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 was not going to be around, he had completed his task. A Delhi-based designer, Sunaina Suneja, had curated a show “Bapu: The Craftsperson’s Vision” where she had commissioned several craft persons to depict Gandhi and his life through their art. One of the artists was Rajesh Vengad Chaity from Dahanu, an artist rooted in the indigenous Warli tradition. Traditionally, Warlis paint their mud walls with symbolic images to draw blessings from natural elements, but over the years they have also started painting on paper and canvas to enhance their livelihoods. Rajesh had painted three canvases, based on his discussions about Gandhi with his former schoolteacher in the village. Radhika Menon the publisher had approached Sunaina with the idea of a book for children and had the canvases with her. The paintings were beautiful and I could see why Tulika publishers saw great potential in it becoming a book for children; and also why they thought of me.

I could easily recognise the major events from Gandhi’s life but without meeting the artist I would miss out the finer details of his representation of these events and why he chose these. And what about the ones he did not represent? There could be other events which may be of value to children’s understanding of this complex enigmatic personality who they only knew as ‘father of the nation’, freedom fighter’, and someone who believed in non-violence and vegetarianism. How overwhelming would that be…and if the book was to be for children would we not need to make children think of him as someone that had a childhood like any other child and who became someone because of the decisions he made and ideals he followed.

Would they not like to know who his heroes were and what were his fears or the sort of things that children worry about. I remember asking my niece once what was it that she liked about a certain character in a cartoon and she said that she liked it that the character was just like her but then he was brave and cheeky and did what she would be afraid to do. Children are a bit scared of faultless heroes and so are we I am sure. And if we did have to include these nuances as well then where were we to find these stories? Of course, a historian researcher would be required and we would also need to bring in the artist to have a discussion if we were going to do anything of some value. But a children’s publishing house never has the funds for so many cooks and this project was beginning to acquire epic proportions. The publishers would bring in the artist but the rest was to be my call.

Such a project had to be a labour of love, not a professional assignment. I had met an amazing young storyteller a month before this project came up and he had told me how he was in love with Kabir and his next passion was Gandhi. He had studied history but then he moved on to several things before he finally chose to be a storyteller in the Dastangoi tradition.^[i]. Ankit Chadha was excited to work on this project as co-author and now we had the full team in place. Our first goal was to meet with Rajesh Vengad and Radhika Menon with the original artworks on canvas.

Rajesh walked us through the paintings and told us how he learned of Gandhi from his school teacher and what made a deep impression on him was that Gandhi was just like them; he did his own work and was close to nature. This was a different and refreshing perspective we had not encountered before. He chose to pick on two identifiable elements that made one recognise Gandhi from a mile. Gandhi was portrayed with his characteristic glasses and the stopwatch which showed he cared about time and punctuality. An entire canvas was on village life with Gandhi being there notionally. The last canvas did not show how the story ended. When we asked him why he did not complete the whole story, he said he was commissioned to do three canvases and the story was longer so it ended where it did. Then Ankit pointed out that he had made an entire canvas on village life, could he have not done less there and added the last bit of Gandhi’s life? He said but village life was important so a full canvas had to there for it and so he could not add any more to it. The end remained abrupt. If we wanted more to be added we would need to commission one more canvas.

Our moral dilemma began right there. Should this book be about how Rajesh saw Gandhi and leave it where he did or should we complete the narrative as a story needs a closure and ask him to do one more canvas? After much deliberations and discussion with him, we opted for the latter. The focus of my approach shifted to a collaborative, participatory one where each of us would bring different things to the book. Usually, I work with a storyline in place and then work with the images and even if the visuals are already in place, it stems from the narrative of the people concerned. Here we had to work the story from the images and the life of Gandhi and then work the visuals into the book.

Ankit and I had long conversations about the structure of the narrative. Ankit told stories and therefore was a painter with words. We already had the paintings so we had to rework the text several times to let the pictures also do the telling. Our other concerns were: how would we get children to respond to the story? How could we make them also participate? Could we work with multiple voices? I had tried that with the Kutch embroiderers in my film “The Stitches Speak” and it had worked well as a conversation. Here we could try something close but not the same. We would have the voice of the artist as he told his story of Gandhi and what he chose to paint, and a curious child who could ask questions that any child may have in their mind. And then Gandhi could respond in his own voice. Ankit had read extensively on Gandhi’s life and had his favourite quotes and stories that could be woven into the story without obscuring the conversation between the artist and the child.

The book could not be completed without a visit to Sabarmati ashram where I saw the place where Gandhi spun the charkha. A squirrel was the only visitor allowed inside the space that I saw only from the outside. This was a sign to include Rajesh’s squirrel in the narrative!

The book ended with the Independence celebrations and Gandhi walking away with his two nieces on the opposite page. We did not want to end it with his dying nor did we want to shy away from the facts. Rajesh too was satisfied with this ending as he agreed with us that it did not make sense to show the tragic end and leave children with the thought that doing good leads to tragedy.

This project had many collaborators and my learning from this was that though it is challenging to work with so many different minds, it is also the most rewarding. It pushes one out of one’s comfort zone and stimulates one’s imagination to different levels.

When the book was first launched at Kitab Khana in Mumbai Rajesh, Sunaina, Ankit and I were present to share it with a large group of children. Ankit had an amazing idea of introducing the tale of two goats, another favourite of Gandhi’s, who wanted to cross the bridge and neither would give way to the other because of their pride. It was not a part of our text but he wove the idea of the goat sound ‘mein’ which also means ‘me’ in Hindi and how the problem is solved when they make the sound ‘hummm’ which also means ‘us’ in Hindi. Rajesh drew images from the book on a board and we enacted the story of the goats with Ankit weaving in little tales of Gandhi as a child. By the end of the event we had the entire audience screaming ‘mein’ and then ‘hummm’. Children wanted to see where the goats were drawn in the book and whether they belonged to Gandhi. Each kid wanted to come and see the book for themselves. The entire credit for this excitement goes to our storyteller friend Ankit Chadha who jumped up and down with the kids and encouraged them to ask questions. This became our way of involving the little readers to engage with the text even when we made another presentation for NBT in Delhi at the World Book Fair. Ankit enthralled the readers and we are really sorry he is no longer with us. He passed away suddenly at the age of 30 leaving us with an amazing legacy of storytelling that I was privileged to share through My Gandhi Story. This article is dedicated to Ankit Chadha, a storyteller and a beautiful human being.