Background This presentation maps some of the insights/questions that emerged in a search for new themes and stories

for children for a project at Anveshi. Titled Different tales: Stories from mar ginal cultures and regional languages, the project led to the collection and publication of a set of about 20 stories for older children in a series named Different Tales. Written in Telugu and Malayalam originally, these stories were translated into English as well as Malayalam and Telugu, respectively. Most of the writers are from Dalit and other minority communities, and their stories are embedded in their own childhoods. The stories problematize the normative grids through which we view childhood as they depict the complex ways in which children negotiate and cope with the material conditions of their marginality, often drawing upon the resources and relationships within the community. Hegemonic Representations of Childhood Childhood has been hegemonically represented in childrens narratives, textbooks, consumer culture and popular media as a period of innocence, play, spontaneity and vulnerability clearly marked off from adult worlds of responsibility and work. However, a probing of the dominant ideal of childhood uncovers its middleclass and upper-caste affiliations, unsettling its claim to universality. Standard reading materials are addressed to an urban, middle-class and upper-caste child and reflect his/her everyday routine, emotions, economic resources, family relationships, beliefs, school experiences, food habits and dialects. Children from different contexts sometimes do find a place in these stories, but measured against the norm, they have to continuously establish their smartness. A tribal boy may have to prove that his knowledge of the forest has relevance in the modern world; a disabled girl may have to excel as a craftsperson. In the much acclaimed Tare Zameen Par, a dyslexic child is also an extra-ordinary artist, and that forms the basis for his acceptance. Some of us who have differently abled children in our families and cherish their difference, will surely appreciate why this is problematic. The idea of Different Tales emerges out of Anveshis long-standing engagement with questions of education and marginalization. Its most immediate context is a study on curricular transactions in 10 government schools in and around Hyderabad. A majority of the children who attended these schools were from Dalit and other minoritized backgrounds. Many of them skilfully balanced school with work; and their sense of self was positively constituted by their contribution to familial survival and well-being. Yet, textbooks and classroom transactions were found to be distanced from and often hostile to their lives. Measured against the dominant culture of the school, these children appeared as unsmart and uneducable. The authority and pervasiveness of such images affected their confidence and ability to learn and a sizeable number dropped out of school. It is during this project that the idea to search for alternative images emerged, images that would be enabling and affirmatory for children from non-mainstream communities. Anveshi approached Dalit and Muslim writers who were already engaged in thinking about the politics of childhood and used experience as a critique to articulate a challenge to ideal childhood. Some of them wrote

new stories for us; some rewrote stories written earlier for a more general audience. We found that these writers did not follow the adult/child distinction that formed part of the normative imaginary. Children in their stories share the responsibilities and pressures of the adult world. They (the stories) dealt with the everyday concerns of the life of a child work, school, family, community, festivities, friendships, poverty and celebrations. These are not stories of victimhoodor stories about oppression. I will try to map the specific nature of the Different Tales intervention into the field of childrens literature. It might be useful to begin by situating the series in relation to other significant contemporary efforts to address difference in childrens literature in India that signal a multiculturalist turn. In analys ing this shift, I confine myself to the (inter)nationally circulated childrens reading published in English, which, I feel, represents a crucial node through which non-middle-class lives are increasingly being made available to the urban-located, middle-class child. Several books in recent years, by publishing initiatives like Tulika, Tara Books and Puffin Books, may be located within a multiculturalist discourse that foregrounds the misrecognition and exclusion of certain cultures from the mainstream cultural arena. Multiculturalism is grounded in a politics of recognition; it pushes for the inclusion and acceptance of the subjugated cultures difference, alongside the dominant culture. These initiatives introduce a dissonant note to the established mode of childrens stories that ar e tied to an undifferentiated idea of childhood, frequently drawing from folk or heroic themes. Just to signal the direction this is going to take, I hope to demonstrate that the DT stories mark a shift from the multiculturalist representations of childhoodthe stories and the artwork deal with difference in other ways. Hope these other ways will emerge through this presentation. I will also address the gender question as not separate from but embedded in questions of caste and class. Since illustrations are an integral and extensive part of DT stories, in this particular presentation, I am going to use visuals to make some points about representative strategies and the shifts that have happened in recent years in CL. Let me start with some contemporary childrens books that attempt to represent non-middle class lives especially the lives of working women from marginalized communities. One can see an attempt to move out of simple man/woman binary and and historicize characters in terms of their caste and class. While these efforts do bring in a shift in childrens literature, in the sense that people from non -middle class background are the protagonists, often the images are geared towards the gaze of the middle class. This world must be made comprehensible to a child from a more privileged class. Two noteworthy efforts by Tara: Ponni the Flower Seller and Babu the Waiter: two much-acclaimed books from Taras People Around Us Series. Show pictures from Babu and Ponni. Around the age of three, children become curious about other people and the things they do. The People Around Us series enhances and answers this curiosity. Designed like family albums, the books

in this series have been developed in interaction with children of this age group. Each story features the world of a real-life working person, who is familiar to the child. You can see that the real life people that the photographs claim to represent are indeed frozen and passivized, performing chores for the camera. The camera marks Ponni and Babu off as types. A close viewing points to the artifice of the camera and the care with which the world it captures is positioned and organized. For instance, the front cover freezes Babu and Ponni in their identity as waiter and flower seller. Ponni is standing close to a wall near a window with a basket of different flowers in her hand. Her head is not straight, its tilted and a little bent, her eyes not looking at the camera on a straight leve l, but is slightly low. She does not seem to be in a very comfortable position holding the wide basket like that. Nowhere during her work, Ponni has to stand still like this, with her body absolutely immobile. Clearly, she is waiting to be photographed, and waiting for our gaze. In her interaction with men, she is positively uncomfortable and almost coy. The men on the other hand look confident, especially the middle class man

On both the books, on the same line as where the photographs of Ponni and Babu end, begins in bold black capital letters the signature that authored them: SIRISH RAO.

I would draw attention to one significant issue hereBabu is as much of a passive object as Ponni. You can see that it is not simply a question of being a woman and her submission to the cameras gaze, but gender, class casteall of these factors constitute the objectification.

I am now going to shift a story called Tataki that we chose to publish in DT. Written by renowned dalit writer and activist Gogu Shyamala, it is the story of a girl named Balamma from the madiga community drawing on the life of her own older sister. Brief synopsis 11 year old Balammas family has held on to a small piece of land in the face of every attempt by landlord to claim ownership. Balamma gets up at dawn everyday so that she can water her familys small patch of land before the landlords man arrives, the unwritten rule being his field must receive water before everyone elses. Angry at this affront to his power by a chit of a girl from the madiga caste, her attempts to rape the little girl one morning when she reaches the fields. Frightened at first, she gathers her wits and fights back. In this story, Tataki is neither presented as a supergirl nor as a victim. Her life and struggles is embedded in the power relations and land relations of the village. Gender is relational, inextricably meshed in the caste question. As a dalit girl, Tataki must work for familial survival, as do her father mother and other siblings. Her smartness emerges as part of negotiating the circumstances that she is part of. She is recognized as smart and resourceful by her family, they depend on her; yet it is a smartness not for the middle class audience but shaped by the local knowledges and history of her community. The rape incident is interesting. First of all, there was a lot of discussion whether CL, which is a sanitized zone, cant have such topics. On the other hand, Shyamala could never understand why and in fact how children can not be exposed to this.

Second, the representation of rape which is more often than not coded as the loss of honour. In this story, it is entrenched in power relationsa social context where over generations the landlords have had customary access to dalit womens bodies. Also, it is also a tool of punishing not a single woman but her family and community. Belonging to such a community, Balamma must learn the strategies of survival. When the landlord attempts to rape her, there is a moment of incomprehension and fear and a realization of being really small. Then, in that moment of desperation, she draws on the collective memory of the women in her community: Balamma trembled all over. Her mouth went dry. One corner of her mind recalled the women in the mala and madiga settlements whispering about how the landlord had taken one woman or another. Then it struck her, This swine is going to do something awful! (Shyamala, 2008: 41) She kicks the landlord in the groins and escapes as he folds over with pain. The final lines of the story defuse the power of the landlord, choosing to focus on the irreverent banter among the women of the community: In the village the mala and madiga women giggled through their pallus as they shared the news, The landlord wanted to catch our Balamani. She kicked him in the groin! (Shyamala, 2008: 43). Other Mothers: I now want to look at the gender question through the trope of mothering. In representations of childhood, motherhood has an important role to play. A childhood minus caring, protective parents is considered to be inadequate, a lack. Several writers from subaltern locations have challenged this normative representation. They have suggested that it is impossible for children from such communities to stay untouched by the life struggles of their parents, and their vulnerable social situations. But the self worth of such children is positively shaped by the participation in familial responsibilityyet hegemonic representative practices rarely take cognizance of it. (Susan Bissel) Kancha Ilaiahs Mother is a tribute to his own motherbut it is not a story of nurturing and sacrifice. He paints a large canvas of village hierarchy and patriarchy and then situates his mother in it. His mothers decision to educate him is also part of this; there is a point she comes to the decision that education may be a way of a closed social order. You can also see in this image that his mother is not larger-than-life but embedded in the social and community context. Mothering is represented as a historical practice not delinked from social or community contexts. Finally, I want to discuss motherhood and childhood in The Sackclothman. The story is about a middle class family but the setting is non-normative. Anus mother is undergoing depression after her sisters death and father turns to drinking. The writer, Jayasree Kalathil, a mental health activist, chooses not to treat this family

as dysfunctional nor does she put the extraordinary burden on the mother to come out of her condition so she can take care of her child. This is a difficult moment for the child but childhoods can be pretty traumatic, not the happy places that they are made out to be. Anu must negotiate, draw on other resources her mothers sister, friends and also on her mother during times when she capable of relating. This is also a time when she avoids the pitying gaze of people around her but also finds an unusual friend in the village madman the sackclothman with a fetish for sack cloth. It is he who gives her a perspective on her mother that normal people cant Sometimes when we are sad, it takes a long time to go away. The story kind of turns the gaze back on the sane world and the pressures it creates for children whose mothers do not fit into the ideal of motherhood. Community