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.
The city is at the heart of a quiet but slow revolution, with publishers, small and big, taking tentative steps in the field of tribal literature. One such group is Adivaani, a database which collects, publishes and preserves tribal folklore and culture.
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.
Kakoli Poddar, journalist with Magna Publishing, chose to feature adivaani in this month’s issue of Society:
Ruby says they want to create a database of adivasi writing of, for and by the adivasis. “We wish to document the oral forms of their storytelling and folklore. We also aim to narrate our stories of struggles, exploitation and displacement, in our words.”
Go get a copy. Find us on page 98.
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.
Why don’t we have an Adivasi voice?”, “Why don’t we have a ‘for and by’ Adivasi publishing house?”, “Where is the authentic Adivasi narrative?”
To my loving daughter Khushi,
You are only 4.5 years young and I am writing to you; for you to understand what your Papa does, about why there are cartons of books around the house and why my phone conversations and other interactions with people revolve around adivaani. Papa is building a ‘time machine’; the adivaani time machine for Adivasis; for us and for our people to travel to the past and carry the adivasi legacy we left behind to the present and the future. Beta let me explain: I started this new place of ‘work’ called adivaani in July 2012 partnering with Ruby and Luis (Remember Luis brought you a handmade arawak toy from Mexico and you have added it to your friend’s circle since then).
We are making books; and through them we want to reclaim our identity in our own terms. Super excited we produced our first ever book in Santali in the month of October 2012. With no proper sales guidelines and strategy we set out. We missed out few occasions where we could have sold our books but such are the challenges of a new venture.
By this time I had already shifted to Pakur, our home: you will not realize this as you see me far too often than when I was in Ranchi. Your mom used to scare me saying that one day you’d fail to recognize me because of my being away from home most of the times. Thank you for proving her wrong.
The start of 2013 was exciting for adivaani as we were busy producing two books together. One is Gladson’s (Remember we went for his wedding and you had a good time playing around). The other you love to look at and make me tell you the story of the geese again and again. Come February the 7th 2013 and we had a terrific launch of the two books at the New Delhi World Book Fair.
Way back in September 2009, when you were only 11 months young, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland on an official visit. Rev. Andrew Anderson, the then presiding Priest of the Greenside Church had invited me to speak on a Sunday morning service about the situation of our people in India. In his introductory remarks, he introduced me as the first person he has known in his lifetime that has his daughter named after him. Khushi (Joy in Hindi); your mom loves me for this, what about you?
‘If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door’…I’ve just re-tweeted this a few days ago copied from an online friend, who by the way also happens to like our posts on adivaani’s website. That’s why the time machine is important.Beta, I am building a time machine and I feel I’m running out of time and resources. Our passion alone cannot drive this time machine, we need fuel, and we need the support of everyone. I am worried and often wonder how we will make it. Then I look at you and when you play and make me laugh, I feel alive again. You inspire me. It’s for you and adivasi children like you that the adivaani time machine wants to preserve this cultural legacy. I do believe and hope that this ‘work’ of ours will fulfill the potential it has.
Your grandpa has donated a part of our house in Pakur to be used as the adivaani bookstore. I am so overwhelmed with his gesture and support. He extended his support without us even asking, and that humbles me. But we need to reach out to everyone and tell everyone who we are what we want to do and how we need their backing.
So we started an online fundraising campaign called ‘A time machine for Adivasis: documenting and tooling our history’on indiegogo in March 2013 to have them support our venture:
A time machine for Adivasis
We’ve been blessed with the response we got; a few people donated money, some want to write about us and some want to keep our books in their library. That’s wonderful! We sincerely hope our campaign succeeds.
March 2013 also had adivaani written about for the first time in Tehelka.
I feel extremely honored to be in the company of such wonderful people who believe in adivaani and us. adivaani and the promise of what it can do is the inheritance I proudly leave for you and adivasi children everywhere.
This is the first ever letter written to you; the first letter of your life. From now on, you have a confirmed seat in our ‘time machine’, just beside me.
With everlasting love and best wishes,
Papa
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 