What about kabaddi appeals to you? 
We were discussing ideas, and the Pratham team suggested kabaddi because they wanted to focus on sports. I’m not a sports person but I got excited because it’s a sport from India; it comes from the villages. I also really like drawing human figures. I thought kabaddi, which is so much about bodies interacting with each other, will be interesting to explore.

The vivid illustrations by Kabini Amin captures the local flavour of the game

Was it always planned as a wordless picture book?  
It didn’t start out as an only-picture book. I was struggling to frame a narrative and was going back and forth figuring out what kind of a story this should be. I didn’t want to make it a linear story with a strongly defined protagonist and antagonist. Then I thought the game is so interesting because all you’ve to say is kabaddi, so I decided to work around that.

A friend had introduced me to John Sir, a state-level cricket coach and veteran sportsperson. When speaking to him, there were many fun anecdotes that came about. Like when there’s a tournament, people come from different schools and states, and there’s a bit of rivalry. At the end of it, though, you celebrate whoever wins because that’s the spirit of a sport. Another thing I learnt was that before cricket became huge, the India-Pakistan rivalry was commonly witnessed in kabaddi matches. The story built from there, with the scene of the two buses and the children throwing paper planes at each other being a direct reference to that history.

Tell us about some of the artistic choices you took.
I have to thank Canato Jimo, the art director on this book, who gave me an encouraging push to step out of my comfort zone. We talked about how to bring a local flavour to the art. I really love the screen-printed circus posters with neon colours and black backgrounds.

Kabini Amin

The ideas for the colours came from there, with pink and yellow as the colours for the teams, and the backgrounds really simple. With the white lines of the court, the images started to look funky, which is what you see in the book.

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