Book covers image source - www.amazon.com and www.bookganga.com
Writing for Children is not everyone’s cup of tea. One needs special skill set for it. Balancing the fictional and real world through limited vocabulary of words by considering the age group of readers, understanding the children’s changing psychology and mindset while writing and most importantly making it lucid, simple and beautiful are some of qualities the writer must posses while penning down the words for children. Some of the writers get a prefect knack of doing it to such an extent that they further go beyond these requirements and become able to add essence of their own life and experiments in such a way that the child could reflect, read and feel the meaning of insights between the lines.
Children’s literature in Indian languages has been continuously expanding. Right from Rabindranath Tagore, Anant Pai of Amar Chitra Katha, Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murthy, Bh.Ra.Bhagwat, Prakash Narayan Sant and many other brilliant writers have greatly contributed to expand and enrich the horizon of Children’s literature in Indian languages. In the field of short stories for children in Indian languages, Ruskin Bond and Prakash Narayan Sant are one of the most loved authors by all the age groups in India. People from all age groups can read their writing with the same sense of curiosity for innumerable times. Their extremely rich vocabulary, inbuilt sense of humor sprinkled throughout the story, pictorial depiction of incidents are some of the features people love while reading their work.
Before going to the similar factors I found within their writing, it is interesting to know about their upbringing in brief. Surprisingly, I found some of the common factors from their life journey too, which I think are the reasons for the similarities we can notice in their literary works. Born on 16th June 1915 at Belgaon, a village situated on the border of Karnataka and Maharashtra State, Prakash Narayan Sant was one of the well-known writers in field of Marathi Literature. He was a son of famous Marathi writer and poetess Indira Sant. He started non-fictional writing at the age of 17. In his 20’s he started to write stories. His popular work includes four books of short stories namely ‘Vanvas’. ‘Sharada Sangeet’, ‘Pankha’ and ‘Zumbar’ and he also made illustrations in first three books. Lampan a young boy from the village situated on the borders of Karnataka and Maharashtra is the central character between all these stories. Prakash Narayan Sant lost his father at the age of 10.
Born on 19th May 1934 at Kausauli, Himachal Pradesh, Ruskin Bond too started to write at the age of 17, when he wrote his one of the popular works, ‘The Room on the Roof’. He has written more than 30 books for children and around 100 short stories. Series of the short story books written by him revolve around the character Rusty. Ruskin too lost his father in his childhood.
Though both of them are from the different time period, the short stories written by them are semi-autobiographical. Many of the incidents from their stories are from their own life. Their stories do not present their life journey in any particular order, but do reflect the writer’s opinions about their lives at some place.
‘The Photograph’ written by Ruskin Bond in ‘The Essential Collection For Readers’ and ‘Paan’(A Leaf) by Prakash Narayan Sant from his book ‘Pankha’ have a common central theme. Both the writers are telling the stories and hence both of them are in first person narrative. Whenever I read both of the stories consecutively, I come across many small yet heart-warming similar things.
In Image (From Left ) Prakash Narayan Sant and Ruskin Bond
Image Sources - www.wikipedia.org and www.tatalive.in
In a story 'Paan' (A Leaf) by Prakash Narayan Sant, ‘Lampan’ starts to tell us the story right from the beginning. He gradually takes us up to the main incident of the story by sharing about a brief background mischievous deeds done by him earlier. The actual story starts when the atmosphere becomes cloudy and eventually rain starts falling. His grandmother denies him to go in terrace and grandfather keeps eye on him at the door so that he could not go in rain to enjoy. In such a difficult situation, Lampan recalls one memory related to the photograph of his grandparents.
He asks his grandfather immediately to show his old photograph. When the grandfather takes out the photograph from the wooden box his grandmother(Aaji) also gets nostalgic while looking to the old photographs. From all of those photos she stairs upon one special photo for long time. One person wearing coat was on sat on the chair and one lady was standing behind him. Background in the photo was of a small garden and fountain. Both of them were smiling without seeing at each other. After sometime Lampan realizes that the lady and man from the photograph are his grandparents only! Further his grandmother avoids to tell about the man in photo. Lampan insists her to tell the name of that person and further the story ends.
In the story written by Ruskin Bond ‘The Photograph’, there is a similar conversation happens between the writer and his grandmother over an old photo. A boy finds one old photo in the box of old books when he returns from the Maidan after playing Cricket. He goes to his grandmother to ask about the photo. Grandmother not directly tells him who is in the photo but keeps the conversation going on by weaving a woolen sweater simultaneously. Here also, the boy keeps asking her about the photo and she continues with the conversation by giving him clues and asking him questions. Here also at first the writer fails to recognize her grandmother in the photo, but soon when he starts looking at her grandmother sat beside him, he realizes that both of them are one and the same. But still like Lampan he keeps asking questions to his grandmother to know more from her.
One familiar point which all of us can quickly draw from both of the stories is the relation of writers with their grandparents. As both of them had spent most of the time from their childhood with their grandparents in real life too, this bond has appeared in many other stories too. One thing which I like about this relationship is that the relationship is open enough to communicate well. Grandparents are their best buddies.
Love for the nature is the second thing I found in both of stories. As both them spent their early days in rural area, they got well connected with the mother-nature. Each tree from their locality, each plant, each flower grew in their garden became close their heart. In story 'Paan', title of the story itself reflects Lampan's bond with the nature. Nature is their best friend. In this story, Lampan describes his locality as "the sunshine was spread all over the surrounding like a golden yellow pumpkin flower. I wish I could keep one small part of that sunshine in my bag and then give it to Sumi. But later I realized that to bring the part of sunshine I'll need to go to the sun for that". ( This sentence is a perfect mixture of his creativity, sense of humor, imagination and pure innocence.) or "the sunshine was spread all over after the rain with a lovely fragrance. near on the plant, almost 2500 flowers were bloomed in a mad way.". (Mad is a buzz word for Lampan!). similarly Ruskin also tells us about his surrounding nature. "It was late summer and there were sunflowers in the garden and warm wind in the trees.", or "A lemon-colored butterfly settled on the end of Grandmother's knitting needle and stayed there while needles clicked away. I made a grab at the butterfly and it flew off in a dipping flight and settled on sunflower." Both them have subtle connection with the nature.
Both of these short stories reflect the pure innocence within Lampan and Ruskin. Seeing photos of their grandparents and seeing grandparents lost into the memories for a moment, gives both of the writers the real sense of small happiness hidden little things. Simple life with sound mental health (which is rare today) can be seen in both of the stories. The ending of the both of the stories is pretty-much same. In 'Paan' Lampan keeps asking his grandmother about the man in the photo, but her grandmother refuses to tell him and only tells him through her movements. She then gently keeps the photo near to her heart and points out her finger at grandfather. Lampan tells us it as " it meant Me and and he." Here, Ruskin too keeps asking his grandmother about the lady in the photo though he identifies her. But she tells nothing to him and continues her knitting. Ruskin ends the story as "I wonder whose hands they were', and her needles clicking away in the soft warm silence of that summer afternoon." The non-verbal way of their grandmothers to disclose about their old photos is quiet same.
The world created by Lampan and the world created by Ruskin Bond is imaginative yet very sensitively reflects the understanding of a mature person hidden in them. The bond between Ruskin and Lampan is woven by the deep and sensitive thread of emotions both of them have. Their subtle bond with nature, emotional and little mischievous bond with grandparents are the two major commonalities I always observe when pondering parallels about both of them. Both of them always tell you about the simplicity of life by elaborating the happiness from small moments. They never fail to give you the source of positivity. when I thought about their secret behind uniquely harmonious bond with their readers for the years, I got my answer in the below quote of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe!
Quote Image source - https://in.pinterest.com/pin/272538214922756306/
Let me know in the comment section whether you liked my attempt of finding parallels between the writings of these two most loved authors.
For Marathi readers you can listen one of the books ‘Vanvas’ by Prakash Narayan Sant on the link given below. And do let me know whether you came across with another interesting parallel between both of them!
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What a beautiful journey you took me on, Chaitralee!!! Loved the common link in their childhood and how it reflected in their work. Also the references to nature reminds me of another short story by Ruskin Bond I had read decades ago - where the little boy's grandfather helps him plant a cherry tree. You are right in pointing out the heartwarming nature of these stories.
-Meghana