Children

The spices of India can take credit for inspiring some of the greatest maritime expeditions in the world. In a bid to find the sea route to India, European explorers like Bartholomew Diaz, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama braved uncharted seas, discovered new lands and earned fame and glory for themselves. But for India, the opening of the trade route was both a blessing and a curse.

‘Search for Durra and Dana – Faces, places and spaces’ is a wonderful book consisting of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting two little girls, Durra and Dana, in various locations full of amusing things and characters. Readers are challenged to find a range of characters and things hidden in the illustrations.

Synopsis:
Durra and Dana are back in town after a thrilling journey that went beyond their wildest dreams. Look at their tour album and spot them in each picture. Adam, their younger brother, too accompanied them keeping an eye on Mofu, his cute little dog who can’t get enough sleep. Soumi, Durra’s darling white cat too was part of the entourage.
Everywhere they went, they saw a guitarist in red cloths playing gloomy tunes and an unclaimed green bag. Go find them all!

Shankaravara could run faster than all his friends and swim across the Brahmaputra when it was in spate. But when his grandmother scolded him for not paying attention to his books, he took her words seriously. Named Shankar Dev by his guru, the young man fulfilled all his duties as a student and householder before embarking on a voyage of self discovery. A voyage which led to his starting the Vaishnava movement in Assam.

Parvati was born a maiden of the mountains. The mighty god Shiva was practicing meditation in the dense forest. Desiring to win over Shiva, Parvati went to serve him. But Shiva paid no attention to her.

At this time, the gods were being tortured by an invincible demon, so they prayed to the supreme god for a saviour. He assured them that the son of Shiva and Parvati would be the one. So the gods sent Kama, the god of love, to lead Shiva into marrying Parvati. But when the god of love worked his charm, Shiva was disturbed and turned him to ashes. Parvati redoubled her efforts at penance.

Bhasmasura, the demon, has Shiva in a fix. The good-natured god has granted him a boon that any person whom he touches on the head will turn to ash and now the evil Bhasmasura wants to test the boon on Shiva’s head. As Shiva runs for his life, his good friend Vishnu decides to step in and help.

Hitopadesha (Good Counsel) is an 11-12th century Sanskrit collection of stories in four chapters instead of five in the Panchatantra on which it is based. Each chapter contains a string of stories, one emerging from the other, with each designed to render counsel on ethical worldly-wise conduct. The characters are living beings including humans and animals in the wild. The latter too are endowed with the reason and emotions of human beings. Thereby they come to represent types of human nature and behavior and one can draw morals from the stories. The first story here describes the fateful journey of a farmer’s bag of coins from a pot through a goat to the farmer, from him to a shepherd, then to a well, back to the farmer, thence to the shepherd’s staff and back again to the farmer! Moral: What is rightfully yours will not be lost. In the second story, a traveler in a forest rescues from a well, three friends – lion, monkey and a snake, he also rescues a goldsmith fallen in. Later, the grateful animals rescue him from robbers but the ungrateful goldsmith lands him in prison. Again the animals come to his help and the goldsmith is punished. Moral: Evil acts bring evil returns.

To his admirers, he is a great teacher and a saint. To his devotees, he is a divine incarnation. Summing up the life of Sri Ramakrishna, Will Durant, in his The Story of Civilization, writes: ” All religions are good, he taught his followers; ‘All rivers flow to the ocean. Flow and let others flow too! He tolerated sympathetically the polytheism of the people and accepted humbly the monism of the philosophers but in his own living faith God was a spirit incarnated in all men and the only true worship of God was the loving service of mankind.”

When Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in the small town of Kumbakonam in 1887, his parents did not suspect that he would grow up to be one of the most extraordinary people in the world. In fact, he was such a quiet child that they worried he would never speak. But Ramanujan’s grandfather taught him to read, the little boy rapidly discovered a delight in learning, especially in mathematics. It was a delight that would shape his life and that of everyone he met. Ramanujan’s short life was one of extremes, of shining mental exuberance and great poverty, of unrelenting hard work and of equally unrelenting illness. But his genius, his sheer enthusiasm and his fervor for mathematics never dimmed and his legacy lives on.

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