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November 17, 2002
AUTHOR: Style & style
FOR Rumana Husain, a graphic designer by qualification from the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, Karachi, her stint with the pen started after she had helped found the Book Group in 1988. For four years, 1997-2000, she was its director. “It was then that we realized that there was a dearth of good Urdu books for children. The children of private schools didn’t pay much attention to Urdu literature and were not overly enthusiastic about the language either.”
The prescribed textbooks didn’t help as they were not very exciting. That’s when the Book Group decided to take a plunge and tackle the waning interest among children in the Urdu language. Initially the Group found it difficult to write no matter how hard they tried. Like others, they too ended up creating stories with a moralistic bent and tone.
“Our problem was getting people to write for us ideally in a more contemporary style, with contents and words with which today’s children are familiar,” she recalls. Whenever the Group got stuck in the usage of language they felt no qualms about seeking help from big names like Obaidullah Baig, Zehra Nigah, to name just a couple.
Rumana feels that writing for children is not very rewarding in the sense that you remain a nonentity. Not with the Book Group any more - she is with the Human Rights Education Programme now — Rumana still writes. And that is an asset for the HREP which has been working in Pakistan since 1995 to raise awareness about social issues and change attitudes towards peace, tolerance and human rights.
When she started writing, her own two children were rather young. “Some of my stories like “Yeh kaisey keeray makoray hain” was a direct result of my spending time outdoors with my children. We used to do quite a bit of gardening and would come across all sorts of insects and worms. I wanted my kids to have the same affinity with them as I felt.”
The book that has received the most fan mail is her book Pakistan ki sair, written for the 7-10 year-old. “About the time my kids were this age. With my daughter as the main character, it is a child’s journey across the country.” Such research based stories take her quite sometime as accuracy in content is of paramount importance and you cannot make mistakes. Facts have to be checked and double checked.
While the first draft is ready within a week, fine tuning may take much longer. Some have taken as long as one to five years, which has been painfully frustrating for her. On the other hand, there have been stories like Kala bhoot which she wrote in hardly no time — on her way home from work.
Speaking of her experience — Rumana wrote/illustrated 31 Book Group’s publications — she says consciously using easy words is not easy. Adapting western books is not easy either. “It backfires as nobody is used to that kind of informality and does not gel well.”
But one thing is for sure. No one can illustrate Rumana’s stories as well as she can. She knows what she wants to say through her drawings. And that perhaps is her biggest asset — to be a writer as well as an illustrator. She feels that for children’s stories, the illustrations are of utmost importance as are colours.
If you look at Rumana’s illustrations, one thing stands out immediately. For each book she’s illustrated she’s used a different technique and a variety of media. “It would be boring to be stuck with just one medium. It is important to have this variety as it is challenging to present stories in new ways.”
Her visits to various book fairs internationally have been quite an eye-opener. “We are far behind in our publishing of children’s books.” On a scale of one-to-ten, she puts us on a mere three!
She acknowledges that it’s tricky to be socially neutral as it is to write stories catering to all. “But stories having a universal appeal are possible if writers can observe and write by putting themselves in a particular setting,” she says.
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