Recently, while reading A Cello on the Wall with my book club, we did a quiz on musical instruments. The piano, the cello (of course), the guitar, and the tabla were easy to identify. The violin was easy for some, confusing for others. But the sarod, sitar, veena and mridangam were difficult for nearly all the children. And this made me realise how rarely we see these instruments in picture books. Yes, many children know that Saraswati plays the veena, but in so many depictions, it looks like she’s playing the sitar. I played the sitar myself, and I still got confused!
It was with all this at the back of my mind that I started reading Roshan’s Road to Music, the story of how Annapurna Devi began her musical journey. What I loved immediately about the book was the use of the name Roshan, rather than the better known name Annapurna Devi.
Little Roshan finds music everywhere. Don’t we all? She hears the cuckoo and the washing of clothes. I used to listen to the engine of a milk van, the train, and carpentry. Even as I read, I could imagine how it would be to read this with a child, taking a moment away from the text to listen to sounds around us.
We come back to the story to find that Roshan’s father teaches her brother Ali to play the sarod. The girl who finds music everywhere wants to learn too! But she’s scared of asking. What if her father gets angry?
As I read Roshan’s lovely story, I found myself wondering about Ali as well. Does he want to learn? Does he have a choice?
And this leads me to what I love most about Roshan’s Road to Music. It is a conversation starter, full of questions waiting to be asked. It’s a snippet of a story, inviting us to explore, to dig deeper, and to discover something about the world around us.
| Title | Roshan’s Road to Music |
| Author Illustrator | Mamta Nainy Priyanka Tampu |
| Tags | Picture Book, Nonfiction, Annapurna Devi |
| Rating (out of 5) | 4 |
| Age-group | 6+ |
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