Lifestyle

Dr. Anurima Chanda of Ashoka University holds activity session for children in Kolkata

by Trans World Features | @twfindia 16 Sep 2019, 09:20 am

Kolkata, Sep 16: Kolkata's popular bookstore chain Starmark, in association with Dorling Kindersley India, recently hosted an activity session for children between 7 and 9 years by author Dr. Anurima Chanda based on her book 'Find Out! Women of India' at its Quest Mall outlet.

The book is about stories and events that shaped women's movement across the country - breaking through the myths, stereotypes and to understand what does equality really mean.

Speaking about the book, Dr. Anurima Chanda said, "The idea was to trace the women's movement in India because whenever we are talking about feminism, mostly we talk about Western feminism. But here we wanted to focus only on Indian women, their struggles to fight against the odds like having no access to education. It was kind of tracing the trajectory. We combined information with wonderful picture research by the DK team, the idea was to talk about these Indian women's voices who get lost in mainstream feminism and also touch upon ideas like consent, dowry system which has been written down in a simple language so that it can be understood by 7 to 9 years old. "

The activity session was supplemented with visual clues and giveaways.

On being asked about the main aspects she came up with while writing this book, she said, "It was a team work, the DK team have been very helpful, we used to have a lot of brainstorming sessions. We found out the highlight areas of Indian feminist struggle and we realised that we need to begin with certain stereotypes like boys don't cry, girls can't play sports. We tried to challenge those sort of ideas and then moved on to the freedom struggle, we found out the major areas and designed our spreads around this idea."

Dr. Anurima Chanda is currently working as a Senior Writing Tutor at the Centre for Writing and Communication, Ashoka University.

She had worked extensively with English Second Language (ESL) students and students with learning disabilities, trying to devise teaching modules according to individual needs.

Said Dr. Chanda,  "Kids are very smart nowadays. We underestimate them. They should always keep dreaming high but also take into account the diversity that our country stands for and being more inclusive in their approach and not really creating boundaries depending upon various aspects like age, gender and propagating more inclusive society. "

(Reporting porting and Images by Subhashish Roy)