Airavata: Stories for Children & the child in you

This blog post is part of the Airavata1microbloghop hosted by MeeraVBarath

Serendipity is something I believe in. I am delighted each time things seem to align themselves to produce a desired result. One such event happened recently, culminating in the production of the book Airavata, by Mayaakatha, Where Stories Dance: the brainchild of Meera Bharath. It so happened that I already had the germ of an idea for a story featuring a baby elephant. I had narrated this story to my children as a bedtime story, many many years ago. I had never written it down as such, spinning the yarn out of my imagination and embellishing it with different expressions as I narrated it. My children are grown up now, yet the story stayed with me all these years. I had planned to write it down properly at some point in time. Well, the time was ripe, apparently. I came across a call for elephant stories, to be collected into a book. That spurred me into action, and the story took shape in its present form, “The Elephant and the Snail”. The concept of living beings helping each other is very dear to my heart and in telling this story to my children (and now other children too), I hope to spread kindness all around. This is especially relevant in the context of humans causing harm to the delicate ecosysytem around them. I also wanted to emphasize that no creature is too small to help and no creature is too big to need help. Animal stories have a special resonance with children and adults alike. I had never read any story with a snail as a character, so I wanted to explore that possibility too. I hope everybody who reads this and other stories in the book takes away a smile and a thought to ponder