SuSanskrit

Great personalities form the cloth that engulfs the human mind in its search for an ideal. From early childhood days, we idolize people around us and try to imitate their ways of behaviour and action. This imitation goes a long way, along with our environment, in shaping our character, way of thinking and actions. Just like a child needs someone to hold its hand when it takes a first step, so do we in our quest for perfection.

In the past we have taught our child to identify an alphabet with objects that are in routine use, e.g. A is associated with Apple, B is associated with Ball, and so on. We thought instead let’s teach our children to associate the alphabets with great characters from our immediate past and our glorious ancient history.

Accordingly, we have tried to identify great characters for each Alphabet of the English language for the children to start associating with. There are innumerable great characters and the ones chosen here are purely out of the association of the writer with such characters. By no means are the characters chosen here greater than the ones not selected. It's our humble effort to make learning more engaging and entertaining for our children along with an opportunity for the entire family to get closer to such great characters for giving direction to our life. In our first attempt, we have tried to use most personalities from Indian history and have only used western personalities wherein they are either associated with Indian History or culture.

With regards to stories from Indian literature, especially ancient history, one should be aware that such stories are full of miracles and magic with a purpose. It is said that to retain philosophy for centuries it is necessary to weave stories around the philosophical concepts. Indian literature has done exactly that. The way rituals are important for the philosophical thoughts to survive, in the same way stories are important for philosophies (values) to survive in the masses. Children learn a lot from stories, especially fiction, as is evident from the popularity of cartoon channels and animated programmes and movies. Why give them something fictional when we have enough real around us. Let's make an effort for them to enjoy the process of learning, and in turn force our minds to think about and pay homage to these great characters.