Neha Singh is a Mumbai- based theatre practitioner, author and activist. She directs, produces, writes and acts in plays for children and grown-ups. She has authored three children’s books- Bela Misses Her Train, The Wednesday Bazaar and Moongphali. Singh’s latest book- I Need To Pee highlights the ever-relevant worry of having a safe and clean toilet experience.
The protagonist of I Need to Pee-Rahi loves slurping refreshing drinks, and so she always needs to pee. But boy, does she hate public loos!
Here are some difficulties Rahi faces when using public toilets:
Category: Children’s Features
Children’s Features articles
Meet Judy Moody, The Queen of Moods!
Judy Moody is a third grader with plenty of attitude and a mood for every occasion. This delightful series, created by Megan McDonald, is loaded with laughs and moments of wisdom as readers follow Judy through her hilarious adventures.
The fabulous Judy Moody will delight any child who’s known a bad mood or a bad day—and managed to laugh and learn along the way!
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Books That Celebrate Mom
On mother’s day or any other day, it is always a great idea to celebrate your mom. So we have compiled a list of perfect reads that honor these unbreakable caregivers and boss ladies. Check them out now!
The Thousand Faces of Night by Githa Hariharan
A subtle and tender tale of women’s lives in India, this award-winning novel is structured with the delicacy and precision of a piece of music. Fusing myth, tale and the real voices of different women, The Thousand Faces of Night brings alive the underworld of Indian women’s lives.
Ladies Coup by Anita Nair
Meet Akhilandeshwari, Akhila for short: forty-five and single, an income tax clerk and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life—always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider. Until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari. This is a story of a woman’s search for strength and independence.
This Wide Night by Sarvat Hasin
The Maliks live a life of relative freedom in 1970s Karachi: four beautiful sisters, Maria, Ayesha, Leila and Beena, are warily watched over by an unconventional mother. Captain Malik is usually away, and so the women forge the rules of their own universe, taking in a few men: Amir, the professor who falls in love with Maria, and Jamal, the neighbour who tells this tale. The curious young man is drawn in by all four sisters, and particularly by rebellious Ayesha. But slowly, it becomes clear he will never completely penetrate their circle—just as they will never completely move with the tide that swirls so potently around them.
Millionaire Housewives by Rinku Paul
Millionaire Housewives tells the stories of twelve enterprising homemakers who, in spite of having no prior experience in business, managed to build successful empires through the single-minded pursuit of their goal, defying all stereotypes. For Ambika Pillai-one of the most well-known names in the world of hair and beauty-it was the need to be financially independent that led her down this path. For celebrity chef Nita Mehta, entrepreneurship was the result of wanting to do something beyond her traditional role as a homemaker. Millionaire Housewives offers valuable lessons for homemakers who want to venture into entrepreneurship.
Legacy: Letters from Eminent Parents by Sudha Menon
Legacy brings forth a rare collection of personal and evocative letters from parents to their daughters. Through their fearless approach to life, love, and overcoming obstacles, these icons from the world of business, arts, films, food, and sports share their experience and wisdom as they pass them on to their daughters. Deeply moving and thought provoking, Legacy is a remarkable collection of life lessons that will delight and inspire at the same time.
The Mother-In-Law by Veena Venugopal
In this witty and often painfully funny book Veena Venugopal follows eleven women through their marriages and explores why the mother-in-law is the dreaded figure she is. Meet Deepa, whose bikini-wearing mother-in-law won’t let her even wear jeans; Rachna who fell in love with her mother-in-law even before she met her fiancé only to find both her romances sour. The Mother-in-Law is a book that will make you laugh and cry and understand better the most important relationship in a married woman’s life.
Mom in the City by Kausalya Saptharishi
When single working mother, Ira, enrolls her son, Abhi, at Bumblebees, a posh playschool in Lutyens’ Delhi, little does she know what she is getting into. The other moms are everything she is not—impeccably groomed, fashionistas who throw lavish birthday parties for their children and holiday in exotic locales. In her eagerness to befriend these hip moms, Ira inadvertently lets slip a lie about her marriage that could lead to her being ostracized from this clique. Mom in the City is an intimate, humorous, and poignant story about contemporary motherhood, love, and life in India.
The Mother I Never Knew by Sudha Murty
Sudha Murty’s new book comprises two novellas that explore two quests by two different men—both for mothers they never knew they had. Venkatesh, a bank manager, stumbles upon his lookalike one fine day. When he probes further, he discovers his father’s hidden past, which includes an abandoned wife and child. Mukesh, a young man, is shocked to realize after his father’s death that he was actually adopted. He sets out to find his biological mother. The Mother I Never Knew is a poignant, dramatic book that reaches deep into the human heart to reveal what we really feel about those closest to us.
Bijnis Woman by Tanuja Chandra
A masaledaar mix of fact and fiction, action and emotion, drama and passion—these strange, funny, intriguing tales from small-town Uttar Pradesh have been passed orally from one generation to the next. The bizarre chronicle of a lazy daughter-in-law, the court clerk who loved eating chaat, two cousins inseparable even in death, a blind teacher who fell in love with a woman with beautiful eyes and other wild tales from Bareilly, Lucknow, Hapur, Badaun, Sapnawat and Pilibhit, places big and small, in that fascinating part of India called Uttar Pradesh.
The Mirror of Beauty by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
The Mirror of Beauty embarks on an epic journey that sweeps through the death-giving deserts of Rajputana, the verdant valley of Kashmir and the glorious cosmopolis of Delhi, the craft of miniature painting and the art of carpet designing, scintillating musical performances and recurring paintings of mysterious, alluring women. Its scope breathtaking, its language beguiling, and its style sumptuous, this is a work of profound beauty, depth and power.
That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande
Jaya’s life comes apart at the seams when her husband is asked to leave his job while allegations of business malpractice. Differences with her husband, frustrations in their seventeen-year-old marriage, disappointment in her two teenage children, the claustrophia of her childhood-all begin to surface. Shashi Deshpande gives us an exceptionally accomplished portrayal of a woman trying to erase a ‘long silence’ begun in childhood and rooted in herself and in the constraints of her life.
Margot by Reba Som
Among all the disciples of Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita occupies pride of place. Margaret Noble arrived at India’s shores in the late nineteenth century, took the vows of a brahmacharini, and devoted the rest of her life to the cause of India. In this compelling biography, the author traces the development of Margaret from a loyal Irishwoman into Sister Nivedita, and finally into ‘Lok Mata’ or ‘People’s Mother’—a title bestowed on her by Tagore.
Sita by Devdutt Pattanaik
This book approaches Ram by speculating on Sita—her childhood with her father, Janak, who hosted sages mentioned in the Upanishads; her stay in the forest with her husband who had to be a celibate ascetic while she was in the prime of her youth; her interactions with the women of Lanka, recipes she exchanged, emotions they shared; her connection with the earth, her mother; her role as the Goddess, the untamed Kali as well as the demure Gauri, in transforming the stoic prince of Ayodhya into God.
Devi by Mrinal Pande
Writer and journalist Mrinal Pande sees in strong passionate women who defy the strictures of a male-dominated world, shades of the Goddess. There were many such women in her life, women who succeeded beyond the expectations of men. First, there was her forceful mother, the writer Shivani. Then came Badi Amma, the most colorful woman in this book, her domineering, intellectual aunt. There were friends who silently lived lives of emotional deprivation till they opted out of the world altogether. There were women who made the news and women who preyed on men. In all these women, the writer sees the original Devi.
Balancing Act by Meera Godbole Krishnamurthy
Balancing Act is a book that is all about the balancing act that Tara Mistri does on a day-to-day basis in her life. Tara Mistri is a stay-at-home mother, who is a frustrated architect as well. She is described as being a baker of biscuits and a maker of bricks. Tara is perplexed by the absolute confusion in her life and is inspired by the Salk Institute, which is in California. Her aim is to bring in the kind of symmetry that exists there, into her own life.
Six Things You Didn't Know About Judy Moody
Judy Moody, from the international bestselling series created by Megan McDonald, is a third grader with plenty of attitude and a mood for every occasion. You know she is funny, intelligent and caring, but here are six things we bet you don’t know about Judy Moody.
Get to know them here.
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Undercover Princess by Connie Glynn – An Excerpt
Connie Glynn has always loved writing and wrote her first story when she was 6 with her mum at a typewriter acting as the scribe. It was at university that Connie started her hugely successful YouTube channel Noodlerella (named after her favourite food and favourite Disney princess). Her book, Undercover Princess is about a fairy tale obsessed Lottie Pumpkin who starting at the infamous Rosewood Hall, where she was not expecting to share a room with the Crown Princess of Maradova, Ellie Wolf. Lottie is thrust into the real world of royalty – a world filled with secrets, intrigue and betrayal.
Let’s read an excerpt from the book:
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Princess Eleanor Prudence Wolfson, sole heir of King Alexander Wolfson and next in line for the throne of Maradova, did not live in one of these spaces, nor was she one of these people, but she was in desperate need of both.
‘I am going to this school!’ Eleanor slammed the brochure on the table with a loud thwack, causing the cups of breakfast tea to wobble on top of their saucers.
Alexander Wolfson didn’t even look up from his newspaper to reply.
‘No,’ he said blankly.
‘I am next in line for the Maravish throne. I think the teeny-tiny decision of which school I attend is something I am capable of managing myself.’
Alexander looked up at his wife, Queen Matilde, who was sitting across the table from him.
She shrugged. ‘She does have a point, Alex,’ she said amiably, delicately dropping a lump of sugar into her teacup and stirring it slowly while stifling a smile.
This was not the parental solidarity King Alexander had been hoping for.
‘See?’ said Eleanor. ‘Even Mum agrees with me.’
Alexander remained firmly fixated on his newspaper, feigning an image of complete composure. He took a sip of tea.
‘ Edwina –’ he gestured to their maid – ‘would you kindly take the empty plates to the kitchen, please?’
‘Of course, Your Majesty.’ Edwina expertly stacked the crumb-covered trays and exited the dining hall with a skilled smoothness, her feet barely making a sound on the oak flooring. The large double doors closed behind her, creaking softly as she eased them shut.
Once Alexander was sure she was a reasonable distance down the hall, and safely away from any domestic outbursts, he looked back down at his newspaper and said, ‘My answer is no.’
Eleanor let out an exasperated screech and stamped her foot. ‘You could at least look at the brochure!’ she snapped, snatching the newspaper from her father’s fingertips.
Alexander was forced to look up at his daughter.
Eleanor had always been a challenging child. She was anything but a typical princess; she would take fiery political arguments and sneaking out to loud, rowdy concerts over mild polite conversation any day, and more than anything she despised elaborate formal functions – or at least she assumed she did, having refused to ever attend one. But she was smart, she was confident and she was passionate – and for Alexander that was all far more important than any of the traditional values expected of her. Although occasionally he did wish she’d watch her language around her grandparents.
As much as he wanted Eleanor to be happy and live a life free of the commitments of royalty, the fact remained that she would be queen one day and would eventually need to accept that responsibility. He was determined to find a way to make his daughter realize she could enjoy her royal obligations; something he’d had to learn himself when he was younger.
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‘What on earth are you wearing?’ Ollie’s sarcastic tone drifted into Lottie’s bedroom. He stood leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed as he watched Lottie pack up the last items in her room.
‘Ollie!’ Lottie’s hand rushed to her chest in shock at the sudden appearance of her best friend. ‘How did you get up here? And how many times do I have to tell you to knock?’ Lottie was huffing slightly from trying to squish down her suitcases. Ollie was fourteen, the same age as Lottie, yet even though he was taller than her he’d retained his baby face, which reminded her of soft-serve ice cream on the beach and other happy memories.
‘I had to sneak past the wicked witch. Did you know her skin’s turned green finally?’ Ollie said with a devilish smile.
Lottie giggled, but she couldn’t ignore his comment. She looked down at her outfit, brushing down her dress self- consciously. ‘And what exactly is wrong with my outfit?’ she said indignantly.
Ollie laughed, grinning at her with his signature cheeky smile. Clumps of dog hair dotted his jeans, a permanent feature that he never seemed to care about.
‘Isn’t it a little too fancy for the first day of school?’
‘Too fancy?!’ Lottie couldn’t believe he’d suggest something so ridiculous. ‘Nothing is too fancy for Rosewood Hall. I need to fit in. I can’t have my clothes making me an outcast on the first day.’
Lottie began picking at a non-existent spot on the collar of her dress. ‘Most of the students probably have their clothes tailor-made out of gold or something.’
Ollie casually strolled into the room, taking a seat on Lottie’s bed. He pursed his lips as he glanced around the bedroom. Usually so alive with Lottie’s special brand of handmade quirkiness, it was now stripped bare, everything she owned crammed into two pink suitcases.
‘Well,’ Ollie began, reaching into his pocket, ‘if you can take a moment off from worrying about what other people think of you . . .’ He pulled out a crumpled envelope and a worn-out Polaroid that Lottie recognized from his bedroom wall. ‘These are for you.’
Lottie reached out for them, but Ollie whipped his hand back.
‘You can’t open the letter until you’re on the train.’
Lottie nodded with an exasperated smile and he slowly placed both gifts in her hand. It was a photograph she’d seen thousands of times: the two of them at the beach, their noses covered in ice cream and beaming grins on both their greedy faces. Even though the colours had begun to fade to sepia, you could still see the tiara on Lottie’s head and the horns on Ollie’s. As children, the two had demanded to wear these fancy-dress items every day and everywhere. Ollie had declared he was the fairy Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream after they’d watched an open-air performance at the beach one evening. He’d been completely infatuated with all the mischief the character got away with and assumed he too could get away with being naughty so long as he was wearing his horns. Lottie’s tiara, on the other hand, had a less happy – go – lucky origin. Her thumb lingered over the accessory in the photo, a little pang striking her heart as she remembered the day she’d received it.
‘I’ll give you some time to say goodbye,’ he said, before effortlessly picking up both her suitcases and carrying them down the stairs to the car. When he was gone she thoughtfully placed Ollie’s gifts with the rest of her most important belongings, which she’d laid out on the now-bare bed so as not to forget them. She put each item into her handbag: first the weathered Polaroid and letter from Ollie, followed by her favourite sketchbook, her most loyal stuffed companion, Mr Truffles, a framed photo of her mother, Marguerite, in her graduation gown, and, finally – looking very out of place among the other objects – a crescent- moon tiara, her most valued possession. It had taken Lottie all of sixty minutes to pack her entire life into two pink suitcases, one denim backpack and a small over- shoulder handbag with a sturdy white strap. She looked over the now- empty room.
I did it, Mum, she thought. I got into Rosewood just like I promised.
Copyright © Connie Glynn, 2017
The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert – An Excerpt
The Hazel Wood, is about seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother who have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the strange bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate – the Hazel Wood – Alice learns how bad her luck can really get. Her mother is stolen away – by a figure who claims to come from the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: STAY AWAY FROM THE HAZEL WOOD.
Let’s read an excerpt from this absolutely unputdownable book.
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Althea Proserpine is raising her daughter on fairy tales. Once upon a time she was a girl named Anna Parks, one of the legion of midcentury dreamers who came to Manhattan with their hopes tucked into a suitcase. Then she went missing. Then she came back, and achieved an odd kind of fame, glittering from some angles but dark from others. Now she’s gone again, ed to a turreted house in the deep dark woods, where she lives with her ve- year- old daughter and her husband, an actual royal— she just can’t quit fairy tales. When I get her on the phone, her voice is as alluring as her most famous photo, the one with the ring and the cigarette. I ask if I can come talk to her in person, and her laugh is hot whiskey on ice. “You’d get lost on the way to nding me,” she says. “You’d need breadcrumbs, or a spool of thread.” — “The Queen of the Hinterland,” Vanity Fair, 1987
My mother was raised on fairy tales, but I was raised on highways. My first memory is the smell of hot pavement and the sky through the sunroof, whipping by in a river of blue. My mom tells me that’s impossible— our car doesn’t have a sunroof. But I can still close my eyes and see it, so I’m holding on to it.
We’ve crossed the country a hundred times, in our beater car that smells like French fries and stale coffee and plasticky strawberries, from the day I fed my Tinkerbell lipstick into the slats of the heater vent. We stayed in so many places, with so many people, that I never really learned the concept of stranger danger.
Which is why, when I was six years old, I got into an old blue Buick with a redheaded man I’d never met and drove with him for fourteen hours straight— plus two stops for bathroom breaks and one for pancakes— before the cops pulled us over, tipped off by a waitress who recognized my description from the radio.
By then I’d figured out the man wasn’t who he said he was: a friend of my grandmother, Althea, taking me to see her. Althea was already secluded in her big house then, and I’d never met her. She had no friends, just fans, and my mother told me that’s what the man was. A fan who wanted to use me to get to my grandma.
After they’d determined I hadn’t been assaulted, after the redheaded man was identified as a drifter who’d stolen a car a few miles from the place we were staying in Utah, my mother decided we’d never talk about it again. She didn’t want to hear it when I told her the man was kind, that he’d told me stories and had a warm laugh that made me believe, deep in my six- year- old’s heart, he was actually my father come to claim me. She’d been shown the redheaded man in custody through a one- way mirror, and swore she’d never seen him before.
For a few years I’d persisted in believing he was my dad. When we left Utah after his arrest, to live for a few months in an artists’ retreat outside of Tempe, I worried he wouldn’t be able to find me again.
He never did. By the time I turned nine, I’d recognized my secret belief for what it was: a child’s fantasy. I folded it away like I did all the things I didn’t need— old toys, bedtime superstitions, clothes that didn’t fit. My mom and I lived like vagrants, staying with friends till our welcome wore through at the elbows, perching in precarious places, then moving on. We didn’t have the luxury of being nostalgic. We didn’t have a chance to stand still. Until the year I turned seventeen, and Althea died in the Hazel Wood.
Storytelling Traditions of India and its Importance
Telling stories is more than just a fun activity. It is a way of preserving the culture and beliefs of a tribe or community and passing them down to the next generation. That is the real significance of oral traditions.
However, storytelling does not need to be limited to oral recitation. It can take form through drawings, paintings, dance or even puppet shows. India’s storytelling traditions are as diverse as the culture of the country, as can be seen in Nalini Ramachandran’s book, Lore of the Land.
Here are some of the storytelling traditions of India:
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Marvellous Thieves, An Excerpt
Paulo Lomas Horta in ‘Marvellous Thieves’ introduces the poets, scholars, pilgrims and charlatans who made unacknowledged contributions to Arabian Nights.
Here’s an excerpt from the book.
On March 25, 1709, a visit by Antoine Galland to the Paris apartment of his friend Paul Lucas yielded a discovery that would shape the literary legacy of the first French translator of the Thousand and One
Nights. Lucas, a collector of treasures for the court of Louis XIV, was well known for his travels in the Middle East, and his apartment was recognized as one of the marvels of the French capital. Listed in early eighteenth- century guidebooks as a place to view antiquities and other rare objects from Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor, it drew scholars, collectors, and curiosity seekers of all kinds. Over the course of his journeys in the Mediterranean and the Ottoman Empire, Lucas had amassed enough medallions, coins, engraved stones, and gems to fill six rooms.
The herbier in his apartment contained some 3,000 varieties of plants taken from foreign locations, and the droguier was equally impressive. One visitor to the apartment in the 1730s described a remarkable sculpture of the goddess Ceres that Lucas had acquired in Athens forty years earlier. Ten feet tall, the figure was made of Oriental jasper and plated with bronze, and in Paris she enjoyed the company of many other bronzes from Greece, Macedonia, and the Levant, as well as two Persian sculptures of nude sages at prayer. Among such historically valuable pieces, stranger artifacts were scattered: petrified mushrooms, seahorses, and mummified birds encased in bronze.
Arriving at this cabinet of curiosities in 1709, Galland found an even greater treasure awaiting him: a young Maronite traveller from Aleppo by the name of Hanna Diyab who, he reported, “[knew] some very beautiful Arabic tales.” While Lucas may have viewed Diyab as just another Oriental curiosity to be displayed at the French court, Galland saw in him a solution to a frustrating predicament. After translating all the stories in his incomplete Arabic manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights, Galland was in need of more, and he had now found a storyteller who could fill the gap. In a sequence of twelve meetings between May 5 and June 2, 1709, Diyab related sixteen fantastic stories to Galland, who chose to add ten of these to the final three volumes of his French version of the Arabian Nights. Th ese storytelling sessions were the origin of some of the most famous of the Arabian Nights tales— including “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and “Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri- Banu”— and represent a lasting contribution to a story collection that has taken its place in the canons of world literature.
It was not the first time that Galland had benefitted from the curiosities collected by Lucas. Despite his lack of respect for Lucas’s abilities as a scholar, Galland found his collection of coins very useful in his own numismatic research, and he tried to gain access to lists or drawings of these from common acquaintances when his younger colleague was unwilling to share. Just as Galland borrowed coins to add entries to his numismatic dictionary, he would borrow Diyab to add stories to his version of the Arabian Nights. Considering his impact on the first French edition of the Arabic story collection, the Syrian storyteller could be judged the most valuable curiosity Lucas ever brought back from the Levant.
Since the publication of Les mille et une nuits, Galland’s French version of the Arabian Nights, in twelve volumes from 1704 to 1717, Galland has been credited as the first “author” of the collection in European letters, and as a crucial contributor to the emergence of the “Oriental tale” in French. Not only did he translate the 282 nights of stories in his Arabic manuscript in elegant Parisian prose, but he is credited with making a more substantial contribution to the story collection by lovingly adopting and adapting the tales that he heard from Diyab in 1709.
These stories, called the “orphan tales” because (with one exception) they have no known Arabic manuscript source, are seen as central to Galland’s achievement as a translator of the Arabian Nights. In this portion of his story collection, Galland’s work was no longer simply translation or adaptation; it represented “creation.”
Jean- Paul Sermain, one of the editors of the most recent edition of Galland’s Les mille et une nuits (2004), states the case most persuasively. He argues that Galland, working from his sparse notes on Diyab’s oral per for mances, created tales of ordinary characters caught up in extraordinary predicaments. Drawing on French literary conventions, he invented dialogues and descriptions and gave narrative coherence to the tales. Characters were developed with more sympathy, and moral lessons were highlighted. In the hands of Galland, the orphan tales of Diyab spoke of the superiority of the hero of humble origins and the need to behave decently in difficult circumstances. To fill out his meager notes, the French translator drew on his scholarly knowledge and his own travels of the Orient to imagine the fabulous details of voyages, palaces, and magical objects. Sermain argues that these orphan
tales teach the reader how to read the Arabian Nights as a whole. In the space between the French fairy tale and the Arabic story cycle, Galland seemed to fashion a new genre— that of the “Oriental tale.”
Meet the Deities from Hindu Mythology
The Hindu mythology comprises of many deities who are worshipped in many forms across India. We all have heard stories about them and have been fascinated about by them. Award-winning author Sudha Murthy in her new book, The Man from the Egg brings together fascinating tales of the most powerful gods from the ancient world.
Here are a few of those deities:
How many of these deities did you know about?
Six Science(Ish) Facts from Movies That Will Surprise You
Covering movies from 28 Days Later to Ex Machina, Rick Edwards and Dr Michael Brooks take the readers on a joyous ride through astrophysics, neuroscience, psychology, botany, artificial intelligence, evolution, and plenty more subjects that are invoked by your favourite movies.
Here are six facts that will blow your mind:
The Martian
Jurassic Park
Interstellar
Back to the Future
Planet of the Apes
Interstellar
Fascinating, isn’t it?
