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Sravanthi Challapalli

Be it Indian rhymes or traditional stories of the jackal and the monkey, Karadi Tales believes that by talking Indian, it has been able to strike a chord with Indian kids.

C. P. Vishwanath of Karadi Tales calls his an `activist agenda'. The Director of this enterprise, which is on a high with the success of its latest release, Karadi Rhymes, sung by Usha Uthup, sees no point in wasting any energy on Jack and Jill who aren't relevant to the Indian situation. What will strike a chord with Indian kids are Indian rhymes and tales, and that's what Karadi Tales has been churning out for the last four years.

It's not as if there haven't been attempts in that direction earlier. Children's magazines Chandamama and Amar Chitra Katha both tried their hand at this, but were not "commercially successful", says Vishwanath. "Unfortunately, ours is the largest selling product," he adds. Why unfortunate? "Because there should be more such enterprises. There have been honest intentions and sincere effort which couldn't sustain themselves. It is not a competitive scenario. The market has not grown though there is huge scope. We need five more enterprises like ours," he says. However, he is chary of revealing sales figures as the company had till recently been embroiled in a row with Times Music over the distribution of its products.

Karadi Rhymes, which has gone into reprints within three months of its launch, retails for Rs 99. Usually, the company comes out with 10,000 tapes and has to issue reprints in 8-10 months. The second volume of rhymes, also rendered by Uthup, is due for launch. The Kolkata-based singer had about three years ago narrated four stories for Karadi Tales in the Under the Banyan series of Talking Books. Using big names to narrate tales and sing rhymes is a tactic that has been exploited to the hilt by Karadi Tales, says a spokesperson for Landmark, the Chennai-based books, music and gift store which retails these products. "They have used personalities very successfully to make parents buy the product."

Vishwanath agrees, but qualifies this saying that "it's not so much the celebrity alone as who is qualified or equipped to tell the story". Acting with the voice alone, without the aid of visuals and holding a child's attention is a tall order and not all celebrities can do that. Celebrity voices that have featured in the read-along books include those of Nasiruddin Shah, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, Udit Narayan, Saeed Jaffrey and Gulzaar.

Another unusual thing about Karadi Tales, says Vishwanath, is that it is India's only icon-based child's brand. Every other kid's brand in the world is icon-based, such as Mickey Mouse, but somehow this didn't happen in India. And Karadi and Meera become the alter egos of the grandfather and the grandchild, bringing back the figure of the grandfather in a traditional role as a story-teller.

So why Karadi? "Well, we started off looking at the Panchatantra, and found that, strangely, it's only the bear that is not represented in it. So we made him the sutradhar," says Vishwanath, "and the word karadi means bear in most South Indian languages and is a proper noun for all practical purposes." Laughing, he adds that "we were very unimaginative when we set out".

A few titles of Karadi Tales are also available in Hindi and Tamil. This foray into regional languages started only two years ago. Now some products in Telugu are in the pipeline. The pace of work in these languages is rather slow because "we have to build confidence in ourselves, and get a script we like; it shouldn't be a translation of the English original but a transcreation," says Vishwanath.

Karadi Tales is making waves in education too. The Karadi Path, using the Karadi audiobooks, is an experiment in English language learning that seems to be paying off. The company claims that using this method in a scientific manner as a supplement to conventional ways of teaching language and reading will give the student a gain of at least six months in terms of language and reading levels besides improved skills. Aimed at students whose first language is not English, it aims to teach them the language in an enjoyable and non-threatening atmosphere. Around 30-40 schools in Chennai follow the Karadi path. The latest to join are about 100 Konkani and Marathi medium schools in Goa. As an experiment in cross-cultural understanding, the tales are also present in around 300 American schools and have won much acclaim, says Vishwanath.

Future plans for Karadi Tales feature books a year from now. The company already brings out jigsaw puzzles based on its tales. There is one CD-ROM in the market, priced at Rs 500, and another is on the way. "Eventually, we'll come to TV but we have to develop our ability to market it commercially," says Vishwanath. For now, he takes pride in saying that Karadi Tales is a kid's brand which was conceived intelligently.

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