As
someone who travels sometimes between India and the US,
I am often asked two questions: "Is life better here
or there? These are very difficult questions. "Life"
is too broad a concept to be comparable across cultures.
While I personally relate to many aspects of an Indian
way of life, there is something specific that I value
in the US – the existence of a strong culture that
promotes reading, especially, parent-child reading.
In India, many
parents are not able to read to their children. But even
those who can read, seldom do so, simply because it is
not a sufficiently valued cultural practice.
Reading Rainbow's
work goes to the heart of changing cultural practices
around reading. While at one level RR engages children
in a variety of reading activities, I believe this work
has deeper significance. When I see children taking enthusiastically
to a reading club like RR, it makes me reflect, "I
wish my parents had read to me too when I was a child,
that someone had opened the world to me at a tender age."
Reading Rainbow
is making us all aware of the importance of reading to
our own children. I have seen Atula's efforts mature over
several years. Her rainbow didn't just appear because
it rained one day while the sun was still out. It was
painted pixel by pixel with perseverance and passion and
still remains for her and her team a work in progress.
Having worked
for literacy for over a decade, I believe that reading
centres like these show us a way forward, on a journey
to the end of the rainbow! |
