Govindraj is our milkman and neighbour. His daughter Deepa lives and studies at a school near Valapady. This summer, he was very upset because she had failed in English. He wanted us to give her "tuition" (That's a Tamil word now) in English.

Our usual "solution" to this request is to convert the tuition into a drama, a story-telling, a story-reading or a drawing class.

In Deepa's case, in addition to story-reading, we got her to make a page of a book, every day that she came to us. On the day we stapled the pages together and bound it into a book, she was really thrilled. It was her book in more ways than one, and she has taken it to school to show her teachers and friends.

Luckily I scanned it before I gave it to her, for these things have a way of returning to us very well-thumbed and dog-eared. So, you can flip through it here.

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