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Birds, brains and fairy-tails

Veteran author Ranjit Lal and theatre director VK exchange notes on their love for today's children

DIFFICULT TO PLEASE THE KIDS Vinod Kumar Sharma (right) seems to be telling Ranjit Lal just that Photo: S. SUBRAMANIUM

He treats children like `ordinary' people and writes for them without passing any value judgments. His stories are sensible and no-nonsense and yet let the imagination soar like the birds he often writes about. And interestingly, the approach is such that adults often end up reading what they had acquired for their children!

Alka Raghuvanshi brings together author Ranjit Lal with the very creative theatre director of the Khilona group, VK - few know or remember his real name Vinod Kumar Sharma - who by his own description, creates theatre with children rather than for them.

Ranjit: I have often been asked that as an adult writing for children, how do I stay out of the pitfall of talking down at them? To me it is simple - I talk to them as ordinary people. Besides, they immediately catch on when you talk down at them.

VK: Exactly! Children these days have access to so much information and are way ahead of what we were when we were their age. Bringing up my own child and doing theatre with children is making me realise what I had read long ago - that child is indeed the father of man!

VK: What are your inspirational points? In the sense how do you set your story?

Ranjit: In my latest book "Big Neem, Red Jaguar and Mrs Samson's Lammergeier", one of the three stories is set in a cemetery which overlooks my backyard, which actually had a tree that caught fire. From this evolved my story. I enjoy writing ghost stories and shall I tell you a secret - use ghosts and stories are made! But by and large I love absurd ideas which all find a place in my stories!

VK: In my plays I have to be careful that I don't pass value judgments, for I find that children tend to stay way out of any situation where they think you are sermonising.

Ranjit: This despite the fact that children, often as part of a conditioned response, look for a moral or the obvious one of good guys emerging victorious, but you can write the best story in the world but if the child reading it is not having a blast reading it, it is meaningless. Or if I feel that I was getting bored writing it, how can I expect my readers to respond?

VK: In my opinion they look for the moral and then decide not to take it!

Ranjit: I for my part try and stay away from moralising. I only think about how it is going to end, not the moral. I feel as it is, there are too many Rottweilers of morality in this world, with brains behind barbed wires. Thankfully now things are changing.

VK: Recently I wanted to do "King Lear" with some children and you know how they demolished the idea - yeh to film `Baghban' ki story hai! Shakespeare demolished in one go!

Ranjit: Sure! But I think children tend to find their own reference points. Once I wrote about a drunk butterfly, another time about a fly in an operation theatre which emerged when I was getting a pacemaker fitted into myself, then about a caterpillar who went on a diet, and even about a beauty contest for the moths! It is my way of taking pot shots at the absurdity that abounds around us.

VK: You are really this generation's birdman, with so many of your books being bird-oriented.

Ranjit: My bird stories are based on actual bird behaviour. In one particular story I wrote about a magpie robin that used to sing three different songs in three different locations in a condominium just to mark territory.

I got hooked to bird watching when I was really young. The first bird that I saw after I acquired a pair of binoculars looked like a clown, and that did it - for I thought that if one looks like this, how will the other 1300 species in India look like! And I am still finding out!

VK: This process of actually evolving is the one that is very interesting. For my part, I make the children create and not really point them in specific directions. Sometimes they create so many options that it is difficult for us to make a choice. Out of the nearly 70 odd plays that I have done, only four used a proper script. The rest evolved with the children taking the play on their chosen path. When I am writing, I take forever - I remember once I wrote a song in two and a half months. My wife nearly threw me out - such was my obsession with it! Do you pre-plan writing or wait for it to arrive?

Ranjit: I can't start writing in a vacuum. Characters come, but you can't pre-think dialogues. Basically writing is like talking to yourself.

VK: You are rather prolific and have been published by so many publishing houses. Isn't it better to stick to one?

Ranjit: If one publisher was to do my books - I'd need six lifetimes to see them in print, so I decided to have six publishers instead!

VK: Do you miss journalism?

Ranjit: Not really. I was never into the mainstream anyway - never managed to get a job in the big papers - for the moment they heard that I had a pacemaker their response would be like a panic attack - sit down, have a glass of water, don't have a heart attack in our office! None asked me what it meant in terms of the job! But how you spend that time is important. For nothing is going to get that time back. Everything else is a bonus!

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