The story I made up to inspire my kids to write.

Once upon a time there lived a boy called Kajukatri with his parents in an apartment that was crumbled in concrete forest of a very large city.  Kajukatri is an Indian sweet dish that is mainly prepared on Diwali. His parents were very fond of this sweet and named their son after it with the belief that their son will bring sweetness to anyone who would have a taste of him 🙂

Kajukatri was a very loving eight year old boy who was very observant of his surroundings and he loved making special effort to give pleasant surprises to people around him. He would make cards, do chores, sing songs, help without asking etc.

Kajukatri observed his mum daily just to study how she is and her ways of life and his understanding convinced him to believe that his mum gives a lot unknowingly without being appreciated.

He got very involved in the context of his mum’s daily decisions and was motivated to write them down. With this intention his started painting his mum through his choice of words.

Every night before retiring he would spend 10 minutes gazing outside his bedroom window and reliving the vivid flash of all that he remembered from the day. Then he would sit down with his diary, flushing out the details keeping focus on his mother as the subject/object  :-). He would also provide either humorous or very well reasoned analysis on the events he described.

So he continued this for a year and had managed to finish all the pages from his diary. He was surprised that he had developed a closer understanding of his mother’s expectations and could effortlessly make her smile and also improvise her expectations.

So it was his mum’s birthday and he thought this diary will be a good gift but then he had apprehensions what if his mother finds it boring or unimaginative or dislikes so he first asked his dad to read it and giftproof the idea 🙂

His dad was stunned with joy after reading through the narration of daily accounts of his wife and was very very happy to tell Kajukatri to go ahead and wrap the book nicely and present it.

So Kajukatri changed the diary cover to look like a reading book and titled it “The craziness that flowers”. On the day of his mum’s birthday gifted to her with a lot of excitement. His mum was surprised to receive a book as a gift and felt really happy to think to herself that her son thinks she would enjoy reading or needs to read 😉 and gave him a huge hug.

Days past by waiting  for his mother to get back to tell him what she felt but mum did not say anything. He almost lost his heart after a week or so and cried to his father saying his mum did not like the book and it was a bad idea. The dad realised that mother has not read it yet and felt really sorry. He asked Kajukatri to have patience because sometimes feedback takes a while and assured him that mother is still in middle of reading.

After this the father rushed to his mother for her to know the story behind the book. She cried to herself  with guilt she thought it was a book from the store did not know Kajukatri had invested a year in it. She started reading it almost immediately, it took her couple of hours but she was on the top of the world and that made her do something extraordinary. She resolved to publish his writing and approached a number of publishers with a lot of pride and had prepared her talk as to how she would convince the publishers. She won a deal with one big publisher and got this book published.

“The craziness that flowers” – written by Kajukatri

it took almost 2 months for his mother to sort all of this and get a first paycheck in the name of Kajukatri and this book in the stores.

His mother then on one late evening presented Kajukatri his first paycheck with the published hard copy of his writing. Kajukatri was amazed. Mother told him it was a magical gift for her. She was extremely pleased with his thought process and hardwork  for which he deserved a wider recognition. She hugged Kajukatri and told him that his boook was outstanding and was very very happy to read about herself through his world of perception. Kajukatri was very relieved that his mum loved his book and was very motivated with the recognition his mother could get for him.

The money did flood Kajukatri’s piggy bank and so he had to open a bank account! 🙂

Kajukatri continued writing as a hobby.

The END.

Reaction at home: Amreen says to me – I want to publish my story too and she has just started building a context on her storyline.

Although to motivate her to complete it will take more such stories 🙂

#nationalstorytellingweek