Interviews

Herminder Ohri has been a Zoology lecturer, a primary school teacher and is now a first time writer for Read India Books. She discovered her gift for story telling because of her grand children and there has been no stopping her since. In conversation with Herminder Ohri:

Q) How did you start writing for children?
I first started writing stories when I wrote letters to my grandchildren. When I started writing letters, it would not be just a letter but a little story with illustrations and they were the heroes! I had been doing this for some time when people from the family said why don’t you think of writing for all children. I was computer illiterate! So I went to a cyber café with my text and illustrations and explained to them as best as I could what I wanted.
Then I got a call from World Wildlife Fund (WWF). They liked my stories because they were about animals. They wanted me to do story telling sessions with children from slums. I went along with them on a visit to the zoo. After we went around the zoo, we all sat under a tree and I told them the story about Spincy Spider (Chutkoo Makda) and Our Wonderful World (Hamari Khubsoorat Duniya) and they loved the stories. I also had a larger story telling session at their auditorium where the teachers asked me for the books and I told them, they were not available as books! Then Rukmini (from Pratham ) came and read the stories and thought they could be published as books so here they are …

Q) What are your books about?
The books are simple stories for children and are drawn from everyday life. Kato, the squirrel, gets its name from a colloquial Punjabi word for squirrel, often used to describe a vivacious young girl! I feel a child’s world is very beautiful; free of wickedness. Even if it’s there, you can’t see it; things are black and white for a child. Every child should have an ideal world; you may have to make it up…
I am a Zoology major from BITS Pilani. I am comfortable writing about animals. But when I use them in my stories, I draw them again till they look like the character in my story.

Q) What have you learnt while writing for children?
I learnt a lot when I taught Grade 1 in a small school for Tibetan children in Nepal. It is easy to teach higher classes but it was very difficult to teach children. It was not about teaching them to spell or 2x2=4. You have to bring yourself at the level of the 5-6 year old. You have to hold the attention of a restless bunch. The painting class would be such fun. They would tell me stories about what they painted. The story would be about a robber and if I asked where the robber in the picture was, they would say, he had run away!

Q) What do you think about Pratham Books’ efforts to make books accessible to everyone?
I think Pratham Books is doing a commendable job by creating children’s books which are affordable. Every child, irrespective of where they come from, should have access to books because it feeds their imagination and sets them on the path of discovery.