AUTHOR OF 18 books for children and young adults, including plays, short stories, novellas and novels. She is also published in several anthologies and has written extensively on children’s literature in the country. Headed the National Centre for Children’s Literature, The National Book Trust, the apex body for children’s literature in India. Paro Anand is a world record holder, for helping around 3000 children make the world’s longest newspaper in 13 languages in 11 Indian states. Recipient of the prestigious IBBY Honour List for one of her novels, No Gun’s At my Son’s Funeral in 2005, Anand was also awarded by the Russian Centre for Science and Culture for her outstanding contribution to the children’s literature in 1998.

As a performance storyteller, she hasn’t traveled across the length and breadth of the country only but also across the globe including UK, France and Switzerland. Anand is one the two authors selected from South Asia to represent the region at the Readers and Writers Festival, Birmingham, UK a decade back.

Besides, she was part of an Indo-Swedish workshop and has co-authored a book for teenagers with special needs, with a Swedish writer. Currently, she runs a very ambitious programme, Literature in Action on the use of stories in the holistic development of young people. In an interview with me, the author shares her experiences

Excerpts:

Q: Writing stuff for children and adolescents is considered as a tricky job or say it is not for all, as the author himself/herself has to walk down the memory lane in order to describe a situation or climax. Is it right?

PA: I find writing for children is neither tricky, nor difficult. Nor, for that matter, particularly easy. It is what comes to me, not through some design or too much fore-thought. I guess it’s just the shoe that fits most comfortably for me.

Q: Being an author of this particular genre, what are the eventual changes you observed since the time you started authoring?

PA: The biggest change I’ve observed is not so much in children themselves, as much as in the attitude of adults especially publishers. When I started, in the early 1980s, the publishing scene was rather conservative, most publishers preferred to stick to re-told stories from our myths and legends. The so-called ‘safe’ stuff, although, if you actually look at it, much of what those comprise, are hardly safe. Certainly, even 10 years ago, I could not have published a book called No Guns at My Son’s Funeral. But today, there are many publishers who are asking me for more such books that deal with difficult, real life issues like terrorism. Another big change is that children are more and more becoming their own buyers of books, rather than only having adults do this for them.

Q: Most of the children literature authors write to amuse children but yours differs as you endeavour to relate social issues concerning children. How do you manage to balance your emphasis between amusement and social issues?

PA: I suppose each story chooses its own tone. It may be a conscious decision to write something more serious, like in the two Kashmir books, No Guns… and Weed, I knew they would be serious books. But when writing something like Wingless, a fairly weird fairy tale, I knew I wanted to deal with a difficult issue like disability, or being different, but it turned out to be a very funny, fun and weird book. But it is important to me that each of my stories says something. It does not matter if it is a funny book, or an overtly serious one. I just hope that I’ve said something that is going to make my reader think, while enjoying the story itself.

Q: In an era, when most of the authors are busy in writing for fashion, lifestyle, politics, sports, communities, technologies, etc., you are still stuck with children. Is there any specific reason behind it?

PA: First of all, I would not say that I’m ‘stuck’ with children. It is the form of writing that I love the most. I suppose if a story comes to me that deals with any of the other genres, then I may embark on those. So I don’t feel stuck at all. In fact, this year, I’ve been on a writer in residency at the Woodstock School, Mussourie and I spent my time working on a book about women in their 70’s and 80’s. The novel is still in progress but I hope to finish it early next year.

Q: What according to you is the best salient feature in children that drives you to write more and more for them?

PA: Hmmm! Best salient feature? I guess that sometimes I love children and find them endlessly fascinating other times I hate them with every fibre of my being. And even that makes them fascinating. I guess that’s just the voice I’ve developed in my writing. Once I wrote a story for teens and one of the best compliments I got was a letter to the editor saying, ‘thanks for finally getting a teenager to write a story for us.’ A great compliment for a 50 year old, no?