{"id":1071,"date":"2026-09-03T04:30:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T04:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/?p=1071"},"modified":"2026-09-03T05:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T05:13:08","slug":"a-lost-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/2026\/09\/03\/a-lost-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"A lost legend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reading habit among children is waning and when it comes to children\u2019s literature in Punjabi language, the situation is worse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harpreet Kaur<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the side effects of growing cable culture and multi media invasion has been the lack of reading among children. How many children crouch under the sheet with a torch in hand to stealthily read storybooks or comics to avoid parents’ rap? A few. Instead of reading a \u2018Chanda Mama\u2019 or \u2018Parag\u2019, children would rather switch on the idiot box and watch their favourite programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for some writers and publishers, the culprits are the parents. Says Baljinder Mann, a writer, publisher and academician, “Parents don’t encourage their children to read anything other than the textbooks. At the most they would ask them to read G.K. books. I’ve met very few parents who actually take their children to bookshops and motivate them to buy fiction.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when it comes to children’s literature in Punjabi, the scenario is even worse. Not that there aren’t any good writers, but those who write solely for the budding minds, receive cold shoulder from the publishers as well as the parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mann is critical of the government also, which, he says, has done little to popularise children’s magazines. “Punjab School Education Board publishes ‘Pankhrian\u2019 and \u2018Primary Sikhya’ but they hardly reach the schools as teachers too don’t take interest in their subscription,” he laments. Mann himself takes out a magazine ‘Nikian Karumblan’ which is the only children’s magazine being published by a private institution in Punjab but he reveals the government does not provide any incentive to encourage it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says every child has a penchant for reading but this predilection was neither recognised nor fulfilled. “The only thing to be kept in mind is that the reading material should be entertaining and not insipid. We push our children in the world of television even before they learn a single written word and don’t let their reading skills develop,” he rues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another prominent writer Darshan Singh Ashat says that to keep Punjabi language alive, the new generation must be drawn towards it. “Language skills are best fostered through reading and unless we develop children’s interest in reading books and magazines we can’t promote our language,” he reasons. “Children’s fiction is an important segment of literature which needs to be promoted at all levels,” he demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading habit among children is waning and when it comes to children\u2019s literature in Punjabi language, the situation is worse Harpreet Kaur One of the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-stories","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1073,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions\/1073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikkiankarumblan.com\/bithub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}