Ok, I never thought I would design a book for kids but 3 things happened that led to this.

One: My college classmate came down to India from the “Stone Age” (inside joke, move on!) and met her kids multiple times over the month she was in Chennai. Now, let me set the context. I have never been around kids except for very rare occasions where either they were more babies than kids or I did a fly-by while going to work or from work. So, what must be too obvious for most “normal” people is a brand-new experience to me. I was picking “Ms. Wilma” up with her kids to visit another friend “Dracula Parrot” who too was visiting the city. So, while driving, Wilma’s kids taught me a neat game where we gave clues about a vegetable or fruit, and the other person had to guess it correctly.

It was such a simple premise that it still stumped me a bit. We were stuck in traffic and it was about a 30-40 mins drive. We were about halfway to the destination and I was truly running out of vegetables and fruits to give clues about. I mean, I’m not dumb but these kids were guessing so fast that I was drawing a blank. Thankfully, the kids got distracted with another topic and somehow my dignity wasn’t soiled yet (foreshadowing).

Two: We reached the Dracula parrot’s place and she has a kid too. So, at her place, I noticed that on the TV they were playing some kid’s YT channel or something of sorts, and all the kids were so glued to the TV. The only thing which bugged me was that all the videos were so amazingly made but made for kids in the US. After spending a decade building content for people to learn robotics and AI and so on, here I saw the enormous gap where quality content in their mother tongue wasn’t available in the same polished output as the ones made in the US. This irked me a bit.

Three: We spent quality time and the “Dracula Parrot” who invited me to her place, made me pay the bills for the food delivery! I was like super broke due to certain other reasons but then again couldn’t say much at that time. So, paid the bill and was looking at the void in my account. It was large but what happened next made me feel way more uneasy and embarrassed, to say the least. While we were packing off, out of nowhere both these women pulled out gifts for each other’s kids and there I was trying to find some hole in the floor where I can stick my head and not be part of this situation.

Now, I can claim that I was in this situation only because I was like broke beyond measure. But in reality, it never occurred to me that this was something I should have done. I know. I know. I’m that dumb! So, there I was sheepishly standing between two people I have known for about 2 decades and cursing myself for not even thinking about getting something for their kids whom I’m meeting for the first time.

So, it took a car ride, my brain noticing a gap in the content world and an embarrassing moment of being the clueless idiot, leaving a deep mark in my head. I was like ok I need to get something for them. But of course, I was deadbeat broke and like everything else in life, I never do anything easy. So, around the weekend, I don’t know where the inspiration hit but I reached home at 6 and finished my physio.

Around 7 pm, I sat down to work on making a book for the kids. I knew that I can pull off designing a book that can be used as a gamebook to guess the fruits and vegetables. So, opened the world’s best design tool “MS Powerpoint”!!!! Opened it and ……. oh crap, what now?

I realized I need to make a book where the clues are given on one side and the answer is given on the other side. But where do I start? What fruits and vegetables should I use? How to make the clues consistent? How can I make it look presentable? Are you even capable of this? Who do you think you are thinking you can do shit! OMG, I’m so worthless in life. Why didn’t I just get some random gift on time? Why do I always dig myself into a hole and try random shit! This was but a small percentage of what was running in my head when I had Powerpoint open and wondering what now!

Then, it hit me!