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1Feb By Torchlight TeamNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Bookshelf Travels: Borrowed Books in Personal Libraries

Lovleen Misra जिस के पन्ने क़ैद न करें उसे क्या चुराना जो दिमाग संग दिल पे न छाए उसे क्या चुराना जो आपकी हमबिस्तर न बन सके उसे क्या चुराना जो किताबी हवस न जगाये उसे क्या चुराना जिसे लौटाने का मन चाहे उसे क्या चुराना. जो अपने घर पे अपनी न लगे उसे क्या चुराना   जनाब, किताब तेरी या मेरी नहीं पढने वाली की होती है.   Translation Why steal something Whose pages fail to entrap you Why steal something That does not overwhelm the stone-heart Why steal something That cannot share your bed Why steal something That does not provoke a bookish lust Why steal something That you want to return Why steal something That does not feel at home in your home Janab, a book is not mine or yours It belongs to the reader Roxanna Khan I borrowed this book circa 2013 from a close ...

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1Feb By Sujata NoronhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

On The Same Page

Being able to criss-cross the globe on the strength of the Internet has made it possible to engage with creative ideas, conversations, and experiences which otherwise would be beyond our reach—and at times, even beyond our imagination.  On The Same Page will bring to the reader of Torchlight, a combination of textual-audio-visual curated content, about and around libraries and bookish love. Think libraries and one does think about rules, about silence. about overdue fines. Here, we look at libraries and rules, to see if there are rules we must keep but maybe - just maybe -there are a few that are quite unnecessary! Cookie Monster in the Library - Really ? The Library brings to mind books, but it also brings to mind rules. Here is how Mike Thaler imagines them in The Librarian From B...

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26Jan By Sayoni BasuNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Screen, Paper, Stories!

I am not what can be called a careful reader. I love printed books—I live surrounded by them, and help create them. But I dogear my books, and leave them open which cracks the spine. I read in the shower, which causes the pages to curl up. I’d like all the books of a series to match, but this, I am not really hung up about. What lingers for any book I read is the story within. This sounds really trite, I know, and while the pleasure from the physical book—the design and the feel of the paper and the weight of the cover—is very much there, these are pleasures I forget more quickly. Reading for me is very private. I do recommend books, of course to friends, and those I really really like, on social media— may be one in three months—because I feel the world needs to read them. I do not revi...

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26Jan By Shataakshi Verma1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Rohith Vemula Library- The new face of revolution

Rohith Vemula, a young PhD scholar at Hyderabad University, committed suicide on January 17, 2016 prey to systemic oppression and institutionalised discrimination. His suicide triggered a new political wave throughout the country and brought to forefront the presence of caste, a reality rejected by many in the political space, and gave way to a movement bringing debates around caste to the centre stage. One result was the formation of Rohit Vemula Education Centre and Library in Phule Nagar, Powai, Mumbai. One enters the lane of Phule Nagar, near IIT Market, a slum community, to see the houses clinging to each other as one, people sitting and standing around their front doors, dogs running and sleeping around, feeling best at home, children playing and bustling around, all signs of a com...

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26Jan By Sujata NoronhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Collections - Who is responsible?

“Librarians are turning to the police to recover borrowed books”  This was the headline in a national newspaper. The article went on to talk about how users in the public library treat borrowing as taking and that more than half the collection does not come back to the public library.  We really need to pause to think about unreturned books. Does that constitute theft to necessitate police action? In what nature of relationships do we turn to the police?  This really is the over riding question that we feel the library - the public library needs to consider. Relationships are at the stronghold of public services, it is why institutions like the public library were imagined in the 18th Century. In India, it was in the Princely State of Baroda where Maharaj Sayajirao III Gaekwad introduced...

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20Jan By Aravinda AnantharamanNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

This Book Need Not be Returned!

On Instagram, I find that Yamini Vijayan, editor of children’s books, has been chronicling community libraries from her travels. How many have you visited, and what are they like, I ask. “Oh so many,” she replies, “...libraries on islands, and libraries on top of hills. Libraries that are squeezed into biology labs. Libraries filled with bizarre religious and political texts. Sprawling libraries with not a soul in it. Tiny libraries that are exploding with readers. Grand libraries with grand bookshelves. Libraries in which books hang from strings tied to windows…” Her desire to visit libraries on her travels began with mild curiosity but has become second nature now. “Often, when I find myself in libraries located in relatively conservative cultures, I’m shocked by the number of very, ve...

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20Jan By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

A Personal Readerly Problem

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20Jan By Samina MishraNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she calls herself a “wandering poet, though San Antonio, Texas is both home and the inspiration behind many of her poems. “But everywhere can be home the moment you unpack, make a tiny space that feels agreeable," says Nye. She was the recipient of the 2014 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. This poem is from the collection, Fuel. Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things She is holding the book close to her body, carrying it home on the cracked sidewalk, down the tangled hill. If a dog runs at her again, she will use the book as a shield. She looked hard among the long lines of books to find this one. When they start talking about money, when the day contains such l...

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25Jul By Jyoti SahiNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

Relation of  Word to Image

The relation of word to image is the origin of writing. A visual symbol or icon, that carries with it an association with a word, is called a pictograph. The pictograph is rather like what today we might term a “logo” which a designer creates to give a specific “identity” to some product. The Mohenjodaro seals are another example of a pictograph. From ancient times until the present day some artists, particularly in the Far East, use personal handcrafted seals as a way of “signing” their creations. Letters for Tagore had a character of their own. They were in a way his “signature”, representing his unique personality. Seals have often shown the way to linking the word to an image. A seal cannot be just simply de-coded as a system like a word composed by letters of the alphabet. A seal is...

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25Jul By Nina SabnaniNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

Telling Gandhi’s Story

The story that I am going to tell is about the way we made the illustrated book ‘My Gandhi Story’, published by Tulika Publishers in 2014. By ‘we’, I mean Radhika Menon, Rajesh Vengad Chaity, Ankit Chadha, Sunaina Suneja and I. The story begins like this: When Tulika publishers asked me to do an illustrated book on Gandhi for children in collaboration with the Warli artist Rajesh Vengad Chaity, I panicked. It was not because I had never collaborated with traditional artists before; on the contrary, I had worked with embroidery artists from Kutch and Kaavad makers from Rajasthan to make animated films and illustrated books for children but my approach had always been more ethnographic. I would interact with them and together we would arrive at the images and text. In this case, the artist ...

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25Jul By Kamlesh Chandra JoshiNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

चित्र पुस्तकों द्वारा बच्चों में कला के प्रति रुझान विकसित करना ........

स्कूल पुस्तकालय की चित्रों से सजी पुस्तकें बच्चों में पढ़ने की उत्सुकता जगाने में अहम भूमिका निभाती हैं | इन किताबों के चित्र पाठ्य को कल्पनात्मक विस्तार देते हैं, सौंदर्यबोध जगाते हैं और बच्चों के पढ़ने के शुरूआती दौर में अनुमान लगाकर पढ़ने में मदद भी करते हैं | स्कूल पुस्तकालय संचालित करने का एक महत्वपूर्ण उद्देश्य है  - बच्चों को उत्साही पाठक बनाना | पाठक बनने का मतलब है कि बच्चे पढ़ने का आनंद लें; उनमें चित्रों के प्रति सौंदर्यबोध विकसित हो | इसके लिए स्कूल के पुस्तकालय में एक शिक्षक या पुस्तकालय संचालक की भूमिका महत्वपूर्ण होती है कि वह बच्चों के साथ किताबों का उपयोग करते हुए इन दोनों ही पहलुओं पर ध्यान रखें | अकसर स्कूलों में देखने को मिलता है कि बच्चों को किताबें पढ़ने को दी जाती हैं लेकिन चित्रों को गौर से देखने और उन पर बातचीत पर बहुत ही कम ध्यान दिया जाता है | यह बात कई विद्यालयों मे...

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25Jul By Liz KempNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

Literally Art - Words and Images

There is a long established connection between books and art in the form of the familiar graphic illustrations that give visual life to a written concept and help to illuminate elements of a story or poem with colour, shape and form. The skill of the illustrator is one of interpretative inspiration and, not wishing to push alliteration too far, also one of personal insight, sentiment and experience. Books create pictures in the human mind - complex scenes of imagined places, times, conversations, memories and images are conjured into being through the power of words to create cognitive landscapes that are as much about the reader as the writer and the life experiences that shape the individual. This article is a little about the creative use of text in the drawing (Guided Drawing) and the...

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25Jul By Jennifer Thomas1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Mama, let’s read two stories!

“Mama, let’s read two stories!” This is a familiar refrain from my 4 year old, Z who insists on a picture book read aloud every night before going to bed. He dislikes going to bed. So he tries to prolong his waking hours by insisting we read at least two stories. In these nightly rituals which mark the close of yet another day, Z sees and says unexpected things, opening for me a small window into the world of how children learn to read.  He often doesn’t respond to pictures as I expect him to but he listens carefully as he is later able to retrieve new information to make connections with his own lived world. In our shared reading of picture books, I realize I’m doing much more than narrating a single story to him. I’m opening up possibilities of endless connections and multiple stories f...

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23Jul By Samina MishraNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Turning the Pages: Sherna Dastur and the Art of Making Books

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22Jul By Rhea D' SouzaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Guided Drawing

For the video, we used a translated version of 'The Night of Glowing Sembar‘ from the 'Night Life of Trees‘ by Tara Books. The process of the guided drawing is here. Participants of the 'guided drawing' are requested to sit comfortably (in a circle in this case so that they could share the stationery) and silently listen to the story that will guide their drawings. Instructions on how to use the colours and any doubts are addressed at this point.  The stationery ( soft pastel & oil pastel colours and A1/A2 Cartridge sheets) should also be laid out by this time. Once the story read aloud begins, the participants must concentrate only on the text of the story. They may close their eyes. ( Additional instrumental /ambient music pertaining to the text may also play in the ...

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22Jul By Venantius J PintoNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

This world of dew is only the world of dew— and yet . . . oh and yet . . .  Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶, 1763 – 1828) Translated by Sam Hamill

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22Jul By Milan KhanolkarNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Dolls as Artifactual Literacy

Notes from a conversation with Milan The domain of artifactual literacy is of growing interest. It brings together material culture and literacy. The ‘stuff’ of culture is understood as a valid and powerful form of meaning-making. Milan Khanolkar, a Goan artist opens up the notion of a text as something beyond the printed and even spoken word. It gives us an insight into how story-making can be multimodal and how texts can be woven in diverse ways. Bookworm has published her children’s book, Bindi Su. Milan has also worked on documenting stories from the rich oral tradition of certain Konkani speaking coastal communities. Even from childhood, I was fascinated by dolls – not the dolls that you could buy from the market but the ones that I could make myself. I wanted to make my own creati...

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21Jul By Aniruddha SenGupta2 Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Stand Up, Comics!

The graphic book genre has taken interesting baby steps in India in the past decade Given that my brothers and I were even as young children heavily into reading, it's difficult to fathom what may have prompted my father – a reasonably typical Bengali middle-class man, a government servant – to start plying us with Amar Chitra Katha (ACK), Classics Illustrated and Tintin comics. The most likely explanation was that they were meant as sources of inspiration for my brother Orijit (at the time still spelt the 'official' way, Arijit), who had shown a prodigious talent for art at a very young age. Whatever it was, it paved a path of exploration for us that we have continued to travel on into our adulthood. If anything, Orijit has even been something of a trailblazer, as far as India is concern...

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21Jul By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

A Comic Readerly Problem

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17Jul By Junuka DeshpandeNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Listening to Images: The Experience of Working with Tactile Illustrations

A few months ago, I had an opportunity to create a visual book that completely challenged my way of seeing, imaging, visualising and making. I must say that the learning has taken me towards a way of engaging with the design that is intuitive, hands-on and poetic. This is simply because, the constraint was big- the images I create, will not be seen! The book was meant to be for visually impaired children and my usual way of approaching ‘image’ from a perspective of the visually able world would not have worked. This triggered a question, what is an image then, if it is not to be seen by eyes? An image lives in the realm of the seen world. Much about its existence, interpretation and function relies on the visual perception of its maker and the viewer. At the same time, it is also an exper...

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