To Inaaya, with love

How do you tell a story to a child? For actor-parents Kunal Kemmu and Soha Ali Khan, it took a bit of practice, and some nudging from their four-and-a-half-year-old daughter Inaaya. "She loves being read to, and enjoys looking at picture and storybooks," says Kemmu, adding, "But, I realised that when reading out to her, I'd miss seeing how engaged she was with the story, because she'd be sitting on my lap and staring at the book. I wanted to look at her face while I narrated to her. So, I started creating stories from my imagination; it helped me understand how she reacts or what scares her." The process of creating soon turned into a game of sorts, where little Inaaya would tell her dad about the characters she wanted to hear about, while he would weave tales around them. During one such occasion, Kemmu told her the story about a little girl, and an orphaned puppy, and how they met to become best friends. This was when the germ of the idea for Inni & Bobo Find Each Other (Puffins Books), their just-released illustrated book, took root.

We are chatting with the couple over a Zoom call. Jumbo Jr, the flying baby elephant with long ears from the 1941 Walt Disney fantasy film Dumbo, is splayed across Khan's oversized tee. We haven't been to the couple's Khar residence, but from what we can see on our screens - a broad shelf stacked with encyclopedias, fiction and non-fiction, titles not clearly captured by the camera on their iPad - books are as central to their universe as the movies. This is not the first book coming out of their stable - Khan previously authored The Perils of Being Moderately Famous (2017), a rather, witty choice for a title of a memoir - but it's their first as a couple. "Writing a children's book is much shorter," Khan quips. "It took me about eight months to write my first book. This one took us just three hours. But of course, the process of putting it together took longer, because finding an illustrator who could bring to life what we had imagined, was a much complex task. But I really enjoyed it." Telling a story "using simple language, and characters and words that are exciting to children", says Khan was important. "It was fun, but I don't know how the critics are going to be… these three-year-olds. They are much more honest."

Inni and Bobo are the protagonists of the new series, illustrated by Rituparna Sarkar. Pic Courtesy/Puffin Books

The book is the first in the Inni and Bobo adventure series - their second one is scheduled to release later in the year. This one introduces us to Inni - created quite in the likeness of Inaaya - whose "big green eyes" light up when she is taken to a dog adoption centre. "I want to take all of them," she tells her father. "…They can sleep on my bed. I have so many toys, so why can't I have so many dogs?" Her father gently tugs at Inni's plaits, letting her know that dogs are not toys. "They need constant care and looking after." Inni eventually warms to Bobo, a scruffy puppy with floppy ears, whose fur was as brown as a chocolate biscuit.
Working together on a project like this one came easily to them, says Khan. "Kunal is very creative and imaginative, and also knows how to hit the right beats, to evoke a response, whether it is emotional or comical. That requires a certain skill, and he is very good at that. I think my strength is in the style of writing, which is making it pretty and read well. And so together, I think we make quite a formidable team."

Kemmu says he never planned to be a published author, especially not for a children's book. "But the motivation first came from Inaaya, and then Soha, who convinced me that we should do this. With the illustrator [Rituparna Sarkar] coming on board, I really enjoyed the journey of it coming together from a simple thought to the paper and then in an illustrated way. Because it's so different from how films work, right? There, actors come together and take on different parts. Here, nobody is acting it, but the expressions are conveyed by the way it is drawn." Sarkar and the couple hit it off immediately. "A lot of credit goes to her, because this is a book that children will look at," says Kemmu. One of the first illustrations that Sarkar created for them was the cover of the book, says Khan. "We immediately liked it. It's hard to please parents who've written something for their daughter." Kemmu butts in, "We did put together a few sketches for reference, but thankfully they didn't get used."

Inaaya was very much part of the collaborative process, say Khan and Kemmu. "In fact, she was the first person we read the story out to… There were moments when I narrated the story, and she'd visibly laugh out loud, so we knew that those were very important moments to capture in the book, and say them in a way that not just her, but other children would also [break into a] giggle."

Kemmu remembers how excited Inaaya was, when she heard that the protagonist was named after her. "On the day we launched Inni & Bobo, she walked in saying, ‘I am the hero of this book'," he laughs.

While the actors share a deep love for animals - they have adopted two dogs - and wanted to talk about values they believed in, they say they didn't want to make it look like they are "torchbearers of a cause". "We certainly want people to be kind to animals, but we aren't saying that everyone should adopt, because not everyone is cut out for it. You should truly do it only because you want to, as it's a big responsibility," says Khan. Kemmu says the book "purely stemmed from our love for our daughter, and the need to tell her stories… everything else is a byproduct of that".