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Shashi Deshpande, who writes with great insight and nuance on the changing lives of Indian women and their families, is our muse of the month. Get inspired!
Each month, we ask our readers to get inspired by an iconic woman writer and funnel that into their own writing. The idea is to inspires you to read more of these writers, and also get your own writing hat on! The 5 best entries on the writing cue get published here on Women’s Web.
Step 1. Read the writing cue (mentioned down below) and get inspired.
Step 2. Write your own story/narrative/piece based on the cue. You could use it as the opening line, the closing sentence, or somewhere in between! You could even choose not to use it anywhere in your story – just write a story using the cue as a prompt. (And ‘story’ can be fictional – or not – as you wish).
Step 3. Send your work to us. Please email it to [email protected] with ‘Muse of the month – Dec’ in the subject line, and your story as a word/txt attachment. Do include the name we should use if we publish it, and a brief introduction to yourself (2-3 lines) in the mail.
Here are the 5 shortlisted entries, added as we publish them, one each day, starting December 27th.
Cycle of Change, by Vijayalakshmi N: Our lives are a cycle of change, and this poem chronicles it beautifully.
The phoenix, by Ujwala Shenoy Karmarkar: Constantly being asked to change your ways gets very tiring, very soon. Don’t succumb, rise like the phoenix, says this story.
A Reunion That Did Not Last, by Rajlakshmi Kurup: People and circumstances change, leaving relationships as only a shadow of what they once were. Here’s a story that captures this transition.
Merry Christmas, by Shaheen Ahmed: Relationships aren’t easy, especially when they end. Here’s a moment of moving on, captured beautifully.
Please send in your stories by December 26th 2014, Friday, 3 p.m IST. The 5 best stories will be published on Women’s Web the next day on, i.e. one each from December 27th to the 31st.
Keep it between 250 and 800 words. (Please keep this in mind; in past editions, we have had to disqualify some good entries purely due to word count issues).
Please avoid typing the story as inline text. Send it as an attachment only.
The 5 best entries will each win a Flipkart voucher worth Rs. 250.
Shashi Deshpande is an author whose work is set around people and situations that seem intimately familiar to most readers; she explores the world of close-knit Indian families, comfortable yet often claustrophobic and teeming with hidden dangers. Her characters face situations that could be the lot of everywoman, making them deeply identifiable for many readers.
Winner of the Padma Shri and Sahitya Akademi awards, her oeuvre includes nine published novels, besides children’s books, essays and short stories.
“It’s astonishing how we comment on change, as if change is something remarkable. On the contrary, not to change is unnatural, against nature.” – from Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence. Make sure to get your entry in on or before December 26th 2014, Friday, 3 p.m IST
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Paromita advises all women to become financially independent, keep levelling up and have realistic expectations from life and relationships.
Heartfelt, emotional, and imaginative, Paromita Bardoloi’s use of language is fluid and so dreamlike sometimes that some of her posts border on the narration of a fable.
Her words have the power to touch the reader while also delivering some hard hitting truths. Paromita has no pretences in her writing and uses simple words which convey a wealth of meaning in the tradition of oral storytellers – no wonder, Paro is a much loved author on Women’s Web.
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I watched a Tamil movie Kadaisi Vivasayi (The Last Farmer), recommended by my dad, on SonlyLiv, and many times over again since my first watch. If not for him, I’d have had no idea what I would have missed. What a piece of relevant and much needed art this movie is!
It is about an old farmer in a village (the only indigenous farmer left), who walks the path of trouble, quite unexpectedly, and tries to come out of it. I have tried my best to refrain from leaving spoilers, for I want the readers to certainly catch up on this masterpiece of director Manikandan (of Kakka Muttai fame).
The movie revolves around the farmer who goes about doing his everyday chores, sweeping his mud-house first thing in the morning, grazing the cows, etc and living a simple but contented life. He is happy doing his thing, until he invites trouble for himself out of the blue, primarily because he is illiterate and ignorant.