Our Outreach Executive Khyati Datt writes about how v-shesh is using books to help develop language skills amongst children with hearing impairments. 

At a workshop conducted for parents of children with hearing impairments, Kanchan and Tabassum, trained sign language interpreters,  posed the gathering question: 

“What do you see as the biggest obstacle in ensuring that  your child’s learning is not restricted to the classroom only?” 

Most parents spoke about the communication gap that existed between them and their child which often resulted in the child becoming withdrawn from the family. Kanchan and Tabassum gave them a simple solution for this:

“Read to your children.”

Kanchan and Tabassum have always enjoyed interacting with children. They work with v-shesh Learning Services, an award winning impact enterprise that assists persons with disabilities (PwD), with socio-economic inclusion. v-shesh works in the training and education space to assist PwD in accessing formal sector jobs.

The duo are closely involved in the implementation of a project which aims to assist children with hearing impairment develop English language competency. When they joined v-shesh in 2016,  the project had just started, but overtime, being in the field made them realize the needs of the children. 

“Most of our students were either pre-teens or teenagers. We found a lot of interest and enthusiasm amongst the students to learn the English language, but most teaching learning material and methodologies available were not age appropriate to teach basic concepts. This led to the need for continuous innovation and to build upon existing material to make it relevant for students and simultaneously address the core challenge of assisting them with the basics”, Kanchan shares.

Books and beyond

Kanchan and Tabassum have always believed that stories are an important tool in igniting interest in learning a language. They started looking for books that were simple, colorful and had captivating illustrations. While Kanchan decided to divide the children in groups and asked them to read to each other, Tabassum started giving out books as rewards to the children.

v-shesh is a big believer of the PVR (Preview, View, and Review) method of teaching. In this method, a book is introduced to children by giving them a general description of the topic. As a next step, they read the book with the students using some visual effects and end the discussion by asking the children to review the book and share their learnings with each other. Simple videos were also made to explain the concept to the teachers and parents as well.

 

Children reading in pairs in a v-shesh centre in Delhi

Tabassum shares how the books from StoryWeaver were, especially, loved by children with hearing disability; “The children would often read the books on their own and volunteer to talk about the story in the class. ”

Kanchan and Tabassum’s advice to the parents at the workshop ensured that learning did not stop once the children exited the classroom. The parents of  Khushi, one of the students at the center, were the first to read a book to their child. Kanchan and Tabassum noticed a remarkable change in Khushi’s confidence and were happy to see that despite not knowing sign language, Khushi’s parents were able to connect with their child through books. 

Kanchan feels that, “Books are the most effective and the most important means of igniting interest in language among the students . A beautifully illustrated book helps motivate children to read and learn a language like no other”.

 

Source:  v- shesh centre in Delhi

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Saurashtra is a language spoken by a group that migrated from Gujarat two centuries ago to cities like Madurai, Chennai and Tanjore. The script for this language is no longer in use and while it does follow the Devanagiri system, many native speakers cannot read Hindi. The only languages available to write Saurashtram are English and Tamil. Pavithra Solai Jawahar asked us to add her mother language Saurasthra and has been busy translating stories and creating a book of rhymes in the language. 

In recent times, I found myself to be very jealous of people who speak Indian languages like Tamil and Gujarati. The reason: There were these lovely publishers in India, who were bringing out beautiful books in regional languages for children and young adults. But there were none in my language, my mother tongue, Saurashtra. Belonging to a group of linguistic minorities, I believe when your language has a very limited literature for children, it is an injustice done both to the language and the children who miss out reading books in their mother tongue. And when you read in your mother tongue, you also take pride in your heritage. A sense of belonging, you can’t find elsewhere.

That’s why I started to translate children stories into Saurashtra. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Pratham Books StoryWeaver. They graciously added Saurashtra onto the platform as a part of their Freedom to Read campaign.

There is something about a child’s imagination. You can never put a lid on it. It is unparalleled in a way, you and I, can’t imagine. So when I started to translate my first story, it was this fear that took over me. Will I do justice to this pure, boundless imagination of the child reading it? Also, Saurashtra is a dialect. A language whose script is in disuse. And so, I had to resort to transliterating Saurashtra into English. A language which would be easier to read for the children to read.

I have translated two books, as of now.

   

(Click on the above links to read these stories)

I have also created a “rhymes” book in Saurashtra, using illustrations from StoryWeaver. You can can read it here.

Now that I am able to create online story books in Saurashtra, my next challenge is to spread the word about it. And that’s where I discovered the  next tricky thing about my mother tongue. Saurashtra has several regional variances, that my transliteration couldn’t cover. (The variation of Saurashtra I speak is different from my dad’s. Yes, that’s how it is!) I am in the process of getting inputs from the Saurashtra community, on how best this can be handled. Also, I now realise, that I should print these translations as physical books which can help engage children with the language better. You can expect more Saurashtra storybooks from me and if you know of any Saurashtrians or if you are one (Avo, avo!), please do share these books and spread the word.

You love your mother tongue. Let it live! :)

Pssst: Since you have read the whole blog, here is another interesting story book, I created with my spouse, for our nephew. It was about a certain SpaceBoy who jumps to the moon to dance with a dinosaur!

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If you grew up during the 80s and the 90s, you could not not have pored over copies of popular children’s (in today’s time it would have targeted the Young Adult category) magazine Target, published by the India Today group. A constant companion during long train journeys, sultry afternoons during summer vacations, copies of Target magazine were zealously guarded from annoying friends with borrowing-but-not-returning habits. Along with a slew of reader contributions, in-house features (anybody remembers that fantastic page dedicated to pen friends?) Target ran a bunch of popular comic strips including Detective Moochhwala by Ajit Ninan, Granny’s Gupshup by Praloy Chakravorty, It Happened in History by Renuka Narayanan. But perhaps the most memorable character remains Gardhab Das, a kurta-pajama wearing, harmonium wielding donkey, who was also an unemployed music teacher.

Co-created by cartoonist brothers Neelab and Jayanto Banerjee, Gardhab's favourite weapon for “mass destruction" was his singing talent or the lack of it. His singing mostly landed him in trouble, but sometimes it also got him out of sticky situations.

And bringing back the charm of Gardhab Das and the nostalgia associated with him is Jayanto with his newest creation for Pratham Books: Gadbad Das, son of Gardhabh, a millennial of sorts, but unfortunately for him, musical talent is still not in his genes. Gadbad lives in small town India. Like his pa, Gadbad is a terrible singer too. Everybody knows this, except him! Gadbad does various odd jobs to survive and solves his problems musically mostly. Like in his debut book — No Water for you, where Gadbad has to fix a puncture in his cycle shop, but he has run out of water. Off goes Gadbad to find some water, but it’s not as easy as you’d think.

Gadbad’s creator Jayanto, who has, post Target, done stints at India Today, Times of India, and Hindustan Times as a cartoonist, tells us why he decided to resurrect Gardhab Das into our lives again with his mini-me: Gadbad, reminisces about Target days and creating an iconic cartoon character.

What was the original inspiration for the Gardabh Das comic strip that ran in Target from 1980s to early 90s?

To do that I will have to go back to that era. This was the late 1980s and the editor of Target was Rosalind Wilson, a British lady. She wanted an Indian cartoon strip to be created as a double spread in the magazine and Neelabh and I met with her to discuss the possibility of creating a comic strip once in three months. Her brief to us was very clear, “It should be about your life [ we were from Lucknow], the comic strip needs to have a small town feel to it. We thought about it and decided that unlike every other comic strip that had superheroes, our hero basically would be a loser. He would be terrible at singing and unemployed and that kind of gave us that a fertile space to create really funny situations that protagonist Gardhab Das keeps getting into.

What was the appeal of Gardhab Das during his time?

Gardhab had to be an everyday character, and relatable to kids, their parents and grown ups as well. What was to be a three-monthly comic strip (featured as a double spread) soon became a monthly affair thanks to its immense popularity. In fact Gardhab became so popular that the comic strip became part of Target’s popular yearly diary, made it to annual issues and even got its own digest. There was a point in time when Gardhab was going to be killed off because its illustrator Neelab (Jayanto claims his brother was much better at creating Gardhab than him) had decided to move on, but the then editor Vijaya Ghosh insisted that Jayanto continue with the comic strip and it had another successful run for the next few years until the magazine shuttered.

What inspired you to create Garbad Das for Pratham Books? How is Gadbad similar or different from the legendary Gardabh Das?

Initially while discussing with the Pratham Books editorial team we wondered whether we should bring back the original Gardabh Das for the book. But we realised that Gardabh belonged to another era and we wanted to contemporise the character even though father and son have the same talents. Hence we decided to introduce Gadbad Das, son of Gardabh Das, a character who was born after the year 2000. Even though Gadbad might be contemporary, the look and feel of the character and the setting are more small town than metros. A hand pump, a very rare site in big cities is still prevalent in small town India. But water and water shortage is a common problem that plagues the entire country.

Jayanto hopes that Gadbad Das can become a series and become as popular as his illustrious father. Characters such as RK Laxman’s Common Man and the Amul Girl have grown on us, and are still going strong, so why not Gadbad Das, says Jayanto.

 

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