Niranjan Narasipuram, Vishwa Kumar Narasipuram, Veda Madhurya Kowturu and Medha Vaishnavi Kowturu, aged between seven and 12, stroll into the Saptaparni Cultural Centre in Hyderabad with a way of familiarity, drawn to cabinets stuffed with books, exercise kits, and board video games. “This is the team that approves the books we shortlist for Namaste Gang,” say their moms, Visali Kopparthy and Shilpa Kowturu.
Namaste Gang (thenamastegang.com) curates books for youngsters in the age group of 0 to 10, predominantly in Telugu, with just a few titles in English, Kannada, and Tamil.
Visali teaches copyright and civil legislation at Siddhartha Law College, Vijayawada, and divides her time between Hyderabad and Vijayawada. Shilpa teaches English and Social Studies at Chaitanya Vidyalaya School, Hyderabad. The duo had been sourcing children’s books in Telugu for buddies and household and based Namaste Gang in 2021 as an extension of the exercise.
Visali and Shilpa come from households that get pleasure from studying each in English and Telugu. When their youngsters had been younger, they sensed a niche in children’s books in Indian languages. “We’ve been reading in Telugu to our children since they were babies,” says Visali. “We realised that this was not the case with other families, due to lack of awareness about the importance of reading to kids in their mother tongue or simply the lack of access to good children’s literature in Indian languages.”
Reading in one’s mom tongue is the simplest method to inculcate studying habits in youngsters, says Shilpa: “Children are first introduced to native foods of the region, so why not books in their mother tongue?”
As for the title, Shilpa and Visali needed the standard Indian greeting of ‘namaste’ and ‘gang’ so as to add the cool quotient for city youngsters.
The enjoyable issue
Namaste Gang curates and resells titles from children’s publishers comparable to Pratham, Tulika, NBT, CBT, and Manchi Pustakam. They additionally establish titles by means of bookstores, exhibitions, and storytelling classes. Having learn to their youngsters, they’ve a good thought of what can be of curiosity with out being preachy. Then, the youngsters step in. “The books chosen by Niranjan are liked by most kids, because he reads for fun,” says Visali.
So far, the online bookstore has catered to greater than 5000 households. Social media presence (@thenamastegang at Instagram) has helped faucet new prospects. To preserve prices low, they depend on postal supply versus a courier service. They started with an funding of ₹5 lakh and broke even lately.
The staff additionally ventured into publishing Telugu board books. “There are 10 to 15 publishers in the Tamil board book segment, but we found none in Telugu,” says Visali. Their pictorial guide Aakesi Pappesi, with visuals impressed by the ‘Vivaha Bhojanambu’ track from the Telugu basic Mayabazar, has been a significant hit.
Telugu and Tamil calendars
A brand new addition is ‘Manamaasalu’, a pictorial presentation of the Telugu calendar. “We wanted children to understand, through simple illustrations, that Ugadi comes in chaitra masam rather than March-April,” provides Shilpa.
Similarly, Namaste Gang additionally launched a Tamil calendar and revealed a Tamil board guide titled Chithirayil Enna Varum. Plans are on for a calendar and guide in Kannada.
Their books take a less complicated strategy in direction of introducing phrases to younger youngsters. Visali causes, “Unlike our generation that grew up reading volumes of Chandamama and Balamitra, children today need to begin with simpler words, given their limited exposure to reading in Telugu.” The books even have a refined gender equality undertone — consider photographs exhibiting a woman enjoying hockey, a boy serving to in the kitchen, or a mom engaged on her laptop computer.
(Check www.thenamastegang.com for additional particulars; books are priced between ₹70 and ₹300. A couple of titles can be found at Saptaparni, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad)
