Once upon a myth

Hema Vaidyanathan, in her re-telling of Indian mythology for kids who need to re-connect with their Indian milieu, wants to keep it short, funny, and free of violence

There's something about Indians who settle across the seas, and their love for mythology. It's not a general blanket statement, stereotyping all Indians that way, but look around among your own immediate family and friends and tell me if our kids here are not more hooked on to Bob the Builder rather than the story of Karna. Hema Vaidyanathan, children's author who lives in Switzerland and produces beautiful books on Indian mythology, admits it may be true. But she argues it's more a young urban parent phenomenon.

The author, whose second book “Tail Tales” was released recently in the city, furthers the idea: “It's true that when parents leave India, their sense of anchor is gone. It strikes you that there's a lot of Christmas and representations of other faiths around. But the sound of the Indian milieu is not there. And one wants to introduce kids to what we connected with. But I see that even parents in India want their kids to be re-connected and re-introduced to what they grew up with, not just NRIs.”

With two “cross-cultural children” of her own, who were born and brought up outside India, Hema saw herself dealing with a whole lot of issues.

Full report here Hindu