My niece wanted me to write/translate a story for her 4-year old daughter; the little one whose voracious appetite for reading and stories should be daunting for her mother. Immediately I remembered one of the Russian tales of Arkady Gaidar whose story of ‘Chuck and Geck’ I had read some 40+ years back in Tamil. Those days, the soviet communist propaganda was allowed free reign in India under the Indo-Soviet co-operation, Our CPI cadres were running a publishing house ( I think the name was NCBH) where they printed translations of Russian publications from Progress Publishers or Mir Publishers, Moscow. While a good deal of them were pure propaganda with titles like “How Socialism settled the question of sub-nationalism in USSR” ( the fact was that they only exacerbated and never settled them) or “Scientific Socialism – Empirical criticism” , there were also excellent children’s literature in the form of folk tales and songs all rendered in highly readable Tamil. ...
Tell all the truth Tell it slant Just as lightening explained To children kind Or every man be blind