Adventures in storytelling
Chitra Soundar talks about her journey to becoming a writer both in Tamil and English, and how a local libraries and her family growing up influenced Chitra’s own story to becoming a children’s author.
CHITRA Soundar’s journey to becoming an author is perhaps less conventional than others – although having spoken to many authors, it is clear that there is no such thing as a “typical” journey. But like many, her journey involves her local library and visits that helped cement her love of reading. She says: “Although we couldn’t afford to own books, I used our school library and a paid library to read everything from comics to poetry to short stories. I was reading and writing in three languages by the time I was 10 and the blending of literary traditions across the literature from India and the west shaped my own storytelling and writing.” She was born and raised in Chennai, India, and says that the stories she heard as a child were not always written in books, but each of them has had their own influence on Chitra. She says: “I grew up in India, surrounded by oral storytellers, theatre-makers and in the Tamil movie world. My mum loved to perform and my dad’s mum, who lived with us, loved to tell stories. My mum, grandma and my mum’s dad – everyone read avidly. My dad’s older brother introduced me to science fiction and some of the classics. My dad still quotes from Jane Austen he read when he was at university.”
That broad background and immersion in storytelling may have been the spark that saw Chitra
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turn to writing – “My first story was written in my Grandad’s diary when I was five or so. It was a three- line story that didn’t make any sense. But there I was, writing. I loved writing and spellings in school and had always made up stuff – either orally or in written form.”
However, there was something much more prosaic
that set the fire burning and allowed Chitra to become a professional writer – time. “In India when I was working, I had six-day weeks and the rest of the Sunday went away in chores and catching up in life,” she explains. “When I moved to Singapore and suddenly faced with a five-day work week, living on my own, I had the luxury of time. Singapore also has an amazing library system that brought in books from local publishers, from the Indian subcontinent, Australia, Europe and North America.
“My sister reminded me of the stories I used to tell them when I babysat our cousins. And I decided to write them down. I went to a few writers’ gatherings, met a publisher, and wrote all sorts of things – from newspaper opinion pieces, travelogues, to children’s stories. I still write for adults in my free time but then (and even now), I prioritise the limited free time I had to writing for children.”
Chitra’s sister is also providing inspiration in other ways, through her two sons, as Chitra reveals: “The
Spring-Summer 2024
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