Mala Kumar’s Travelling Treasures: 100 Incredible Tales of How Things Came to India is crammed with charming facts like these, tracing the origins of a hundred everyday objects and how they finally reached this country.
Did you know that JRD Tata piloted India’s very first commercial mail flight from Karachi to Mumbai in 1932? Or that hing (asafoetida), that ubiquitous spice added to so many Indian dishes, wasn’t actually grown in India until the 21st century? And that the twice-baked rusks we love dipping into the afternoon tea go all the way back to the Roman era, at least?
Mala Kumar’s Travelling Treasures: 100 Incredible Tales of How Things Came to India is crammed with charming facts like these, tracing the origins of a hundred everyday objects and how they finally reached this country, reminding us about how global the world has always been. “What I hope comes through in this book is that we’re all so interconnected. We owe it to our children to strive for a harmonious world,” says the Bengaluru-based Mala, a freelance writer and editor who has authored over 40 books for children.
The book also helps remind us that we owe a lot to the people behind many things that are today such a vital part of our lives. “Imagine if we didn’t have paper or pencil….and without my glasses, I am blind,” she says, pointing to the spectacles perched on her nose. “I feel grateful that somebody had the brains, will and grit to invent these things or keep improving upon them.”
Beginnings
Over a casual chat with her editor at Hachette India, who had published Mala’s earlier book, Up the Mountains of India, the editor mentioned that they had an idea that Mala would probably like. “Those are dreamy words, so I immediately said yes,” she recalls with a smile.
Mala, whose editor for this particular book is Sanya Verma of Hachette, says it started with the idea of doing an A to Z of things that had come to India from outside. “Essentially, around 26 things or a bit more is what I registered it as, so it didn’t seem so daunting at that moment,” she says. “As a journalist who likes digging into a lot of things and then writing a short piece, I thought it was an excellent idea.”
But then, Sanya suggested that they make it a hundred. “It started getting a little difficult then,” confesses Mala. She began making a list of things that could go into the book, choosing to look only at things that came to India before 1947. Since it was primarily a book for young readers, it had to be objects children saw around their homes or were familiar with, says Mala, who took nearly nine months to write this book.
She also ensured that there was enough verifiable history about each object and tried to avoid being too repetitive. “I wanted to make sure that there were things covering different groups like fauna, flora, sports, arts, utility, wearables and so on,” says Mala. “I kept thinking about what would interest children and what I would find boring if I were that kid reading that book. “
Research and more
Mala believes that her training as a journalist was enormously helpful in researching and writing this book. The research process involved reading a lot, turning to books, the internet and archives to cull out interesting information about these objects. She also made cold calls and reached out to random people using social media and every other means available to her to garner a better understanding of the object.
“I ended up speaking to many 90-year-olds,” she says, pointing out that there was sometimes a strong connection between many of these objects and the Swadeshi movement. “So many things had a lot to do with the people fighting for freedom,” says Mala, who found herself getting excited whenever she discovered something quirky, really human about the object in question. “It was a series of Eureka moments for me.”
“One of her favourite stories, for instance, is the story of the English inventor George Cayley, who tried unsuccessfully to make a heavier-than-air-vehicle, getting his coachman to get on a flying machine he had designed in 1853. According to her, this vehicle, “a boat-like carriage fitted with wings,” flew for about 275 metres before crashing. While the coachman was not hurt during the crash, he said that he was resigning because “he was hired to drive, not fly,” says Mala. “Usually, in most books about inventions, you find facts. But this human nature of how things came to be fascinated me,” she says.
Writing for children
Mala, who insists that she hasn’t grown up yet, loves reading children’s books and writing for children. “I like to connect with children and am happiest in their company,” she says, listing out some reasons why writing for children is so gratifying: their unpredictably, brutal honesty and the creativity triggered when she is around them. “I just have to get in front of a child, and somehow the stories come out,” says Mala, whose first audience for many of the stories that went into this book was her own granddaughter. “She would ask me how the tomato or chilli came to India. So there was one story or the other like that, every day,” she laughs.
She is now looking forward to releasing her next book, one focused on water management. “It is fiction, but the journalist in me can’t help bringing facts in,” says Mala, who is also very invested in environment and resource management, especially considering Bengaluru’s water crisis. This book, which was commissioned by YUVA, an initiative of the Foundation for Indian Historical and Cultural Research (FIHCR), tells the story of water resources in present times. But there are flashbacks to Hampi and the Vijayanagara Empire, elaborates Mala. “I’ve submitted the manuscript, and it’s in the making,” she says. “It should be out in March or April this year.”
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)