Varun Duggirala takes children on a ride of emotions at SCRF

The Chief Creative Officer of a media and product company helping young children build essential life skills through stories, play, and experiences, Duggirala showed them videos of three fictional characters E, Mo and Mee as they played together and occasionally fought with each other, to illustrate EQ or emotional quotient. “Practice regulating your emotions and count to 10 if something makes you angry,” Duggirala advised, and demonstrated and practised breathing techniques with the youngsters. He pointed out that they could have moments of high or the Yay moments and points of low or the Meh moments in their life, and the young crowd answered that the session had taught them how to be patient and kind or helpful and forgive, and so on.

The children were quick to ask questions in the Q&A session that followed. The 42-year-old told them his favourite book is My Best Friend isn’t my Friend Anymore: A Story Exploring the Sadness of Changing Relationships, which he wrote to help his seven-year-old daughter cope with sadness. He revealed that the character E in his cartoons was based on his daughter and Mee on his son. Duggirala, who has also written a book for adults called Everything is Out of Syllabus: An Instruction Manual for Life & Work, told the children how he overcame his writing block and now makes it a point to write for an hour every day.

“Follow your passion and be curious about everything,” he asserted, revealing that he kept aside his phone and always “looked around and looked at people”.

Just as at the start of the session, the charismatic influencer got the children to “wiggle, shake their hands and clap for themselves” to mark their happiness and fun session at SCRF.

Taking place until May 4 at Expo Centre Sharjah, the 16th edition of SCRF promises an immersive experience under the theme “Dive into Books”. Organised by the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA), this year’s agenda features 133 guests from 70 countries, and 122 Arab and international publishing houses from 22 nations.