Words by Imala

In our culture here in Maldives, there are so many traditional beliefs, customs and stories that are passed by the older generation to our younger generations. Mostly it is in the form of what we say in our native language ‘thun thun mathin.’ Our native language, Dhivehi is an Indo-Aryan language that has many dialects amongst the islands. Hence, it varies in each dialect.

It is surprising that a lot of our ancestry in Dhivehi is diminishing with the widening gap between the old and young generation. More or less, it could be said that the effort to make the younger generation more aware of how distinctive it is to have our very own language. And this can be done by taking the initiative to create contents that matches just about anything in any other language. For example, we see a lot of creativity in English books depicting their specialities and to find those kinds of contents in Dhivehi was rare.

For the kids of today, a few members of our society have been taking the initiative to make contents using our native language more enjoyable and fascinating. One such individual is Aminath Shareehan Ibrahim who is the founder of Thakethi which was established in 2016. As for how she began, “It was during college days whilst doing an Advance Diploma in Visual Communications where I did a final project on a Dhivehi Folklore story in English. During that period, it made me realize that I wanted to do Dhivehi based books in an engaging and enticing style. And I was very interested in creating the folklore stories then. I was thinking more of writing those stories and at the same time became aware that I am also not very fluent in Dhivehi.” Shareehan said with a laugh

“Hence it made me think as to why that is so, what is the root cause of this. Like why this issue is there with the later generation too. So, what I came up with was that we do have the content but it is more of a design problem. We do have various books but it seems not engaging enough to attract the younger generation today in comparison to the English books we see today. So, I started from the basics like board books.” She continued as she worked on a project.

She clarified that the name Thakethi came about as, “I always knew that I didn’t want a name that says books specifically because I had no intention of just limiting it to books since I wanted to create and release different kind of products. So, one day, whilst thinking of a name, out of the blue I just happen to say, why can’t I just call it ‘Stuff’ which meant ‘Thakethi’ in dhivehi and that was it.”

Shareehan finds inspiration from foreign picture book authors which she collects at the same time so that she can come up with ways to work on creating something up to the same standard. “Most of the products are created using my own imagination or by other artists or authors who wants to release their products through Thakethi. Majority of the products in Thakethi are in collaboration with artists and authors who contributes their drawings and ideas as our main goal is to bring quality Dhivehi products to the market.”

Since the initial beginning with two board books six years ago, Thakethi has come a long way with approximately over 40 products being sold. “At first I had started selling my books in an online page called whiteheronbooks. The sales were a bit slow in the beginning because people were a little hesitant towards the price and unsure of what to expect. After I took part in the Art festival and distributed it to the bookstores, it really started to pickup. As it is a small business startup with a small capital that is shared amongst the collaborated artists and authors the price range is higher compared to what you get in bookstores. From then on, it was very good and got a lot of feedbacks on the quality and how I can improve certain areas which I had corrected and released two, three  editions of the book afterwards. I would also like to add that during Covid-19 pandemic, Thakethi got a lot of boost.”

Currently, Shareehan is working full time in an office space where she works relentlessly in order to release new products for Thakethi. She described that the whole process of releasing a new product is very time consuming and a lot of effort is enforced to make sure that a worthy product is released. She also collaborates with a lot of local artists and authors to bring a diversity of products to her followers. Her dream is to open a shop for Thakethi one day and our wish for Shareehan is to gain more success in the future to reach new heights.