Samina Mishra in Conversation with Ruchi S. and Tultul Biswas
Question: You are a film-maker by training and profession. What brings you to children’s books?
Samina Mishra: I came to children’s books via a film that I was hoping to make but didn’t. That turned into Hina in the Old City (that Eklavya has now republished as Hina in Purani Dilli), my first book for children. But my interest in creating media for children predates that—I had explored that in my student work in Jamia. So in a sense I think I am just telling stories in different mediums, and I am interested in creating work for, with and about children.
Q: What did Jamlo’s story do to you, as a person? As a professional?
SM: The pandemic has been such a landmark event in our times and yet in many ways, it was just an underlining of what was going on in the world before. The horrors of the pandemic were made possible by a world that had been treating many groups in inhuman ways, a corollary of the inequity—which is why a 12-year old child had to leave home to work, and then she had to try and find her way back home without support. Reading about Jamlo and then writing this book made me even more conscious of my own privilege and of literature’s role as memory-keeper. It has always been important to me that what I create can help in leading to a more meaningful understanding of our lives today. And I think that in writing Jamlo Walks, I was able to articulate this more clearly for myself—I had to ask myself why this story, what about this story, and why should it be for children. It sharpened my awareness of why and how children’s books are political, and how important it is for me to embed in my work that there is no one way of being Indian.
Q: Both your books for children—Hina and Jamlo—are chronicles of time. Yet, both are very different in their style, tapestry, emphasis. How would you describe this difference?
SM: Hina in the Old City was published in 2000 and Jamlo Walks in 2021—that’s two decades of working across different media. There have been other books for children in the middle, documentary films, working with sound and teaching. All of this has impacted my practice—my articulation of the stories I want to tell, playing with how I want to tell them, my conceptual understanding of childhood… I think there’s much more confidence and a sharper awareness of working with both content and form. So, I guess the difference between Hina and Jamlo comes from a life having been lived and all that comes with it.
Q: The juxtaposition of Amir, Tara…what was your thought behind this?
SM: The pandemic affected everyone differently, it was much more difficult for some than others. I wanted the story to record that, so that children remember how there are many ways of being in the world, many ways of being Indian. But I also wanted the story to have Tara, Rahul and Aamir because of the commonalities. All children suffered in the pandemic, even those who were far more secure than Jamlo suffered, in different ways. This experience of loss and difficulty can be a way to connect us to someone very different from us, to remember that at the heart of being human lies the commonality of feeling—sometimes it’s joy and sometimes it’s sorrow. That awareness can begin a conversation, a process of reflection.
Q: The way Tariq Aziz’s illustrations complement the textual flow of Jamlo is remarkable. Tell us about the process and your experience of working with the illustrator.
SM: Tariq came on to the project after the story was finalized but his contribution to the book is equal to mine. We worked virtually of course and I still haven’t met him in person, but that never became a challenge. He worked with the art director, Devangana Dash, and they shared an initial layout with me, after which they shared each spread as it was being done. They were very open to my responses and we spent time thinking about what clothes she should wear, what kind of bag the chillies should be in, her expression, etc. They looked for images on the internet and found a passport photo of Jamlo that Tariq used as a reference. I just made minor suggestions because Tariq did such a fantastic job with the colours, texture and the composition in each spread. I think he has demonstrated an exceptional understanding of visual language—he managed to convey the emotions through the visual characterization of the figures and their interaction with the spaces, objects and other figures in the frame. It was challenging to illustrate a story for children with a difficult and sad context but Tariq found ways to include visual moments of hope and colour.
Actually, I think Jamlo Walks is a wonderful example of the kind of collaborative process that picture book publishing can be.
Q: What was your story behind writing Jamlo Walks? What was the writing process like?
SM: The first draft just came, the story of Jamlo juxtaposed with the other children. I wrote it just the way it came, without thinking about the reader. It was only after speaking to my editor that I started thinking of it in the form of a picture book. It’s a spare text but there was a lot of writing and editing that led to the final version. The challenge for me was to write it to convey a sense of the journey, the texture of the space, a sense of character—all the things that can allow a reader to find a connection. There was not much to go on for these things. Normally, I would have tried to get a sense of these things by actually going out into the field but we were in lockdown. So, I created a Jamlo from my imagination. I turned to her inner world to tell the story for which I drew upon my experiences of children and childhood. So, Jamlo tries to befriend a bird, she thinks of trees, of her parents feeling proud of her. I think children everywhere have similar experiences of this kind that are part of their inner worlds—different yet recognizable—and I hope Jamlo did too. The other children came from my experience of the pandemic world, what I saw and heard children and parents struggling with—the loss of school, the absence of friends, the desire to protect your children… I thought a lot about craft in the process, how to tell a layered story in which Jamlo is more than just a girl who walked during the lockdown but didn’t reach home.
Q: Have you read this story with children or young adults? What was their response?
SM: I have done readings with some groups of children and many other dedicated educators have used it in their work and I have been privileged to listen to their accounts of using it with diverse groups of children—rural, urban, primary classes, senior classes. The responses have affirmed how books work like windows and mirrors—e.g., children in villages in Jharkhand felt a resonance with Jamlo because their fathers had walked back to the villages during the lockdown; or some urban children resonated with Rahul’s experience of looking out of the window to see what was happening outside or Amir’s internet breaking up.
And then there have been children from English-medium schools in cities who have spoken of how the book made them think of their privilege or the fact that we all have something in common, a connection even if we are not alike.
At a festival, I was a little concerned because I think the book needs a longer conversation with children than is possible at a festival reading. So, I started by asking the children if they were OK with listening to a story that’s not happy. Many of them said yes to that and when I asked why they were OK with it, they told me that it was important to listen to all kinds of stories because life is not always happy, and that everybody’s stories should get a chance to be heard. Children continue to surprise us and challenge adult pre-conceptions—and I am glad that I get to experience that