“Mandrake the Magician may not have worn his underwear on the outside but he was the closest I had to a superhero,” says Twinkle Khanna. The actor, who launched Tweak Books last year, says the idea of what a ‘superhero’ looks like is changing.
Her platform is out with its second book, published by Juggernaut, in the When I Grow Up, I Want To Be series for children, that narrates inspiring accounts of 20 real-life ‘heroes’: from ‘Mr Inkredible’ Anirudh Sharma, who found a way to turn carbon emissions from cars into ink, ‘Forest Man’ Jadav Payeng, the environmental activist from Majuli, to ‘Rocket Woman’ Ritu Karidhal, who was the deputy operations director for the Mangalyaan mission.
“We want children to get acquainted with our local heroes: men, women, and yes, kids, who have done remarkable things,” says Twinkle, in an email interview. The Tweak team drew up lists of people after combing through news reports, documentaries and recipients of prestigious awards in fields like conservation and invention. “We then had to narrow it down to 20 individuals that had consistently contributed to their individual fields. These had to be stories that children would find both inspiring as well as engaging,” she adds.
Accounts of their merit and experiences were turned into stories that would capture the imagination of children.
Picture ‘Choti Champion’ Alana Meenakshi lording over her chessboard, surveying the kingdom her pieces rule over, or a 100-kilogram birthday cake for all of Bibi Prakash Kaur’s (founder of Unique Home for Girls) 60 adopted daughters. “We included children like Saarang Sumesh, who invented the smart seat belt, so children would find a hero among their own peers,” says Twinkle.
As a mother to her nine-year old daughter, Nitara, Twinkle attributes the changing idea of what makes for a hero to the amount of exposure children have today. She recalls reading Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls with Nitara. “Her favourite story was on Catherine the Great, the German-born princess, who banished her husband and took over as the empress of Russia. She asked me, ‘So is Catherine good or is she evil then, like a witch ?’”
“I told her that all witches were perhaps princesses first, just like Catherine, who got tired of their knight in shining armour falling off his high horse. It gave us a chance to talk about gender, equality and ambition. Books about real life heroes, I believe, give parents the chance to have conversations with their kids that can mould their world view,” she concludes.
Changing conversations around Indian feminism is one of the main goals of her platform. Tweak will soon be completing two years and she shares the observations she has made along the way: “I believe it took a virus to decimate the myth of the equal partnership. All this while, we thought we were leading progressive lives, but our partners were not the ones packing lunches or dusting shelves while we were away at work. It was left to other women — moms, grannies and domestic workers — to help with all the cleaning, cooking and child care. With that disappearing for a while during the lockdown, it brought about the realisation that we were only climbing higher because other women were holding the ladder steady for us.”
