Metro People: Recreating grandmother’s stories

Geeta Gopalakrishnan, a Mumbai-based author, was in the city recently to launch her book ‘My Grandmother’s Tweets’ which is based on the 109 sayings of Saint Avvaiyar. The royalties from this book will be donated to the treatment of underprivileged children with cancer at Tata Medical Centre.

Geeta says that her upbringing and childhood have inspired her to write this book.

“I grew up in a very conventional family, with two grandmothers. Both of them would quote from, you know, a scene from the 10th century. I wanted to present each scene in an interesting way. So, I took each scene and wrote a couple of stories in such a way that the younger generation could easily relate to these stories and draw lessons from it too,” Geeta told Metrolife.

The idea of these stories is to keep doing good to others.

When asked how the book will appeal to today’s generation, Geeta says, “Gone are the days of joint families. We live at a time when both the father and mother are working and grandparents visit only once in a while. Most children today don’t get to hear stories from their grandparents as we did back in our days. My book has simple stories that are rooted in values. One can’t recreate grandmother’s stories, but these simple tales will effectively convey important values to our youngsters to follow and pass onto posterity,” says Geeta.