Going by author Anita Nair’s new book, Bipathu and A Very Big Dream, it takes a village to raise a child and, also, spin a story. Set in Kaikurussi, a fictional village in North Kerala, the book for children tells the heart-warming story of nine-year-old Bipathu, an ardent football fan, and her world.
Speaking over the phone from Bengaluru, Anita says the book, which was released on July 23 at the Vayanashala at Mundakkottukurissi, Palakkad, has several autobiographical elements in it, as Kaikurussi is a fictional sketch of Mundakkottukurissi, where she hails from. Kaikurussi first appeared in her book, The Better Man.
Authorspeak
Anita says it is only right that the book for children, published by Penguin, be released at the library in Mundakkottukurissi. Every year, Anita gives away prizes for the toppers in Malayalam and English, in classes four and seven. “Moreover, students in class seven have a story of mine to study — ‘The Village Pooram’, which is set in the village. They are familiar with the festival and the landscape I describe. Every time I am in Palakkad, the school invites me over for an interaction with the students,” she says.
Author Anita Nair with some of the children of a local school near Mundakkottukurissi, Palakkad, during an interaction in 2019.
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The library, adds Anita, is a nerve centre of the village with several events and reading sessions held there regularly. She adds that the secretary of the library, Subhash Thodayam, also the headmaster of the government lower primary school at Kizhakkupadam, had helped her in fine tuning details in her book for children.
“I would turn to him for help to understand the school, what kind of bell was rung there, the syllabus of environmental science for class four and so on. So, the book had to be released there as it has much of the village in it,” says Anita.
Bipathu’s world consists of her widowed umma (mother), her physically challenged brother Saad, her baby brother Faesal, and her friends in school, at the madrasa and in the village. A resident in the village, whom Bipathu calls madama ( colloquial way of addressing Caucasian women), a maash (teacher), Duggu and a dog bring many refreshing changes in the child’s life.
The story of Bipathu was first written for a writer-translator in Sangli who requested for a short story to be included in a magazine meant for children in rural areas in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. Since Anita did not have any unpublished stories that were suitable, she wrote about a little girl who dreams of a book of her own and how a neighbour gives her a carton of books in which she finds the book of her dreams.
Bipathu stayed in her mind and during her stay in Mundakkottukurissi, she began writing the book. “The description of the village is of my village, the road is the one I live on. I have a little cottage at the bottom of my parent’s property where I spend time to write,” says Anita.
Author Anita Nair
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Anita’s house in the village is next to a madrasa. Anita says with a laugh that she was an oddity for the children going to the madrasa because she dressed differently from the villagers and used to go for meandering long walks, something the women or girls in the village did not do.
“Recently, I have seen a few women, mothers and grandmothers wearing burqas but with sneakers on their feet, going for a walk. I even saw a little girl running on the road, practising for some event in her school. So, I have drawn so much from what I have seen in the village.”
The children were quite enamoured by a woman who stayed on her own in a house with a tiled roof that leaked buckets when it rained. For almost 15 years, she lived there, till she had it waterproofed in the recent past. “I would happily go to sleep with a blue tarpaulin over my beautiful four-poster bed. My parents were very embarrassed. But it was all quaint for the children. On their way to school, they stand at the gate and call out ‘Good morning madama’. This was a period before 2015 when Internet services had not become so pervasive there.”
Evocative picture
Anita has evocatively sketched the landscape, food, culture and ambience of the village and its inhabitants. And football fever is common in the Malabar region. Even after the last World Cup, there were huge cut-outs of football stars such as Ronaldo, Neymar and Messi.
“Everywhere, boys could be found playing football and there were billboards announcing tournaments being played. But I am yet to see a single girl playing football or any other game for that matter!”
She maintains that releasing the book in Mundakkottukurissi was “the perfect thing to do. The village and the people there inspired me to write it. It is a safe space for me to revive the child in me, considering the sinister themes I write about in my books for adults. In one way, this is how I redeem my soul.”