The Colourful Journey of my Writing

My first recorded writing was my scribbles in my grandad’s diary that proclaimed “Book is god.” Who knows what was going on in my head to write that? When I discovered that tattered diary and found my writing, I realised decades later, it’s on brand for me.

I grew up in a family with limited means and unlimited storytelling. We were a joint family with my grandparents and uncles and aunts who helped raise me. And we were often visited by my grandmother’s sisters and we hung out quite a lot at my maternal grandad’s house too. My growing up was peppered with stories. My grandmother who lived with us, told stories as she cooked.

My mum loved reading and storytelling. She loved performing on stage. Our summer holidays were curated with a drama club in which my mum or her friends devised a play for us to act in the community theatre.

I was a boring child because I loved reading, I asked for nothing but books and notebooks. I expressed my love for stories as an oral storyteller first. Because that’s how I learnt storytelling. I used to tell stories to my sister and younger cousins during sleepovers. I won my first oral storytelling prize when I was just about eight.

Writing in earnest started much later when I discovered poetry – especially Tamil poetry – via song lyrics, poems written in kids’ books and the poems of Mahakavi Bharathiyaar, the great Tamil poet who lived in Chennai. He was a feminist, liberal poet, a man ahead of his times and his poems still inspire me and enthral me.

And then the typical South Asian instinct of life took over. I did my degree, my masters, my extra courses, got my first job, excelled at it, went abroad and made my parents proud. Writing was relegated to passion and hobby. Life came first.  Especially when I was a rebelling south Indian woman who refused to get married. A job with a good pay-packet and prospects ensured my independence. I could not have made a career in writing in the late 1990s in India.

I returned to writing when I moved abroad to Singapore. I suddenly had a 5-day work week (India has a 5.5 day or 6-day working week) and I was able to use my weekends to explore writing.  In the beginning, I wrote everything and anything. I published articles in newspapers and magazines, wrote about health, diets and at the same time published poetry and short stories. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do… until I remembered all the stories I made up for my cousins.

In my typical enthusiasm, I jumped headlong into the sea of children’s literature and I’m still swimming in it. But when I moved to the UK and started writing, I had very few examples of what South Asian literature for kids would be in the western world. I grew up on a diet of Indian stories and western fiction. I assumed everyone loved western fiction and that’s what everyone is reading and must read. So, I wrote stories about bath-time, cereals and camping, of which I had very little experience.

I suddenly realised I was caught in the middle of two worlds. Here I was a brown writer in the UK and I wasn’t sure what I should be writing about. If I wrote about western things, it sounded distant and hollow, but if I wrote about things I knew and the stories I wanted to tell, who would read them? I was also the prodigal daughter, the one who kicked away traditions, broke the rules and refused to succumb to auntie pressure. What right did I have over the culture that everyone thought I had forgone?

It was a difficult four years of writing everything and nothing. I was trying to find my feet in the UK in real life and in my stories. Until I realised, I’m a product of my upbringing, the good, the bad and the ugly. Just because I rebelled doesn’t mean this culture is not mine. Also, I had to tell the stories only I can tell. When the switch flicked in my brain, when I gave myself the permission to write the stories I wanted to write, I started getting success.

Fast forward 14 years, the time a hero spends in exile (wink!), I’m not only a published author, but also an award-winning one.

My books, the Nikhil and Jay series, are being turned into an animated sitcom for CBeebies, airing this autumn. It follows the adventures of two Indian/British dual heritage brothers and their lovable family rich with our customs, traditions, festivals, food and music.

But then came the realisation that someone like me, who struggled on the way to the top, must build a ladder and hold it steady for others to climb.

So, I set up The Colourful Bookshelf – it’s a curated shelf on bookshop.org with books by PoC in Britain for kids. I scour the internet and all social media for writers of colour in the UK who are writing and illustrating for kids and make them available to parents, teachers, librarians and more. We highlight lists for celebrations and types of books. We offer new writers a platform to blog for us too.

Discover the South Asian Heritage Month list here which is a curated list of all kids’ books by British South Asians!

Fast forward again, to the present. The bookshelf is great and it is growing. But I realised that South Asian books need a bit more nurturing. Even though we are the biggest minority in the UK (though we are the global majority), we are under-represented in kids’ books in the UK. (Check out this research by CLPE).

So, I hatched a plan with two other like-minded industry women with exemplary credentials, a wide network and a South Asian attitude of can-do!! Enter Sanchita Basu de Sarkar, the indomitable bookseller from Muswell Hill who has defined the standards for community bookselling and Sinéad Gosai, the best trumpet-player, drum-beater for South Asian kidlit and a fabulous publicist. We got our heads together to create SAIL Fest, the first ever UK South Asian festival of kids’ books and art. Our festival will bring together wonderful South Asian writers, poets and illustrators in the UK for a day of celebration, discussion and networking. So, watch this space! We will be making the announcement for this during this South Asian Heritage Month.

I call my journey into writing as colourful because it’s not in monochrome – it’s a blend of my culture, my interests, my attitude to life in the context of where I live. I’m a brown writer in the western world with stories that straddle two cultures, by mixing all the colours in my paintbox. And the best thing about it is I love sharing my paintbox with others so we can all tell colourful stories. If I had any advice for budding writers, I’d tell them to read widely and to always write, write anything and everything, just as long as you keep writing!

Chitra Soundar is an internationally published, award-winning author of children’s books and an oral storyteller. Chitra regularly visits schools, libraries and presents at national and international literary festivals. She is also the creator of The Colourful Bookshelf, a curated place for books for children by British authors and illustrators.

To buy any of Chitra’s books, click here or to learn more about Chitra and her work, visit chitrasoundar.com. Follow her on Twitter aka X or Instagram.