"Gandhi was way before his time..", Lawyer & Writer Rajesh Talwar on his play, 'The Boy Who Became the Mahatma'.
Your play is a fact based drama on the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. While there are enough resources and material out there on Gandhiji's life, how did you manage to focus on the key life events to present to your young readers in order to give them an organic view of his life's inspiring journey?
Rajesh Talwar
@Tally · 2:24
I have to say, Ramya, that children have to suffer through history books which are very difficult to read. I had to suffer reading those kind of history books myself, and even in college. Although these are eminent historians, romela, Thapar, Bipanchandra and I have no issue with their great knowledge, but they are quite often unreadable
Do you think this ideology is, in fact, all the more relevant at a time like this, when we are all waging big wars in various facets of life and governance? I would love to have your take on this, and I will leave you with one final question. Your extensive body of work includes books of fiction and nonfiction. You've also authored several plays. So how different is writing a play from writing a novel or a piece of nonfiction?
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Rajesh Talwar
@Tally · 4:49
For example, this children's play, I think they can be much more transformative because the issues are direct, they are immediate, the children will identify with the characters as the same thing will not happen if they are reading just a work of fiction. So, for example, the play before this was a play on Babasabambitkar, and I was suggesting to some teachers that they can actually have a Hindu kid play the Muslim boy, have a Brahmin kid play the Dalit boy
Rajesh, thank you for this wonderful interview. It was fascinating to come across aspects of the Mahatmas life that are still unknown to many of us. And I really appreciate you giving us a sneak peek into your writing process, which I'm sure would be super useful to writers listening in to this. Well, I shall also go ahead and share the Amazon link for our listeners to check out the book. Thank you for writing this book and for talking about it with us. More about your words