This year has been special in ways more than one. I travelled extensively with my little boy– from quaint hills of Uttaranchal to cities of Japan. Wherever I went I always found my toddler’s pockets full of travel tokens, from coins and train tickets to beautiful flowers and leaves. Sadly for both him and me, many of these tokens never came back home. He lost his precious belongings and I lost my travel memories.

Traveling with my little boy was fun, but I often had to find creative ways to keep him engaged during flights or trains, while waiting for meals at restaurants or during rest periods in hotels. And to top it all there were fights between father and son at the airports over possession of son’s passport, now that son had clearly started recognising his name and face on it.

Thus, Little Collector’s Passport was born. For all little travellers who love collecting things. For parents, who love traveling (within and/or outside India), to make their travel more memorable and enjoyable by keeping their little ones engaged in collecting and recording things throughout their journey in a document they treasure.

Sticker book with flags of 48 countries across the world is included to make parents learn about flags of different countries along with their children. To keep alive the dying culture of stamp collection, sticker stamps of 48 countries are also included to learn about symbols of different countries and get motivated to explore unexplored territories.

Besides country flags and stamps, multiple interactions, from sticking to pasting, colouring, drawing and writing, have been built into the passport design it to make it more engaging and relevant for kids of different age groups. Finding a colour that would appeal to both genders was an equally tough task. To avoid the dichotomy of pink versus blue, finally settled on a purple colour for the cover. While the inside leaflets are light blue to retain the look of an original passport, in many places dabs of pink have been used to serve as a reminder that pink is not only for girls.

And it may just keep your kids off screens and be willing to try out new foods for the time they are busy collecting and recording things they loved!

INSPIRATION BEHIND THE BOOK

In 2020, when families got locked in at homes due to Covid, children (including my own 6-year-old son) started procrastinating a lot more. Not going to school disrupted their daily schedules and parents across the world found it hard to get them to do even the smallest of tasks on time. Parents also struggled to manage their own time between work from home, household chores and handling kids’ school and other activities. 

When time battles increased in households and started impacting the happiness of kids and their parents, I was inspired to write my book – ‘TIME STORY’. While writing the book, I also realised that families were struggling to stay happy at home because of the feeling of time slowing down and boredom kicking in due to travel and other recreational restrictions.

While the experience of this whole new notion of time in 2020 acted as a big trigger for writing this book, the idea of working on this concept had lingered on in my mind ever since my trip to Japan in 2017. I realised how by doing even the simplest things on time, Japanese people were able to work more efficiently. 

Growing up, my father also often used to tell me stories from his visits to Japan to instill the value of time in me. While time management is a challenge at an individual level, valuing others’ time is also a key societal issue, particularly in India. This is why I was so inspired to write this book to inculcate the value of time in kids from an early age. The intent is to also get their families to become more time conscious as kids often emulate their parents’ habits and behaviours. 

Writing all my books in a conversational style between a child – ‘Abdu’ (the main character of all my books) and his parents (mom and dad) helps in involving the entire family in reading together. For Time Story though, I decided to bring in the humour element by writing the book in a comic style and designed activities linked to different concepts, habits and values to make it simpler and fun for kids to absorb the concept. 

PRODUCT INSPIRATION STORY

Orange is a colour that usually one associates with fall colours that we do not have the privilege of viewing in India. But for me and my little one it has become the colour that brings joy to our hot Indian Summer as we rediscover our love for nature while admiring the beautiful orange flowers of Gulmohar trees lining up the streets and parks of our city and get inspired to redesign the nature book on our favourite tree.

Growing up in Delhi surviving the peak summer month of June has always been hard. The soaring temperatures make it next to impossible to step out during the day and even the evenings are more often than not spent in the pools or indoors. To avoid feeling of being trapped and generally depression that sets in the mood, most people have started escaping the city for longer periods of time.

But one fine day when my son brought home the bright orange flower that had fallen from a Gulmohar tree in the park, I could not help appreciating the beauty of Indian Summer. Suddenly all childhood memories of admiring the tree, which stood only 3 feet distance from my bedroom window, every summer when it starts blooming with bright orange flowers came flashing back. Looking at my son’s curiosity for the same tree, I was inspired to write a book and design experiential activities linked to my favourite tree.

Despite the relentless heat, every evening we went to the park to count and collect some fallen leaves and flowers of the tree. We pasted a picture of the tree on the cover page of the book and adorned it with its flowers & leaves, sticks, and stones – all collected from the park. While the son enjoyed pasting alternate dals (orange and brown), sprinkling and blowing the orange saw dust while writing the name of the tree was as a lot more fun.

As for me I suddenly realised why I grew up to fall in love with the colour orange as it adorned the walls of my house and reflected in many of my personal belongings from shoes to handbags. For the first time, I also took notice that the orange flower of the Gulmohar has a white streaked petal in the middle and star shaped centre, which made me appreciate its beauty a tad bit more.

INSPIRATION STORY

In Nov 2017, after the Diwali break, I got a frantic call from another distraught parent…”Our children are suffering because of unhealthy, polluted air. Can we request their school to put purifiers in the classrooms? Can’t we do anything about it?”

I felt devastated seeing our children, elderly and many other adults suffering from bad bouts of health for months together year on year. I also felt sad seeing our children deprived of the original joys of childhood – gazing at the sky full of stars and playing freely under the blue skies.

It struck me then that the future of our children – and their health – lies in our own hands. WE (the citizens) need to change our everyday habits first and become RESPONSIBLE instead of only expecting our government to take action.

If we want to see the bright stars and blue skies again, every month our habits must change, through the year follow and maintain, to our friends and family explain, remind them of the habits they need to sustain!

Thus, City of Stars – an experiential book in the form of a calendar- was conceived…

I wanted to be part of the solution to spread awareness, break all myths and change behaviours for a GREENER, CLEANER and HEALTHIER planet. I realised that AIR and other forms of ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION is not a seasonal issue and a worldwide problem.

I started writing stories linked to air and other forms of environmental pollution in the form of real-life conversations between a child and his parents. The central character of Abdu is inspired by my son, to whom I have been reading these stories, while writing and rewriting them over the past one year.

I have also created an only storybook version of this book for children and their families across age groups to spread mass awareness about this issue.

I hope this book will introduce all the little Abdus and their families across the world to the small and big lifestyle changes for a GREENER, CLEANER and HEALTHIER planet!

If someone were to ask me, what was my favourite subject in school, I would say Maths and Hindi! Yes, HINDI! So when I became a mother, I made it a point to speak and read to my son in Hindi from a very young age, also because I knew the importance of raising bilingual kids for brain development. However, when he turned 5 and started learning to read on his own, he only picked up English storybooks. Though he was learning to read and write Hindi in school, I realised he did not have any interest in the language. 

When Covid struck and I had to often pull my hair to get him to do Hindi assignments, it dawned on me even more that if I was struggling to get my child to learn Hindi, what a big challenge would it be for other parents. When I learnt that the parents often pass on this responsibility to the grandparents, who also find it challenging to teach Hindi to children, I decided to take on the challenge myself.

Thus, I started designing this book that would not only help kids learn Hindi in a super fun way, but also build a true love for the language! Not to mention that I had to revisit my own Hindi while designing the book