Our Happy Place!

Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference to your world. It may be a beautiful rendition of your favourite song that’s playing on the radio or FB live program, or a serendipitous occurring, or managing to catch a premiere of the new season of your favourite show, or a hobby you’ve resumed after years of lassitude, or a flip-kart buy arriving earlier than expected, or chancing upon a book that you have been longing to read, or finding a book that your little one is sure to love and watching her expression as you read it…… its these priceless moments that make your day and lift your spirits enough to carry you through the mundane transactional daily life!

One such mood lifter, happiness dispenser and my very own great escape is a nice little Indie book store, a travelling book store called “Funky Rainbow”! It is a bookstore whose presence is ubiquitously found in many public events in Bangalore related to books and children’s literature. A book store that never fails to excite you in terms of their vast collection and some like CBT and NBT books that feel like they've been  retrieved from your very own childhood memory. A bookstore run by book lovers who are always full of recommendations from the latest children’s publications in India. A bookstore that will give you a shopaholic’s guilt as you can never stop at buying just one book! The travelling bookstore that makes the long wait at my children’s PTM bearable and no matter how well they fare at school, I can always take solace in being  able to lay my hands on a few good books in the end (for them!).  An indie bookstore we are so glad to have, in South Bangalore!    I always look forward to visiting the bookstore and have felt a childlike excitement as we  approach the entrance of Nandi Garden, J P Nagar.

Funky Rainbow and its team have spared no efforts to popularise reading and books amongst children and parents alike. Right from organising author visits at school and book release events during pre-covid days, to Lockdown quizzes,  pre-paid book vouchers and Saturday morning live Book Buzaars on Facebook during Covid times,  Funky Rainbow and their team have been trail blazers in adapting to the changed circumstances. Here’s wishing Funky Rainbow and its team of trio a very happy seventh birthday and wishing many more to come!

Today we read “The Happy Place”, a Ramya story, a part of the Ramya and Ramu series brought out by Ms Moochie publications as a part of the Little Book Lovers’ reading series, of course another one recommended and picked up from “The Funky Rainbow”. Its obvious that Ramya stories have been quite popular with my little one and we’ve followed the precocious little Ramya as she took up the cricket bat, donned the Santa costume for her fancy dress at school and other such adventures. Today we learn about her Happy place… and how she works hard at building and turning it around from the dump that it was, enduring all the jeers from her school mates and braving natural and man-made challenges,   and day by day she watches it grow and delights in the fruit of her labour to form a pleasant surprise for her loving granny. Narrated in a limerick-like style by Samatha K and pictures by Chetan Sharma, this is a lovely read for young children, and an earnest attempt to impress upon them the pleasures of every-day creative initiatives in order to find your own little happy place! Funky Rainbow is surely one such happy place of our entire family....and as Abhay puts it.."Its the Best book store one can dream of having in one's town"!