Lubaina Bandukwala has been in children's publishing as a writer, editor and festival curator for a decade. She founded the Peek A Book Literature Festival for children's, which is now in its fourth year. She does all this so that she can read all the books she wants anytime she pleases and say she's working.
Bombay, 1942
With Mahatma Gandhi's call to the British to Quit India, the city has become a hotbed of revolutionary activity-student protests, secret magazines and even an underground People's Radio which broadcasts news that the British want concealed.
Sakina and her friends Zenobia and Mehul desperately want to be part of this struggle for freedom. But there is little that they are permitted to do. But at least, they are trying to do something useful, while their mothers are only running a cooking club ...
The Songs of Freedom series explores the lives of children across India during the struggle for independence.
Despite being individual tales, the two books serendipitously pose several similar questions. Both, Sakina and Raji, find themselves judging their role in it all, and whether they agree with the adults that surround them. In The Chowpatty Cooking Club, several refreshing perspectives present themselves through the adults. Where one is fighting through underground radio broadcasts, the other is chastising the freedom seekers.
Two parallel lives in Madras and Bombay, questioning their purpose and duty under a colonial regime that are in many ways the same and completely distinct. Did every child in India at the time go through this? We're waiting on the rest of the series to find out.
