Roopa Pai is a computer engineer who always knew she was going to write for children. In addition to Taranauts, India’s first fantasy adventure series for children, she has several other published books to her credit, including The Vedas and Upanishads for Children. To make a living, she brings together three other loves – history, working with young people and her hometown in Bangalore – in her day job as a guide with Bangalore Walks, a history and heritage walks & tours company.
Why do you think The Gita is still relevant to the community?
The Gita is the account of a conversation that happens in a battlefield, between a great warrior overcome by despair about the killing he is about to wreak, and his best friend, who is also his charioteer. This scene seems difficult to transpose to a more modern age, but when you realise that the Gita’s battlefield is only a metaphor for the battlefield of our minds, and that the warrior and his wise friend are only symbols of our confused lower self and clear-thinking higher self, the conversation becomes not only deeply significant but also universally relevant.
What part of The Gita according to you is the most important and why?
As I see it, the Gita is a self-help book, one of the oldest in the world and perhaps the most pragmatic. The crux of its teaching – Do your duty with no expectations as to the result – is remarkable because it is so entirely at odds with the prevailing wisdom of our time, which celebrates goal-setting and goal-achievement. According to the Gita, the key to liberation is to be so absorbed in the joy of the work that the outcome matters not a whit. That idea instantly kills all the pressure that a relentlessly competitive world dumps on children. To my mind, therefore, this is the most important teaching.
Why do you think children must read the book?
When you take the frills away, the Gita is really a conversation between two best friends. There is love there, but also tough love, as when Krishna challenges Arjuna’s decision to walk away from his duty. Although Krishna offers a patient ear and good advice, he never presumes to tell Arjuna what he must do; instead, he urges him to trust himself and make his own choices. There is so much here that children can learn about healthy relationships! On another note, when children engage with an ancient text and find that the problems it is addressing are problems they themselves are grappling with, a sense of connection with all humanity is established; they feel less alone.
How did you condense a classic manuscript into a book? What are the challenges?
Fortunately, the Gita’s lessons are very relatable, so I did not have too much trouble bringing them to children. The real challenge was to convert the traditional verse-by-verse exposition, which can sometimes feel disconnected, into a ‘story’ that could engage children. I was also very keen that young readers never lost sight of the fact that they were reading an ancient, revered text, so my language when I was retelling it had to be suitably classic, without becoming inaccessible. To bring in lightness, I used a conversational tone and contemporary language in the ‘Lessons from the Gita’ sections that I interspersed with the main sections.
The Gita for Children is published by Swift Press on Diwali (24th October). To pre-order your copy, follow this link and click on ‘buy’: https://swiftpress.com/book/the-gita-for-children/
