Have you found Hanuman yet?

NEW YORK: For all Indians who were lucky to grow up listening to their grandparents’ weave glorious tales from the epic Ramayana night after night, Torchlight Publishing’s illustrated children’s book ‘Where’s Hanuman’ might come across as perhaps the most simplistic interpretation of the epic saga. The story that begins with Sita’s wedding and ends with Rama returning to Ayodhya in the Pushpaka is encapsulated in precisely 12 short paragraphs.

But within those few pages, the author and illustrators open up to the reader an amazing world of fertile imagination and epic imagery that’s beyond the scope of mere words.
For millennia, India’s most beloved epic, the Ramayana, has been handed down from generation to generation throughout India via literature, story telling, art, dance and drama and song. Practically every Indian, wherever in the world, is familiar with the characters and the story in which Hanuman is one of the greatest of heroes.

Alister Taylor, the author – like illustrators Christopher Woods and Ben McClintic – doesn’t unveil the whole story of Lord Rama and Sita. But the crisp narration and 12 colorful drawings are suffused with mirth and mischief – which, after all, are the typical characters of Hanuman.

Thus ‘Where’s Hanuman’ gives young children a captivating and fun way to begin learning the treasured story of Rama and Hanuman.

Within the 32 pages of this over-sized volume, children journey into the midst of the most exciting scenes of this adventure. Each of the pages is actually a tightly packed puzzle scene with hundreds of humorous characters and dozes of sub-scenes.

From Sita’s Wedding, to Demons in the Forest, to Attacking Lanka, children will have their minds, eyes as well as their funny bones fully engaged as they try to find the characters cleverly hidden in each scene. Each of the two-page puzzle pictures has scores of characters occupying the entire space, each with one’s own distinct set of features and activity. More often than not, Hanuman himself is just one among the several beings and articles cleverly hidden – it’s tough to spot him in the height of festivity, and hence the title, says the author.

In the publisher’s afterword, Taylor says the book was created entirely by Westerners, and therefore seeks forgiveness if it implies any disrespect in its humorous representation of Hanuman and his associates. “We realize he is venerated and even worshipped by many Hindus, but at the same time, we feel he would not be unhappy if this presentation of his adventures brings joy to the hearts of even a few children,” he says.

Taylor says his life-long interest and love for the great classics of India began with a friend in New Zealand gifting him a copy of the Ramayana some 28 years ago. “It was in fact one of the main reasons that I started Torchlight Publishing in California ten years ago,” he says. “I have always felt that India’s great classics – Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita deserved more recognition in the West. I am happy that Torchlight’s renderings of the Mahabharata and Ramayana retold by Krishna Dharma are now the best selling versions in the English world and have been translated into 12 languages.”

Having visited India frequently in the last 25 years, Taylor says, he found children in particular are losing awareness and understanding of their great cultural heritage. “I find this sad, and this book is part of our small attempt to revive the interest of India’s youth in their great culture, particularly in Ramayana and Mahabharata.”

SRIREKHA  N. CHAKRAVARTY
India Post News Service