Dear Popularity
I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up ever since I learnt to talk. On some days I chose to be a caterpillar, in months, a collector of all things blue and years later, I was confusion- stuck between trying to pick a ‘real profession’ and preserving the imaginative ones. Conversations around me changed from ‘lets go to the park’ to ‘how many friendship bands have you got today?’ The world that was once my family telling me ‘ you are a star’ suddenly became bigger. It included mothers worried about their children’s grades, teachers making sure the silent child in the corner of the class had some one to sit next to, and television projecting how girls who wore their hair open had a battalion of friends behind them, whereas the one with the spectacles buried their faces in books. In retrospect, I often ridicule how fame and popularity floated around, and wondered what popularity really means to children now.
Following that trail of thought, I sent out a questionnaire asking children what popularity really meant to them. The themes that emerged were largely, some one who hones the skills they have, pursues their hobbies, is sensitive towards his or her environment , and loves who they are. Staring at the responses, I thought about what popularity would look like if it were a person, and that culminated into ‘Dear Popularity’, a picture book for 6 to 10 year olds, reflecting ideas of what it really is to be popular, from their eyes to their eyes. Apart from this idea, I felt the need for each child or adult who opened it to know that imagination and reality can coexist which I decided to bring in through the element of play with fabrics, found objects and textures.
Further, this book is more of a reminder than a new thought, that popularity comes in all shapes and sizes, and it looks different to everybody, but it's always around chattering away in our heads. Some times we just forget that its there, thats all!
Also- after reading this, scroll through the images and view the entire picture book attached in the very end!
