Paploo and Ali are unlike typical characters you'd find in a children's storybook. Film maker-artist Devashish Makhija has created two fascinating heroes with the hope that today's kids will think differently. And it's okay to be distracted with its delightful artworks, as Fiona Fernandez discovered

Were both titles conceived around the same time? What was the inspiration behind these? How were Paploo and Ali born?
Not at all. I was working on an animation film for Walt Disney India, for three years. It was a riot of Indian animals and traditional folk art set in a 'dehaati' (rural) Indian jungle. When the film got shelved three years ago, the characters kept squirming and wriggling about inside me refusing to die quiet deaths! A few sprang out onto the pages of When Ali Became Bajrangbali.


Artwork by Priya Kuriyan for When Ali Became Bajranbali

My publishers loved the idea. Just as it went to Priya (Kuriyan) for the drawing, I sent them a poem about a boy who asks spiraling questions -- the kind that adults have no set answers for. They loved the intent behind it and worked tirelessly to give it form; it became Why Paploo Was Perplexed. That Paploo and Ali took birth on the same day had nothing to do with either of us. It's destiny !


Artwork by Priya Kuriyan for When Ali Became Bajranbali

I'm one of those clich ufffdd Bombay cinema struggle stories. I've seen several films that I've written or was directing bite the dust. So to keep myself from losing hope I try to keep my characters alive, sometimes by asking them how else they would like to come out into this world. Ali and Paploo came out through children's books. Others live with me at home. They sit on my head, my shoulders, in my lap, loll about on my bed, jump up and down in the kitchen, waiting not-so-quietly for their turn to come to life.

Tiya James' Artwork for Why Paploo was Perplexed

While the approach is simple and filled with a riot of imagery, the messages in both cases are deep; will kids be able to gauge this?
It would be typical to say that kids are smart and will get it. But I had (and have) no clue if kids would be able to really gauge the subtext and the deeper questions we intended in the books. These questions are something we feel (and when I say 'we' I'm taking the liberty to include the people at Tulika too) kids will slowly discover, once they've gotten past the fun and riotousness of it all. So, like Paploo and Ali, we too are proceeding on HOPE. We hope children return to these books, again and again. We hope that if not today then some day they see what we are trying to tell them. We hope that they ask questions, an insane profusion of them, of their parents, the world they inhabit of everything that's supposed to be a 'rule' -- of all that 'is' and instead ask 'why not'? Just like Ali and Paploo did.
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What challenge is it to play with illustrations and verse? How did you work with illustrators Tiya (James) and Priya (Kuriyan) to ensure things go according to the way it was imagined inside your head?
Tulika did the work with Tiya and Priya. All I did was write my vision of it, and sent them some references to give them a starting point. They seem to have leapt so high and so magnificently with Ali and Paploo that I cannot take any credit for how the books turned out visually. Somewhere both caught the 'cinematic' heart of both stories in their own unique ways. The art of Paploo dances like a magic-realist animation film on paper unlike any I've ever seen, without once losing the 'Indian'ness of Paploo (or 'Hiroo' his counterpart in the Hindi version 'Kyon Hiroo Hua Hairaan'). And in the art of Ali-B (as Tulika likes to call it!) folk art, a suburban cityscape, an Indian circus of beasts, mythological palettes seem to be playing out all at once, like a visual symphony.