Raj Gaurav Verma
Assistant Professor of English, University of Lucknow. ORCID: 0000-0003-1819-3376. Email: ajgauravias@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.37
Abstract
This paper argues that travel writing not only neglected women (at least in its initial stages) but also children in its critical idiom. One of the recent additions to travel writing can be seen in Bhakti Mathur’s Amma Take Me Series, which sets a landmark in adding the gendered and the childist perspective in travel writing. The ‘Amma Take Me’ Series: “Come Explore the Places Where We Worship” is published under Puffin Books by Penguin Random House India. This series introduces readers to the history of the major Indian faiths through their important places of worship like Shirdi, Golden Temple, Tirupati and the Dargah of Salim Chishti. So far there are four books in the series. They are written as travelogues of a mother and her two young children and are designed for children between eight to twelve years. Mathur uses mythology, tradition and history associated with these places to unfold their story as they travel. While children’s literature shows the pattern of ‘Home’ and ‘Away’; travel writing is marked by an outside trip or journey. Amma Take Me Series conforms to the pattern of both the genres in its treatment of “outsiderness.” This series is different as it allows the children (in the text and the child-reader) an access to the outside world, especially to places of worship, guided by their mother who is both the narrator and a source of information. This adds another aspect to travel writing which is about learning one’s own culture through spaces of historical and religious significance. The ‘outsiderness’ is connected to a ‘sense of identity’ and ‘extension of self’ to these places which results in “spatial-socialization” for children. This paper attempts to read Amma, Take Me to the Golden Temple (2017) in the context of gender and children’s literature theory and criticism and the way they develop this socio-spatial and historical-personal relationship through their narrative. The study asserts the “transcendental nature” of travel writing and the ability of pilgrim-narratives in particular, to offer solutions to the problems we face today.
Keywords: travel writing, pilgrimage, children’s literature
