Pensha

Hdg: As different as cheese and chalk God! what a clatter! Slow down, you tornado', said Shama. Only no one heard her speak. It wasn't because the clattering feet of Divya, who rushed up the stairs to their flat, drowned out her words. It was because Shama hadn't said the words aloud. Shama, older to Divya by two years, had always been quiet and soft-spoken. Divya was boisterous and too loud for Shama. Soon Divya overshadowed Shama, deciding for two of them and readily agreed to by their parents. Shama, however, didn't meekly acquiesced to Divya. Shama continued doing things she wanted to do, quietly. No one, not even Divya noticed, because Shama was largely ignored. Left to herself, Shama was happy, if trifle sad. Realising that her opinion don't matter and hardly anyone took note of what she said, Shama kept up a constant dialogue with herself. And, when she thought her brain would burst with conversation spilling out, Shama took to writing. She wrote whenev...

Hdg: Smile away your fears Her large eyes dilated with fear when Shruti Miss announced a class picnic to loud whoops and clapping from other students. Like every year, the picnic was to be held at an amusement park on the outskirts of the city; Sneha remembering last year's troubled times at the picnic immediately put in her pleas to God, requesting that He give her a tummy upset or a headache... Anything that would make her home-bound. A year ago, Sneha joined her new school in a new city. But, she didn't fit in. In the first few days her classmates turned away from her, thinking on these lines - 'Sneha is too smart!', 'What an over-enthu girl! New students must be seen and not heard, 'Sneha who? You mean the 'pizza face'. What about her?' At the annual picnic, all the negative vibes combined to make it the worst day of her life. Sneha heard herself being addressed as 'pizza face'. When she confronted the addresser, Sneha found herself...

Hdg: Act, don't preach! “Look at them...what noise they make,” Siya scowled staring into the room whose walls resounded with peals of laughter. Peering over her shoulders were Siya's cousins – Chiu (Chitra), Mak (Makarand), Rutu, Neetu, Sachu (Sachin), Sanju (Sanjana) – flummoxed that the adults in the room, their parents and aunts and uncles could create cacophony. Chiu, who was the youngest of the lot, pushed the others away and retreated into another corner. To think, to puzzle over. Her otherwise prim and proper mother, Geeta, couldn't control her laughter. And, nor could Golu mama (Niranjan) who was said to be the brains of the family. Golu mama's example was trotted out every time one of the kids didn't fare well during the exams. Siya, who was meeting her cousins and uncles and aunts after a long gap, too was confused at what she had seen. Instead of pondering over it, she shrugged, went to her room, pulled out her earphones and listened to music. Her c...

This is one of the first few short stories that I have written for a children's weekly. Feedback, please! Game for it! Sharada dragged herself unwillingly from the classroom. She wasn't ready to face anyone; least of all, herself. 'I'm a failure'...the words drummed up in her ears, soon reaching a crescendo. Sharada's face had gone red and her eyes shone with tears, slowly trickling down her face. When she reached home, she quickly dashed to her room. The small sprint had her huffing and puffing and reminded her of the dismal performance on the school ground. Sharada was not good at sports, but she wasn't mocked on the field either. But, that day she was BAD. She had finished last in the 400 mt sprint and her long jump...well, let's not even talk about it. Sharada knew the reason, but wasn't willing to accept that her weight had played the spoil sport. Somehow, from the beginning of this academic year, Sharada grew big. Put it down to her su...

Nell Phoenix, who performed a story and also conducted a workshop in the art for the Pune audience,shares her theories on the art of story-telling * The English countryside with its castle, church and cave came alive because of your performance today. Why is performance so important for a story? I am a performer first and so I simply cannot read aloud a story from a book. I first began performing a story for kids when the teacher of my son's pre-school asked me to do something for the class. I asked her 'what' and she said 'tell a story.' So I came prepared with a white sheet to create an impression of winter. I told them the story of Oscar Wilde's A Selfish Giant. They got very involved and the teacher was suitably impressed to refer me to other pre-schools and then primary schools. Children are entranced by images and that's the cure for short attention span. * You have been hopping from Ahmedabad to Delhi and now to Pune, to share your stories with t...

This is an interview with Shazaf Fatima Haider. --- Debutant novelist, Shazaf Fatima Haider's book, How it Happened is a refreshing take on arranged vs love marriage in Pakistani society. a) A lot has been written about wedding and its sub-plots. Did you fear that your work might be lost in all the clutter? I was writing for myself at the time, so the ‘clutter’ was not a problem. When I decided to get it published, I looked around for books that wrote about the process of getting married, and whatever I came across was morose and morbid. The ‘raped into matrimony’ or ‘she was a child-bride’, themes abounded. Many people around me talked about the shortcomings of arbitrarily arranging a match based on a few standard externalities, but no one seemed to be writing about it. The focus of my book is different from other books I came across. b) Was choosing a humorous tone for the book deliberate considering weddings whip up frenzy of emotions? The humor came naturally. I was goi...

This book review appeared in print last Sunday. --- Name: Talking Cinema By: Bhawana Somaaya Published by: HarperCollins Publishers India Price: Rs 299 Pages: 222 Every Friday, a new God or Goddess appear on the screen and soon enough their faithful multiply. We love, eat, drink and perhaps even pray in Bollywood ishtyle. Going beyond these cliches is Bhawana Somaaya's, Talking Cinema that captures the 'thinking aloud' moments of actors and film-makers, whose work has become the barometer of Indian cinema's history. Most of the interviews were done in early 2000, when Indian cinema was in a flux. And, it's that changing mindset of film-makers and actors, Somaaya hopes to capture in this book. Talking Cinema succeeds in its objective, besides getting the timing right too – we are celebrating the centenary of Indian cinema. The Q & A format of the book might at the outset seem pedantic and prosaic. But, it's not. Most of the questions posed to the acto...