Thunderstorms and Me by Chitra Soundar

The rain is raining all around,

It falls on field and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

And on the ships at sea. 

-       Robert Louis Stevenson

As I sit at my table in Singapore and look through the window, what I see mirrors exactly the words of Stevenson. I was excited to leave the biting cold of England to fly across continents to enjoy the sunshine and I’ve been blamed for bringing the grey skies and relentless rain to this hot island.

Thunderstorms in Singapore - A view from the 23rd floor

 My relationship with rain and thunderstorms is as fundamental as my roots. I’ve been woken up as a child often to gathering dark clouds and cracking thunder. The stormy winds, the warnings to fishermen and the flooding of our streets are deeply etched in my memory.

Rain has fallen all the day. 

O come among the laden trees: 

The leaves lie thick upon the way 

Of memories.

-       James Joyce

The crack of thunder and the flash of lightning fascinated me as a child. I’ve never feared the ferocious winds that howl and growl. I remember sitting by  my window, listening to the wind, reading a book. I remember making hot pakoras for snacks and hot tea with cardamom and ginger for everyone at home.

Those rains were warm even though they soaked from head to toe in a few seconds. Those rains were welcome on the parched soil, even though they fell in big drops filling the potholes on the street.

Monsoon by Uma Krishnaswami and Jamel Akib

But I’ve feared them occasionally. I was perhaps ten and it was one of those monsoon storms and my father hadn’t returned home. The buses had stopped, the roads were flooded and I was worried for him to return. It had taken him four hours to journey the ten kilometres hitching a lift with strangers and walking part of the way.

Another time, I would have been eight, and it was a brutal monsoon. The rains hadn’t stopped in days and a stray dog had given birth to six puppies. She had taken shelter under the roof of our backyard. She was shivering in the cold and her puppies were hungry. Normally dogs were not allowed inside our compound. So I had to fight the elders for permission, to let her stay. We filled a bowl full of milk and put out rice on an old plate. And one of the new-born puppies couldn’t survive the dampness of its surroundings. I cried for days, for a stray puppy, whose life I couldn’t help save.

Photo: C Coxon

These incidents in the rain always find themselves lodged in my memory and turn up in stories. Almost 14 years ago, I wrote a story called Afraid of Dogs – about a little girl who has to overcome her fear of dogs to save the stray puppies. Although I should say the little girl in me is still afraid of dogs generally. It takes me enormous effort to stay calm and friendly even with familiar pets in friends’ homes.

But the fear of the big thunderstorms was washed away long ago when my dad explained to me about parched land, the water under the ground and the well in our back garden. We understood the cycle of rain and the price of crops when my grandmother’s sister visited us from the village. I also valued the rain after many weeks of harsh summers.

The gathering of dark clouds, the rain-bearing breeze and the fragrance of the earth when the first drops of the thunderstorm falls on it will always remind me of home. Scientists call this fragrance petrichor and I agree that it is the fragrance of the fluid that runs inside the veins of gods.

Monsoon Afternoon by Kashmira Sheth & Yoshiko Jaeggi

These thundery rainy days in Singapore, remind me of growing up in India, listening to the crash of the clouds, the unusually grey days and coolness of the air. I remember the croaking of the frogs in the puddles, the flash of lightning and the noise of rain falling on the terrace.

I feel calmer when I hear the thunder and the warm rain doesn’t scare me, it soothes my senses and the dark clouds envelop me in a warm cosy blanket. I would welcome the sunshine for sure. But this thunderstorm doesn’t get me down.

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Chitra Soundar writes picture books and junior fiction when she’s not watching the rain through her window. Her next book You’re Safe With Me (illustrated by Poonam Mistry) with Lantana Publishing tells the story of the thunderstorm in an Indian jungle. Follow her on Twitter: @csoundar

The Five Laws of Ranganathan by Savita Kalhan

When I first came across a reference to The Five Laws of Ranganathan, I wondered what on earth these five laws were, and who was Ranganathan? The obscure reference sounded as though it had come straight out of a dystopian or sci-fi or fantasy book.

So I did what most people would do, and googled it, which made me wonder what we used to do before Google and easy access to information from all over the world was just a few clicks away. . . Well, we would have gone to the library to look him up. And that’s important because of who Ranganathan was, and what his five laws are.

Siyali Ramamrita Ranganathan was an Indian mathematician who was appointed as the first librarian of the University of Madras, a role he initially found boring and solitary after teaching maths. But after a trip to the University College of London, and a chance encounter with a Meccano toy set, on his way back by ship to India he began devising a library classification system that became known as Colon Classification (nothing to do with the digestive system as librarians will know!), which became widely adopted in libraries.

He firmly believed that libraries were a key source of education and should be freely available to everyone. He invented the term library science, and he opened a library college in 1929. In 1931, Ranganathan wrote his five laws and they were based on his views of what a library was for – and, just as importantly, who it was for.

So what are the five laws of Ranganathan?

1. Books are for use

Ranganathan believed that books shouldn’t be locked away to protect them. Yes, they should be stored and preserved carefully, but if they are not available to anyone who wanted to access them, what was their point? By emphasising books are for use, he focused on factors like the library's location, loan policies, opening hours, the quality of staffing, down details such as library furniture, temperature control and lighting.

2. Every reader his/her book

Because Ranganathan believed that everyone was entitled to an education and that libraries played a central role in providing education, he felt that librarians were under an obligation to not only provide a well-stocked library, but to know their stock so they could best help and advise their readers.  

3. Every book its reader

Every book should be placed in the library so that its readers can find it. For example, Ranganathan thought that open shelving for children’s books was best, so that kids could find the book they wanted easily.

4. Save the time of the reader

Part of the library service is meeting the requests of readers efficiently. So Ranganathan promoted a skilled staff, trained in library science. And he didn’t believe in centralising books in one place because access to them would be denied to many people.

5. The library is a growing organism

Ranganathan acknowledged that as times and needs changed, so too the library should evolve to meet the needs of the time in terms of books, space, readership, and use.

In 1998 Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association updated the ALA’s five laws of Library Science based on Ranganathan’s five laws:

1. Libraries serve humanity.

2. Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.

3. Use technology intelligently to enhance service.

4. Protect free access to knowledge.

5. Honor the past and create the future.

Ranganathan's contribution to library science is marked on August 12th, National Librarians Day in India, which is celebrated in his honour. He was also made vice president for life of the Library Association of Great Britain.

S.R.R. Ranganathan tirelessly campaigned for libraries to be opened all across India – not just in the cities and towns, but in rural areas too, for them to be available, open and accessible to anyone and everyone at all levels of society, and for libraries to be well-stocked – with books and librarians! It’s a shame that, eighty six years after Ranganathan first wrote his laws, we’re still campaigning for the same things in the UK.

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A Jar of Pickles and a Pinch of Justice by Chitra Soundar

If you were expecting a blog by me, Savita Kalhan, then I apologise - but you are in for a treat today. Chitra Soundar, author of fabulous tales and beautiful picture books, is my guest blogger. I was very fortunate to be able to attend Chitra's book launch where she held the children - and the adults - spellbound with her tales of Prince Veera and his friend the farmer's boy, Suku. Chitra is also an oral storyteller, and she really did bring the magic of her stories to life for us.

A Jar of Pickles and a Pinch of Justice by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy

My second book in the Prince Veera series, published by Walker Books, are reimagined stories from my childhood folklore.

Growing up in a joint family in South India, without a TV until I was 16, oral stories, comic books and the radio were my vehicles of imagination.

The stories that lodged in my brain, not just for their wit and deviousness but also the brutal justice and fairness, were the Raja Birbal and Tenali Rama stories. As an adult, I did elaborate research on these historic legends to find out why they were cast as the heroes of these trickster tales.

Raja Birbal was a poet, a soldier and a good friend of Emperor Akbar, an open-minded, intellectual Mughal ruler in 16^th century India. Even though he was a Hindu, Birbal became the Mughal emperor’s confidante. He was trusted so much that his house was allocated inside the perimeters of the emperor’s palace, where it still stands today in Fatehpur Sikri, outside New Delhi.

Tenali Rama, also a poet, a few decades earlier in the 16^th century, was a courtier of the South Indian king Krishna Deva Raya and became a court jester. The court jester lightened the tense moments in the King’s cabinet especially as they planned resistance towards the Mughal emperors. Of course nowadays a potential ruler might also take on the role of a court jester sporting orange hair and bad jokes.

As a child whose life lessons came in folklore form, I devoured these stories and often pondered about their wisdom. As a grown-up many of these stories are still my touchstones for evaluating the right from the wrong.

When my editor at Walker Books invited me to tell stories from India, these were the first stories I went to. I wanted today’s children, wherever they are, to learn the magic of using ingenious pranks to teach lessons in fairness. Hence they became “child-centric” with new characters rather than the stories of two ancient courtiers from the 16^th century.

So I created two boys, one the son of a king, Prince Veera, and other the son of a farmer, Suku. Their worlds collide. Their perspectives fuse. The prince gets to understand the ways of the common man and the farmer’s son gets a perspective of how justice can be a difficult job.

Writing about the first title in the series, A Dollop of Ghee and a Pot of Wisdom, Ian Eagleton, a consultant with Just Imagine, says “... an excellent basis for discussion about what is right and wrong and the decisions we must face as we grow up.”

The second book A Jar of Pickles and a Pinch of Justice came out in October, this year, with more stories that table the debate between right and wrong.

I have been telling these stories to other children ever since they left me in-charge of younger cousins during summer holidays. Recently I’ve been telling these stories to children in junior schools. Their outrage at injustice and their passion to defend the fairness is inspiring. They love these stories not just for the “exotic” setting of a make-believe kingdom of Himtuk, but also for the choices Prince Veera and Suku had to make to bring justice. The pranks are a bonus.

While fairness is the central theme of the stories, outwitting the unjust mean villain is half the fun. And of course, I haven’t forgotten to add Indian street food and sweets dripping with ghee, and quintessential Indian village life full of donkeys, elephants, and superstitions.

So if you fancy a time-out from the potential Armageddon, that is the US Presidential elections filled with the debate of right vs. wrong, may I recommend “A Jar of Pickles and a Pinch of Justice”?

Click HERE for more information about Chitra Soundar.

You can follow Chitra on Twitter - @csoundar