Anyone collaborating with Ruby Hembrom is sure to widen his or her mental bandwidth. For she not just thinks out-of-box but also invests her soul and spirit into the work she undertakes.
Kolkata-based Hembrom runs Adivaani, a publishing house for adivasi (tribal) literature. It was launched by a group of amateurs that included her friend Joy Tudu, Luis A Gomez, a Mexican journalist, and Boski Jain, a graphic artist.
This is a story of three friends in Kolkata coming together and saving a culture and its heritage from extinction. Ruby Hembrom quit her job as an IT professional to take to promoting the folktales of Adivasis a place on the bookshelves. Here is the inspiring and heartening tale.
adivaani‘s language building through reading initiative in collaboration with the Tribal Cultural Heritage in India Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Does language also have rhythm? from adivaani on Vimeo.
adivaani‘s language building through reading initiative in collaboration with the Tribal Cultural Heritage in India Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Ruby Hembrom left her well-paid job at a multi-national company, and now spends most of her time working on projects to take tribal folklore to the masses. She has set up her own publication firm, Adivaani, to promote the history of Adivasi struggles.
KOLKATA: When Ruby Hembrom quit her cushy job in the IT sector a couple of years ago, she didn’t think twice, thanks to the greater calling to unite with her roots. The result: the soft-spoken yet aggressive Santhali woman is all set to publish her second book that is part of a series on untold lore of the Santhals.
The second Santal Creation Story, Earth rests on a tortoise, will be available soon at a bookstore near you …
This gallery contains 9 photos.
According to her Blogspot profile, Boski Jain is a ‘graphic designer by degree’ but she also likes ‘to illustrate too.’ Hailing from Bhopal, Boski’s career is actually more than that, and her talents go far beyond her modest declaration of craft and proficiency.
Now 24, this young artist had already published work in a collective book by Katha and has two more fully illustrated by her over the last two years (The Mistery of Blue by Tullika Books and Ek Do Dus by Eklavya.) We come from the Geese is her first of (hopefully) many works with adivaani, where she already designed our logo and was part of the process that brought us to life last year …
All the animals you create look like wonderful baroque pieces. Instead of fur, feathers, shells or scales, you come with lines, (fabric like) patterns and dots… tell us why? Is there a way to represent not only diversity but movement too?
My inspiration and ideas come from the variety of tribal arts and crafts in India, particularly the ones present in Madhya Pradesh as I have been living here and have been exposed to these more. Fabric like and block print like patterns come from them. They are bold and the perspective of the figures is simplified, hence the style can be beautifully adopted for a story for children.
Is creating illustrations with somebody else’s script difficult for you? Do you feel constrained as an artist?
I am not a writer (not so far). In my 2 years old career as an illustrator, I have only worked on scripts written by others and I have enjoyed doing so thoroughly. Picture books are picture driven hence I enjoy a certain degree of freedom.
What did you find most challenging to illustrate in the Santal Creation Stories? Why?
For me the worst and the best part about Santal creation stories is that I had never heard them before. It was the best because I got the chance to work on something unusual and hence I could use all of my imagination to visualize how the frames would look. The best part also includes working with editors who have placed their trust in me and have given me a lot of freedom. The most challenging part was to visualize and pictorially translate presence of certain supreme beings that are ‘shapeless, formless and inexplicable’, and yet make them comprehensible for children.
These stories have been carried through from generation to generation and maybe are being published as illustrated books for the first time. Hence there was also a question constantly at the back of my head about meeting the expectations of the ones who ‘own’ these and who have been narrating them for a long time.
By the way, you worked on We come from the Geese mixing digital with drawings and tint … is there a particular method to your work or is it just an intuitive way?
The method for working really depends upon each frame. Usually each element is individually worked upon by hand and then they are arranged digitally to make a composition.
Any new project coming soon?
I’m planning to work on more books for children. Also, I’d like to work on those books which do not begin with a story but begin with a piece of art that sets the stage for the story to follow.
Ruby Hembrom
I believe not everyone is meant to do just one thing in life, I certainly am not. My 8 years of work experience in the Legal field, the Service Industry, the Social Development Sector and the Learning, Research, Development and Instructional Designing field bears testimony to this fact.
My education, training, skills and career define only part of who I am; my identity as a tribal, a Santal, is fundamental to my being and that completes who I am.
But is that enough? Life for me is about fulfilling one’s potential. In the many ways I’ve redefined who I am; the adivaani dream has made me come alive all over again. So what is the adivaani story?
2nd of April, 2012 found me trading four months of my life to learning a new skill. I attended a course on publishing to explore the possibilities of what I could do with my love for Language, the written word and stories. The course would just be an extension of what I was already doing.
In the first month there I met many fascinating storytellers in batch mates, school officials and resource persons from the publishing world and heard lots of stories firsthand. And two stories I heard planted an idea in my head that finally made me see why I was at the school.
Listening to Urvashi Butalia and S. Anand’s stories of what their publishing houses embodied got me thinking. While their story unfolded bit by bit I was bothered by a thought: both of them were sharing specific issue related stories through books that were important to be told, but there were some stories that still needed to be told–the Adivasi stories–and nobody was telling them. I was consumed by the burning desire for ‘our’ stories to be out there. Who would tell them? Soon enough I saw I wanted to tell them. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t write and I had no plan, but all I knew was that the tribal voice had to be heard; the authentic Adivasi story had to be told.
Two days of living with that idea, and going over the possibilities of what could happen all alone drove me crazy; I couldn’t contain the excitement any longer. 5th April, 2012, Good Friday, while getting dressed for Church, I make a phone call to Joy, my sounding board; and started the conversation in a way he was all too familiar with, “I have an idea”. That was it. No ‘not again’ reactions from him.
The more I thought about it and Joy and I talked about it, it became clear how we had been living halve-lives until then.
Next to come is the christening story. We need a name I thought; I don’t want to keep calling it an idea anymore.
In a mock exercise at the school we were to draw up publishing house ideas and I absolutely loved the name ‘Inkdia’ and the logo that one team came up with. So I walk up to the leader of the team, Shyamal, and ask him if the name is copy right, ‘yes’, he says. Shyamal directs me to Luis, who coined ‘Inkdia’ and designed the logo, with whom until then I had not had a real conversation. I shared my idea with him and won over a collaborator. He said he’d help with the logo, and that was just the start of his additions to my big idea.
But I still didn’t have a name.
A little dejected I sit through the session, toying with ideas for names. I try playing around with letters around the word tribal and Adivasi and Voilá! the name as if by magic appears: adivaani, the Adivasi voice.
That’s how an idea became adivaani and adivaani became the fuel that keeps the dreamer and storyteller in me alive.
Luis A. Gómez
I write, I design and sometimes I publish books. I’ve been a journalist for the last 25 years, and during my career I’ve had the privilege to work for/by/within the peoples in Latin America; particularly in Mexico–my motherland–and Bolivia, where I lived for 13 years. There, adopted by the Aymara people, I wrote a book about their community traditions and how they deployed them in warfare to win an insurrection in October 2003: It’s been the joy of my life to love hope, emancipation, and some other tender words, like solidarity and reciprocity.
Some day in March, 2012, I landed in Kolkata. Here, when Ruby asked me to help her in developing this idea she had and had shared with her friend Joy, my heart throbbed again. And I jumped into it: how electrifying was the prospect of using my hands and voice to create an independent press 100 percent Santali (yes, I would be grateful if along the way you call me one of you as well.) You know, I write and make books, mostly, because I love to chase dreams…
Come join us…
Boski Jain
A graphic designer by education—but that’s just one way of pegging her creative talent which is extraordinary and limitless; never ceasing to amaze. Her contribution to adivaani goes beyond the beautiful logo, the very artistic illustrated Santal Creation Stories series and every special project she undertakes for us. She’s adivaani’s pillar of innovation and ingenuity.
(A note by Ruby Hembrom from March, 2014)
adivaani 