Go colour a book

With colouring books for adults becoming a rage globally, a few Indian titles test the waters

April 27, 2016 04:10 pm | Updated August 16, 2017 07:30 pm IST - HYDERABAD:

Devdutt Pattanaik. Photo: K.K. Mustafah.

Devdutt Pattanaik. Photo: K.K. Mustafah.

Is it a fad or truly a stress buster as it’s pitched to be? There are many who feel the trend of adult colouring books, that’s swept the West, is a marketing game plan. Others contend that the books are fun, engaging and even educative. A few Indian colouring books for adults are already out and publishing houses are gauging the response. Popular international colouring books are on themes of nature, abstracts or mandalas, while Indian books are trying to be educative and do some storytelling.

Ecologist Nina Sengupta’s ‘Edible Weeds and Naturally Growing Plants in Auroville’ is among the first in this segment. The book was launched in the city at Our Sacred Space in 2015. Before Nina gets talking about the book, she clarifies that her intention was not to ride on the international wave. She remembers one of her teachers recommending a colouring book to learn the basics of the subject when she was a student in the US. “At a bookstore, I saw colouring books on various subjects. At that time, I didn’t know we had no such educative colouring books for grown-ups in India. I assumed such books must be around,” says Nina.

As an ecologist, Nina was concerned that many took to botany and related sciences for lab-oriented work, but very few were on the field. “It takes years to learn taxonomy. To an extent, this has to do with how information is made available. If the language is in scientific terms, people are put off.” It stuck her that she needed to do something to engage people closely with their surroundings. Where she was, in Auroville, she saw weeds and more weeds. “All these weeds can be found across the country. I thought of exploring this through a colouring book.”

Nina applied for a grant and worked on her book for eight months, during which she heard that adult colouring books were becoming a rage globally.

Since then, there have been other titles. Indu Harikumar had worked on projects where she used her drawings to address issues. Her book ‘Beauty Needs Space: A Colouring Book for Big Children’ owes its title to a friend she knew from a residency programme in Vienna. While dining out, Indu shied away from cake, stating she didn’t want to get fat. Her friend simply told her ‘beauty needs space’. She recalled these words later, when she worked on this book. “A friend from the US suggested I work on a colouring book. I drew a few images, put them up on social networking sites to gauge people’s interest,” she says. Pleased with the feedback, she worked on the book, which has 13 images in the theme of mindfulness and positivity. Indu wanted her book to be interactive, and left empty spaces where one can pen their thoughts. “A girl from Pakistan who had bought the book did calligraphy in these spaces. It was wonderful,” she beams.

Colouring books work on the principle that there’s a grown up child inside every adult. Chennai-based Subadra Kalyanaraman’s ‘Shakuntala and Her Magic Box’ has 16 drawings and two pages with story panels where her husband and Balajee GE narrates a story.

Subadra’s book is a self-publishing venture and features Madhubani drawings. “We didn’t want to ape international books. The images had to be Indian, intricate enough for adults and ones that can be pulled out and framed as wall art,” she explains. They printed 150 copies, which were sold out during a weekend event. More were printed as requests came in.

Leading publishing houses are now testing the market. Penguin Books India is releasing ‘Bagh-e-Bahar: A Mughal Garden’ by Good Earth. The drawings are a combination of Persian, central Asian and indigenous Indian styles accompanied by quotes from Rumi.

Penguin is also releasing ‘The Jaya Colouring Book’ and ‘The Sita Colouring Book’ to go with Devdutt Pattanaik’s ‘Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata’ and ‘Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana’. Will adult colouring books become a phenomenon, giving further scope to Indian titles, we ask Pattanaik. “We have to test the market yet,” he says. The idea for these two titles, he says, came from the publishers. “Penguin felt there was a market in India and approached me. The work was done by the publishers. I approved the final layout,” he says.

Colouring books, he feels, allow the user to retreat into childhood. “It’s also a great family activity, better than watching horrible TV shows/news,” he sums up.

The craze

* Colouring books for adults witnessed a comeback in the West with Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford’s book Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book, which sold more than 13 million copies.

* Internationally, themes of nature, abstracts and mandalas are popular, fuelled by celebrities who found the books to be meditative, promoting mindfulness and stress relieving.

* The craze for colouring tools was so immense that, in March 2016, Faber Castell announced that it had to work overtime to meet the growing demand.

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