“Chachaji’s Cup” by Uma Krishnaswami is a pleasant picture book for six year olds that is much more than a cup of tea. Adults will be thrilled to discover a book that introduces the topic of the 1947 partition without inducing nightmares in young readers.

Neel, the protagonist, grows up in America in a home that includes his great-uncle. Teatime in their household is like teatime in India. Chachaji offers plain and masala tea. They eat cucumber sandwiches and cookies, which he calls “biscuits.” Chachaji always sips his tea from a cup that is very special to him. Daniel, Neel’s friend sometimes comes over and joins them for teatime. Afterwards, the kids build castles and forts. When Chachaji plays too, they’re sorry to be called in to do something else. They sometimes watch hilarious old Hindi movies with him. He tells them stories about the gods and demons and he also reminisces about his days in the Indian Army.

Once during teatime, without too much sentimentality, Chachaji tells Neel about how his family had to travel to the border on car and foot to get to India. Twenty miles on foot sounds like a lot to Neel, for whom two miles of hiking is too much. Chachaji’s family had to leave much behind, but his mother would not part with her teacup. She felt that if it could survive, so could they. The teacup Chachaji drinks from is the one that made the journey with them. Krishnaswami whets our appetite for more details about the ordeal of the great-grandmother traveling to India with her teacup. Unfortunately, the flashback doesn’t provide them. I feel that if it had, the personalized account would have given the historical part a vividness that the rest of the text has.

A year passes in the story. Daniel and Neel grow up. They prefer to shoot hoops and play computer games than to build bridges and castles. The night of Neel’s birthday party, he drops the cup. He is sorry and thinks how precious it was to his great-grandmother. He puts the dozen pieces in a paper bag. The following week Chachaji is hospitalized after he has a heart attack. Neel tries to make him smile but all his jokes only succeed in making the nurse frown. The night before they bring Chachaji home, Neel dreams of refugees and sees his great-grandmother handling the teacup carefully. On waking, he knows what he has to do.

The protagonist’s voice has an honest and straightforward quality that is appealing. It helps us appreciate the relationship between him and his great-uncle. It is slightly embarrassed when Chachaji slurps the tea loudly at the birthday party and when great-uncle’s stories about the past fail to interest the guests. Above all, it is a voice that belongs to an Indian-American boy who tells us his grandfather calls cookies “biscuits.”

Adults and children who enjoy fine prose will savor each line in the picture book. “And cloves and nutmeg flavors would sing along with the boiling water.” “And he slurped his tea as the steam rose in little curly waves about his silver head.” Anyone, even the reader who has just blown out six candles on his cake, will delight in the distilled wisdom. “Old cup for an old man.” “But I figured you don’t have to be shiny new to hold memories.”

The illustrator, Soumya Sitaraman, developed her unique style of painting in California. The book jacket mentions that her paintings reflect elements of Shivite artistry and nature. It would have been enlightening if there had been a brief explanation that would have allowed the older readers to appreciate those elements. Instead, I was left with the feeling that “Chachaji’s Cup” is a charming story that seemed to have the need for cute, perhaps, old-fashioned illustrations. However, Sitaraman did add to the strength of the relationship with poignant portraits such as the one on the cover, where the two main characters glance at each other with mutual adoration. She also imbues Chachaji with a quiet dignity.

A few brief paragraphs on the last page give readers the historical background. Parents who want to use the text as an educational tool can talk to their children about the partition and about colonial practices that have been absorbed by India. The teatime ritual and the choice of cucumber sandwiches are examples of British influence. Ambitious parents might even want to go one step further and discuss how Indian-American lives influence Americans, such as Daniel in the story.

As the story stands it is a good first book for a child to learn about the division of India and the great migration of thousands of people. However, he might be more taken with the modern day tragedy that befell the teacup than its journey from Pakistan to India and the historical past of the two nations.

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