Bedtime for most parents comes with a familiar, high-stakes demand: “Tell me a story, but make it fun, different, and new!” For IPS officer Kiran Sivakumar, currently serving as Inspector General of Police (Lucknow Range) in Uttar Pradesh, answering that nightly call to action gradually bloomed into a heartwarming children’s book aptly titled The Father Who Ran Out of Stories.
The book features two recurring characters Dino and Rhino and a series of their adventures involving travel, mysteries, unusual encounters and imaginary worlds. As the stories evolved, Dino and Rhino began exploring different countries, historical events, scientific ideas and cultural settings. Some adventures drew inspiration from places the family had visited while others emerged from books, films and the questions raised by his daughter Tanvi. “It all started when Tanvi was two years old,” shares Sivakumar, recounting how standard fables were instantly rejected. “Every father goes through this where their child will ask them stories, and they are not interested in this old Panchatantra and Aesop’s fables. They want new stories, also where the stereotypical princess and princesses are not there. They don’t want you to tell them the same stories of Rapunzel,” he adds.
So to stay ahead of her imagination, he began improvising around his young ones favourite animal — a dinosaur! “She liked dinosaurs as a child. But with just one dinosaur, where can we go? So I just put one more character, the rhinoceros. Dino and Rhyno rhymed,” adds the cop narrating how he endeavoured to keep the plots juicy. Revealing how the officer cheekily adapted storylines from old South Indian films, he says sheepishly: “I’m a Malayali, so I started with Malayalam movies so that she couldn’t easily understand where I’m stealing from! I told her the plot, and put the protagonist as the Dino and Rhyno, and then the plot followed.”
{{/usCountry}}So to stay ahead of her imagination, he began improvising around his young ones favourite animal — a dinosaur! “She liked dinosaurs as a child. But with just one dinosaur, where can we go? So I just put one more character, the rhinoceros. Dino and Rhyno rhymed,” adds the cop narrating how he endeavoured to keep the plots juicy. Revealing how the officer cheekily adapted storylines from old South Indian films, he says sheepishly: “I’m a Malayali, so I started with Malayalam movies so that she couldn’t easily understand where I’m stealing from! I told her the plot, and put the protagonist as the Dino and Rhyno, and then the plot followed.”
{{/usCountry}}To balance his writing with his busy schedule, he started dedicating his evenings to his book while drawing upon his UPSC prep and academy essay-writing habits. “Once you get into UPSC you have to read and write, by force or by interest whichever way it is... I for one loved essay-writing and won prizes in the Police Academy, but of late I wasn’t. Once, I started It’s very difficult to put pen to paper.”
When the manuscript finally arrived in September, Tanvi’s reaction was adorably conflicted. “Initially she asked, ‘Why are you writing it down and telling to other children?’ ... She didn’t like the fact that it was put on paper because she wanted to listen. She thought I am giving her the book and telling her to read,” he laughs.
For this writer, the heart of the book lies in the universal effort of parenting. “It is not the story that is important, it is the process every parent goes through where they must improvise and use creativity to tell stories to their child that captures their imagination and makes them curious,” he concludes.