Shaking Up Reality

Bangalore-born Raghava,now based in New York was named one of the top 10 people the world is yet to know of by CNN in 2010. He did not want to bring up his child in a bubble,filled with bias. I found childrens books full of propaganda. Instead of watching my child grow up as an ABCD America-born Confused Desi,I wanted to tell him about different worlds, he says. He had previously put together a book of illustrations and text for children to teach them about Indian and American ways of life. This idea lead him to create an iPad app for children called Pop-it at Home: A Quirky Look at the Parent-Child Relationship. The application was launched at TED Global in Edinburgh this June.

Explore the app,available from iTunes for 1.99,and you discover fun applications,which keeps both toddlers and adults engrossed. One can play drums on it,or draw and tickle characters. It even responds to weather changes it rains on the iPad screen when it pours outside. The childrens book has a series of six scenes,featuring everyday activities involving a child and its parents,such as potty training,bathing and sharing a computer. But the perspective alters when the iPad is shaken. The parents change from a gay couple to a lesbian one to a heterosexual one. This is the artists way of shaking up the reality. It deconstructs the concept of an ideal family. The gender of parents is not important for children. All that matters to them is love, he says.

A personal episode prompted Raghava to blur stereotypes about family. In India,a gay friend of mine was ostracised when he came out of the closet. This shocked the self-taught artist and strengthened his resolve to work against such social bias. His wife was pregnant with their daughter Anaga,so his desire to reach children with his art and philosophy was stronger. His wife Netra Srikanth,who teaches history at a New York public school,also played a role. She explained how a particular historical incident can be viewed differently by various groups, says the artist. This gives his art and ideology multiple perspectives,evident at the ongoing and successful exhibition of his work,Exquisite Cadaver,at Mumbais Art Musings gallery.

Raghava received an encouraging response to his application after spelling it out at TED,where he shared the stage with director James Cameron,musician Sheryl Crow,playwright Eve Ensler,Bill Gates,and mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. Former US vice-president Al Gore,one of dignitaries seated in the front row,even wanted to collaborate with Raghava for a childrens book on climate.

Conceptualising the iPad app itself took a bit longer. Soon after the conference,he was invited to speak at Khosla Ventures Conference,San Francisco,hosted by Vinod Khosla,co-founder of Sun Microsystems and attended by Bill Gates and Tony Blair. When he returned to his room,he found a gift-wrapped iPad from Khosla waiting for him,with a note saying: Go for it. Raghava gave the iPad to his wife so that she could read books on it. Since she wasnt ready to give up the joy of curling up with a page-turner,the iPad fell into the hands of their then two-year-old son Rudra. After fidgeting with it for a while,Rudra figured out how to play music and games on it, says Raghava. This made him realise that its possible to have a conversation through the iPad.

Soon after,he roped in Dhimant Vyas,a Bangalore-based animator who had created the title animation sequence of Taare Zameen Par,and put together a team to develop it. The process of creating it was very intensive. Every time we tried something new,a fresh problem would crop up. We had to sort that out before we could make any progress, Raghava says.

Vyas gives his version of the apps creation. Raghavas paintings,drawings and illustrations are very imaginative and free flowing,I can see them moving and telling stories. The best part is that I had to be wildly imaginative like a child. I had to animate and give life to the free flowing illustrations; make a whole iPad app full of surprises,movements and make each page delight the child inside us, says the animator,who is a creative director at Zynga Games India. Working on this project meant the animator had to exploit his love for creating a dream-like world,full of life and craziness where anything can be possible.

Since the apps launch,the app and Raghava have been drawing mixed reactions. On Apples website,where the app is displayed,comments praise it for teaching empathy. But other comments make their disappointment clear. I wanted to use this with young kids and found its illustrations inappropriate. I love the concept but not usage of it, reads one such post.

Children have always held a prominent place in Raghavas artistic career. At 18,he opened an art school for them. Even after he made a successful transition from cartoonist to a painter,he never stopped teaching them. His logic; Spending time with children helps me maintain my spontaneity.

Recently,he started work with students at NuVu Studio,which was set up in partnership with PhD students and faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At NuVu,Raghava pushed the students both artistically and conceptually to design imagery for the apps in Photoshop. Raghava worked with students to create iPad apps that expressed contemporary stories and addressed social issues. The iPad apps included; A Technological Birthday, which focuses on the growing disconnect between people resulting from technology; Four Legs, which shows a family of animals being reduced to commodities; and MooMoo in the Mirror, which focuses on the idea of body and self-image,says Saba Ghole,chief creative officer of NuVu.

Next month,Raghava plans to take another step with the global launch of a new app for children. He is currently in talks with possible partners for it. This is a book about Indian Independence,very patriotic, he says,with a mischievous smile,When you shake it,you get a Pakistan perspective; shake it again and a British perspective appears. Altering historical perspectives is not for fun alone. The only way for us to teach creativity is to teach children perspectives at the earliest age. I cant promise my child a life without bias. We are all biased. But I promise to bias my child with multiple perspectives, he said at TED.