By Eva Manandar, 2014 Fellow

My kids were going to be creative, imaginative, going to write their own stories.

The first time I told them that we were going to write stories, it was going to be their story, they could write anything they wanted. Blank faces.

"Aundaina miss, sakindaina miss." (Don't know how to do it, miss!)

Then I gave them examples – if your story is about a pink elephant, that’s fine, if your story is about a fish that can fly, that’s fine too, and if the fish eats the elephant, that is fine too.

They sort of seemed to get an idea but it was so hard for them to break the habit of mugging up everything that getting them to think of their own stories seemed quite a task laid out in front of me.

Next time same thing, your story, your world.

Anything that you imagine is possible in your world.

The only criteria to write the story – go wild with imagination.

Slowly, they seemed to accept the idea, slowly they seemed to be willing to break the boundaries, slowly they seemed to be willing to be free.

Is it ok if I write this, they would ask after one crazy idea popped up in their head, another one would ask again, so can I write that this happened, with another amazingly crazy idea.

I would just get all excited and tell them – Yes, yes, yes, it is your story, your world, anything that you imagine is possible in your story, in your world.

The most astonishing ideas were finally there.

Now the next hurdle, they didn’t have the vocabulary. So, building vocabulary was the next step. And this turned out to be quite fun. Colors and drawings had been an integral part of my classes last year, this year with no proper classrooms it became almost impossible to put up the beautiful pictures these kids were drawing on Fridays. Therefore, the idea of the Alphabet book popped up.  The flash cards were given, kids were drawing and learning new words from them in their own Alphabet books.

After the earthquake a lot of Nepali story books came to our school and it was the first time that kids got to read such books. When I took them to the class the kids would just devour these books.

 Of course, it was not all smooth sailing from there. Past tense, present tense all jumbled up, use of prepositions, connectives, just to name a few, all a mess and many many more things -- wrong.

Nope, I didn’t fix all that, no such miracle happened.

However, the miracle that did happen was when I told my kids that as part of their final practical examinations they would have to write a story book of their own, they didn’t say "aundaina miss, sakindaina miss."

They said, "aafnai storybook lekhney; Hunchha miss, hunchha!!!" (Writing our own stories? Sure! )

(Of course not all the kids have come up with their own stories, many have copied them, so I tell myself at least they tried, but some have actually made an effort to create their own story books, and that is what makes me really really happy.)

2014 TFN Fellow Eva Manandhar taught English in Terse Higher Secondary School, Talamarang, Sindhupalchowk.