The book that stars you

There is nothing templatised about Talered, says Chandrasekharan, its books relying on close human interaction for their narratives. Pic/Atul Kamble

Early in 2020, when first, a nephew and then a niece in San Francisco became parents, Mumbai-based former journalist Gitanjali Chandrasekharan wondered what to send them. She knew that the gift had to be unique, and one that would take them back to their childhood. Thus was born the fittingly-named Talered, a service that customises books to client taste, basing them on stories from family and friends, or setting them in fantasy worlds. "The idea is to give readers a book that stars them," says Chandrasekharan.

She has since created books for people of different ages and on a range of themes from a young girl's exploits in a strange city to a baking adventure and a long-nurtured romance. While her journalistic training taught her to present people's stories with responsibility and empathy, she also admits that journalism saw her deal largely with grim subjects. By contrast, the stories she now crafts, if not always happy, are imbued with a sense of warmth, she says, citing the example of one made for a family that had just lost its parents. "We built a story where the parents are alive at a fictional time, recreating food memories like those of masalas that the mother would make or a kind of buttermilk that the father would prepare for his daughter," she recalls. "What I like about the work I do is that I get to see the human side of every family, the things that connect everyone." She explains how there is nothing templatised about Talered, its books relying on close human interaction for their narratives.

The stories have also required different formats. While The Party Never Stops With Kishore Mehra, a daughter's intended gift for her father, was a biographical retelling of the incidents that filled up an eventful life and involved several interviews, another like Isha and the Mystery of Missing Sparrows allowed the writer some fictional liberty. The book was meant as a present for Isha, who lives in the US and was commissioned by her Thane-resident aunt, who wanted Isha to see some specific places around Mumbai. Furnished with a brief that listed city landmarks and informed of the girl's fondness for watching birds from a window when she last visited, Chandrasekharan built a story that led Isha on an adventure to rescue her beloved sparrows as she made stops at Sanjay Gandhi National Park, the Kamala Nehru Park and the Gateway of India. To reference the shoe structure at the Kamala Nehru Park, Chandrasekharan says the book even had a version of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. "Only here, the woman wore a nauvari saree."

Clients can choose stock or customised illustrations. For a book documenting the incidents and memories of her father's life, a client chose a minimalistic style with lighter tones, where not all components of the illustrations were filled with colour. Illustrations Courtesy/Suhasi Banerjee

The process behind each book often takes as much as a month with the text or fictional plot shared with the client at every stage, the latter also approving the size of font, the colour of the paper and in some cases, even the size of the book. Talered can be used in other ways too, feels its founder, who is looking at creating video wedding invites, which share a couple's journey with the guests ensuring a more personal experience. Other possibilities include telling a brand's story, creating a children's adventure around a historical monument, and even a snakes and ladders-like board game with clues and steps based on a couple's life, which Chandrasekharan is presently experimenting with.

WHAT: Talered
WHERE: www.talered.com
FOR: Packages start at Rs 10,000