Now, I picked up this book for two simple reasons. One, it is written by my batchmate IIM 87– Prof S Ram Kumar and two, the title pulled me in. Knowing Ram Kumar, the question that needed immediate answer was., What is Ram Kumar doing with children stories? He is just like no-nonsense, tell it straight kind of a Nuclear Physicist who is IIM Educated and now professional woodworker!
I like what the book promised. I was not wrong to expect it to be honest. Hitting where it hurts and makes you question things around you. I borrow from the cover ‘No pussy-footing, moral science or sugar coating. Spades are spades! No quarter given, none taken. No mythical characters beggaring belief and science. Just brute logic and empirical evidence. Two kids, Bila & Kabun; a dog – Mr Morkley and a story-mongering PICS Dad explore the world around them. Meant to be bedtime stories, they mostly left the teller and the listeners sleepless.’
The last part of the overstatement, however ‘Politically Incorrect Children’s stories’, it does take you to unsettled areas. It is his own humorous, satirical way that makes you uncomfortable with what we are doing in society.
There is something you must watch for. Though there are kids and their lovely dog and a no-nonsense father in the book, the stories have children in them, and these are children stories but maybe they are not necessarily stories for the children. But why not? It will help children to understand the ambiguous world that we have been creating for them.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is written in a simple language. Looks like Prof S Ram Kumar wanted it to be read by elders and yet keep the simplicity as if the story was being read to children at the bedtime. Of a story being narrated. And I would agree with JJ, Ram’s English Teacher praise of the book, ‘UNBELIEVABLE. Absolutely UNBELIEVABLE. He actually wrote something readable’.
Politically Incorrect Children’s Stories, is a book that keeps you engaged. There are stories within stories. There one must credit Prof S Ram Kumar to use simple children in the jungle scenario to raise so many questions that are definitely Politically Incorrect. But then one needs to write such Rough Stories for Tough Times.
Towards the end, in one section to deliver the point, Ram Kumar tends to be irritatedly repetitive. And so, only in this section of few pages, in the last story ‘PICS DAD PLAYS JUDO!!!’, I found him losing me as a reader. Some of you may still enjoy this marvellous section where PICS DAD, writes to school explaining why his children could not come to college. However, because you are just coming round the bend like a formula 1 driver having just read the story ‘THE TOOTH FAIRY BPO’, you ride through the slightest of the discomfort. This story ‘The Tooth Fairy BPO’ is my personal favourite.
Not to miss out the story ‘Just Tooling around’ which ends in a dramatic statement of intent and expectations. ‘And so the kids understood and from that day on every kid in their own way aid homage to every tool, artefact and skill they processed. And the machines forgave them became their best friends’. This is where the machines, tools go on a strike.
Do, go ahead and pick this lovely book ‘Politically Incorrect Children’s Stories’- Rough Stories for Tough Times. There are some 20 wonderful stories spread over 150 pages. Published with Notion Press. Priced at INR 260. Available at Amazon and Flipkart.
BLOG/23/2020
