When people ask me, “Do kids read these days?” in a disbelieving tone, I want to ask them, “Have you tried giving kids books? Books they w...
When people ask me, “Do kids read these days?” in a disbelieving tone, I want to ask them, “Have you tried giving kids books? Books they want to read? Giving them to kids who have no books to read?”
Padma Baliga took to hashtagging her social media posts at least three years before I did. A vocal feminist, her write-ups on phenomenal women have a liberal sprinkling of the word “badass”. Kickass, too.
And she seems to have liked SRK.
I am not even one-tenth down her Facebook timeline and am already enamoured of her.
But first, the reason I’m stalking her online.
Padma, as she insisted on being addressed by one and all, and I had never met. Our interactions had been limited to a one-off on Facebook over children’s literature, mostly Indian, and a few emails exchanged back and forth over the books she would occasionally place an order with me for, for the many libraries that she was setting up. She had once also reached out to congratulate me on one of my books that she found particularly engaging.
When I learnt of her death from Covid-19 on May 12, I put out a small note for her on Facebook. She belonged to our close-knit kidlit...
