November 17, 2002

AMINA Azfar wrote her first story for children while “fooling around with a pencil and a piece of paper. I think I just wanted to write something and since there were children around me, I ended up writing a children’s story” which by her own admission “was not very original”. She is honest enough to admit that ideas or inspiration for her stories “rarely knock” at her door. “It is I who knock at theirs, and sometimes quite frantically!”

“I was beginning work on a series of Urdu textbooks about which I was extremely enthusiastic. I had seen how unattractive Urdu textbooks were and felt very keenly that since this was the only intellectual fare that was available to the majority of the children in the country, it was unlikely that Pakistani children would ever learn to enjoy reading. I was longing to put together something of a better intellectual calibre, that would also appeal to children and spur them to read more.”

She got her break soon enough when she was entrusted with the task of coming up with the first five books (later seven) of the Urdu Silsila, a series of Urdu textbooks by the Oxford University Press, where she was working as an editor. “The motivated human mind is a strange thing and seems to have a life and will all its own.”

To her utter surprise and elation, “Ideas for the first fifteen stories which comprise the first level of the series came flooding in, with almost no effort.” But that avalanche of inspiration was like one odd storm that passed by in no time. “That was the first and only time when inspiration came without being wooed.” After that she’s had to look everywhere for ideas, hoping that inspiration would knock at her door once again.

While she has written a couple of stories in English, most of her writings are in Urdu. “Ideally I want to write for children who cannot read English and are therefore deprived of the best reading material.” She, however, believes the Urdu Silsila, which contains most of her stories, is doing better at some of our private schools. The series is a compilation and contains some excellent prose and poetry by acclaimed writers, who Amina proudly claims to have persuaded and cajoled to write for children.

“I still hope that one day I am able to produce work that reaches out to and attracts children who have never enjoyed the pleasures of reading.”

While penning down stories for children, Amina likes to “offer challenging concepts, in language that is not intimidating. My ideal is to keep the language simple, but competent enough to convey intelligent, even sophisticated ideas”. By ‘simple’ she means the kind of language that the reader can cope with. “I don’t like to think that a reader may be grappling so hard with difficult vocabulary and complicated structure that he loses sight of the meaning.”

To her language that is familiar and content that children can relate to are ideal ingredients for harnessing a child’s attention, and as a starting point. “But,” she adds, “they should not remain static, they should move on to newer and more complex language and content, especially content, because language follows automatically as a necessary vehicle. People tend to stretch an idea that they understand to an illogical extreme.”

Giving an example she says: “It should not be taken for granted that a rural child will only understand ideas relating to farming implements or cattle. Or that the illustrations in his books must all show farmers, and their womenfolk with covered heads and nose rings. The rural child has as much right to a widening of horizon as any boy or girl who is used to reading English and does not lose his bearings when the illustrations show a culture other than his own.”

For Amina a story with a moral is acceptable only if it is “something like a fable from Aesop’s, a charming tale with a universal appeal, and the obvious moral spelt out at the end.” She is a little wary and rather skeptical about “mediocre stories bristling with morals”. While she agrees that some writers write with more ease than do others, “those who set out to write for children should read a lot themselves. Young minds are not necessarily stupid minds, and no amount of moralizing can cover up a lack of ideas and imagination in the writer.”

Asked to come up with the most favourite among all her stories, Amina says she enjoyed writing “Hara bandar” (The green monkey). “In writing it perhaps I was influenced by Alice in Wonderland which still remains my favourite children’s story, but I know that I feel most at home in it.”

Asked if she’s ever thought of writing a novella, a novel or a children’s stories series, there is an instant “No, I have never thought of writing novels for children. You see, I am not expecting to make a career out of writing for children — I’m merely trying to help in introducing the reading habit. If somebody told me that this had been achieved, that children in Pakistan had started reading and were enjoying it, I’d probably turn to something else — painting perhaps, or playing with my grandchild.”

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