“Challenging, Exciting & Cartharic!” : #6FrameStoryChallenge Entry by Ambica Vinod

What we loved most about the #6FrameStoryChallenge was the disparate nature of the entries we received. People of varied ages and backgrounds submitted entries-ranging from mother-son/daughter duos, professional illustrators, aspiring illustrators to techies! This one’s from a software professional, music teacher, stay-at-home mom and a first-timer- all rolled in an eloquent, expressive woman!

Ambica Vinod’s story is titled, Himalayas to Thar – A train’s journey Its a train journey from Himalayas to Thar desert. 

Ambica goes on to explain: “These are two of our country’s finest and distinctly opposite terrains…. A chill and wet Himalayas to a hot and arid Thar desert. Through the journey, the train traverses terrains like a valley, through a tunnel, a sleeping city and a river bridge. The train is emoting its feelings in each terrain, traveling at different times in a day. It also brings back to me the nostalgia and excitement of traveling in a train when I was a child. 

“This is my first attempt at creating illustrations. I signed up for the challenge to challenge myself to create stories based on a limited wordlist. To say that the other illustrations on the Pratham Books Facebook page have been very inspiring is an understatement. I hence decided to illustrate even though the drawing artist in me hasn’t grown beyond a 10 year old!!  

CHALLENGING, EXCITING and CATHARTIC experience for me. I started illustrating on 29th after I had a concrete story idea. I
chose the train primarily because it is easier to draw!! It took me 5 hours to finish my drawings. My daughter let me use her crayons for my illustrations (happy hours for her watching TV in return). Thanks to my family for enduring a mother engrossed in drawings.”

Read the other interviews by illustrators who took the challenge:

Rajiv Eipe, Kalyani Ganapathy, Prashant Miranda, Kavita Singh Kale, Megha Vishwanath, Priya Nair Panicker, Sweta Roy Choudhury, Paneendra Suresh, Priya Kuriyan, Yulianto Qin, Manjari Chakravathi, Sonal Goyal and Sumit Sakhuja, Samidha Gunjal, Preeti Lata, Shwetha Elisha,Mithila Ananth, Sunandita Mehrotra, Vedavathi Narasimha Murthy, Jithin Jacob, Vidya Gopal,Archana Sreenivasan, Somesh Kumar, Gumani, Antara Mukherji, Anjora Noronha,Vinayak Varma, Soumya Menon, Jisha Unnikrishnan, Kruttika Susarla, Ninoshka Dias, Isha S Valentine, Neelima Raparla, Vallabhi Shegaonkar, Sangeeta Das, Hari Kumar Nair,Lakhsmi Mitter, Lily Banerjee, Aditi Dilip, Niloufer Wadia, Deepa Jayaraman, AnupamaApte, Nishith Mehta, Muhammed Shafi, Amar Soni, Krishna Prakash K,Lavanya Karthik, Sonal Gupta,Kabini Amin, Jason Dvorak, Tanvi Bhat, Ranjani S, Shikha Nambiar, Aritra Roy Chowdhury, Vaishali Chudasama, Sharanya Kunnath, Priya Manikandan, Milan Nayak, Delwyn Remedios, Geetanjali B, Ambica Vinod, Shailja Jain Chougule, Chitra Chandrashekhar, Nikita Modi, David Knight, Geetali Tare, Nilomee Jesrani