When I first browsed through Delhi-based children’s writer and editor Mamta Nainy’s latest work This Is How I See It, my first instinct was to be filled with warmth.
In Nainy’s book, brilliantly illustrated by artist Mehnaaz Husain, Venu is a young boy who loves colours and playing with all kinds of colours. He draws and he paints, but he’s often told that he has got his “colours all wrong.” His friends tell him that the leaves are supposed to be green and the bark of the tree brown, and not the pigments that he has actually put to paper. Venu’s response, though, always is a simple “this is how I see it”. Not everyone understands it, until he meets a fellow painter who also sees colours like he does.
At the end of the book, there’s a post script; a small paragraph explaining what colour blindness is in simple words, and then talking about famous people who were colour blind as well.
It’s a tiny segment that the book would still have been complete without; but its addition increases the moral value of the book by leaps and bounds.
The story is simple, beautiful, and teaches you to be caring without preaching it to the world. It’s meant to be a children’s book, but it has lessons for adults too. As a kid, I was a stickler for rules and somewhat of a teacher’s pet — not a great combination to have in a friend, perhaps. It probably meant I was less of an empath and someone you’d not really want to confide in. Which is why, when a children’s book tells you to be kind and inclusive, you listen, and you learn.
Nainy, through her work, is teaching children that you should be nice to people, even if they see the world a little differently than you do; and then she goes on to tell them that there are people fighting invisible fights that you need to be respectful towards.
A small gesture, that goes a long way, especially when inculcated in children.
Book details:
Title: This is How I See It
Author: Mamta Nainy
Publisher: Niyogi Books
Number of pages: 28
Price: Rs 350
