There's a particular kind of magic in hearing a child say a word in their grandparents' language. It's more than communication — it's identity, roots, and belonging wrapped up in a single sound. Arlene Singh is a Vancouver-based author quietly making that magic more accessible for diaspora families across the city, one bilingual board book at a time.
Arlene is the storyteller behind Curious Kahaani — kahaani meaning "story" in Punjabi and Hindi. Canadian-born with mixed South Indian and Punjabi heritage and family roots in the Fiji Islands spanning two generations, she's also a Registered Emergency Nurse and Senior Health Care Leader.
When she became a mother and started raising her child in an intercultural family, she wanted to pass on the gift of her language — but found almost no toddler-friendly bilingual books that included English transliteration. So she made her own.
Three Languages. One Page. Every Time.
Each page carries the text in three distinct layers: the heritage language written in its native script, a romanized phonetic version so parents who can't read the original script can still sound out the words, and an English translation to ground the meaning for everyone in the room.
It's a format built for real diaspora life. Maybe you grew up hearing Punjabi around the dinner table but never learned Gurmukhi. Maybe your own parents are fluent but your kids were born here in Vancouver. Arlene's books meet families exactly where they are — no fluency required, no prior knowledge assumed.
Heritage language loss is a real and quiet grief for a lot of immigrant families — the slow erosion of words that carry culture, memory, and connection. Books like these give parents a practical, joyful tool to push back against that loss, even in small, daily ways.
Follow Arlene on Instagram at @curiouskahaani and explore the full collection at curiouskahaani.com.