CHENNAI: Amid the bustling stalls and eager crowds of the 49th Chennai Book Fair scheduled to begin on Thursday, two modest booklets priced at a single rupee will be delivering a message worth infinitely more. The Seer Vasagar Vattam publication house, is set to sell these works — late CM Karunanidhi’s ‘Anil Kunju’ and M Murugesh's Kattai Viralin Kathai’— use the power of allegory to wage a quiet war against caste and religious discrimination.
The initiative follows the attention garnered by last year’s Re 1 booklet, proving that profound lessons often come in the most affordable packages. This year’s selections aim to continue that tradition, turning simple stories into mirrors for complex social fractures.
‘Anil Kunju’ unfolds through the eyes of 10 -year-old Fahrook navigating a village simmering with religious tension post the Babri Masjid demolition. He encounters opposing, heated speeches on the dispute, the words ‘Babri Masjid’, ‘sectarianism’, and ‘Ram Temple’ echoing in his mind.
The conflict crystallises when Fahrook rescues a baby squirrel. His act of kindness sparks outrage: his father, Ibharaim Rawther, demands he return it, while a villager, Aravamudha Iyengar, chastises him, declaring the squirrel a sacred animal of Lord Ram. A communal clash seems imminent until an eagle snatches the squirrel, dispersing the crowd.
The squirrel, albeit tragically, becomes the unlikely peacekeeper, leaving Fahrook in tears but the village intact. The story is a poignant fable on how innocence is often the first casualty of manufactured conflict.
Similarly, ‘Kattai Viral Kathai’ uses stark imagery to attack caste hierarchy, with a group of boys discovering a bleeding, severed thumb that narrates its own story — it belongs to Ekalavya, the gifted tribal archer from the Mahabharata. Denied training by Guru Drona due to his birth, Ekalavya masters archery alone. Yet, to his privileged student Arjuna’s success, Drona extracts his guru dakshina: Ekalavya’s right thumb.
The disembodied finger tells the boys, “There is no distinction of birth. Everyone is equal.” Moved, the children — David, Dhamu, Raghu, Kathir, and Ahmed — unite, declaring, “We are all friends,” with a rainbow symbolising hope behind them.
These booklets, for the price of a candy, challenge readers to reflect on deep-seated prejudices. They transform ancient myths and simple animal tales into urgent commentaries, proving that at the heart of the book fair’s commerce lies a potent, affordable tool for social change — the story.