Storytelling – The Female Way

sangeeta — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 06:39:40 +0000

The other day I found myself including a long sambhar recipe in a story that had nothing to do with sambhar or indeed food of any other kind. The inclusion just happened. I stared at what I had written, wondering how it got there. It had got there, of course, because I had typed it out there myself. It wasn’t something I had cut and pasted off the Internet. I had written the recipe, inside my story. I didn’t remember doing it, since, till the previous day, I had been concentrating on writing a mother-daughter narrative replete with bathos and sarcasm. And suddenly, the recipe.
I don’t have a very healthy relationship with my sub-conscious. I don’t understand it, never talk to it, and most of the time don’t believe in it. So it could offer no help to me whatsoever on why I should be writing recipes instead of stories.
And then my logical self told me why. Like most female fictioners, I’m not a writer alone. I’m also wife, mother, daughter, daughter-in-law, and maid about the house. Irrespective of what I’m writing, of what my deadline is, of what my book promotion schedule is, or of what research I’m required to do for my next book, I have to ensure that everyone dependent on me, kids, husband, parents, are all looked after PROPERLY. After all, writing a novel is no excuse for slacking off!
And since I needed to make sambhar for dinner that night, it was the recipe that engaged me, and not the next plot twist in my potentially award-winning story.
Female writers are writers on-the-go. Their writing is fractured and inconsistent, and therefore more passionate. They write when they can, where they can, sometimes sitting at the kitchen counter where they write in between doing other chores, sometimes at the dining table, when it is not occupied by family dinners or children’s homework, sometimes at the crack of dawn, when nobody else in the whole world is awake, and there is no risk of inadvertently writing down a sambhar recipe, sometimes in the late hours of the night, when finally everyone is asleep. They write because they can’t help it. It is the only way they can regain their sanity and self-esteem.

Oh Woman Writer

sangeetamall — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:59:13 +0000

The media has decided. I’m not a writer. No such luck. No, I’m a ‘woman’ writer. The word ‘woman’ is a noun, according to all grammar books. When did it become an adjective? When did someone become a ‘woman’ pilot, a ‘woman’ executive, a ‘woman’ photographer? When a ‘woman’ journo in a newspaper, unmindful of the irony, decided to do a story on ‘woman’ something-or-other. When she decided that a story had to be written, not on flying a 3000 ton monster, but on the dainty soul behind the wheel of the said monster.

Well, whoever said life was simple! I’m now confronted with the tag of ‘woman’ writer, for no greater sin than that I’m a female. When male writers embed sappy love stories into their Alpha thrillers, nobody calls them ‘male’ writers. But the minute I do it, I’m asked why women can only think of writing about relationships? Don’t they have anything else to talk about? The journo wants to know, essentially, if all ‘women’ writers in India are only capable of writing about thirty something, hormonally charged independent women in search of perfect sex combined with perfect romance, a hard combo at any time. Why can’t they come up with something different? Why is there so much ‘chicklit’ flooding the market?

My answer: First, all books about urban, successful women are not ‘chicklit’. Second, what’s wrong with chicklit? I can’t think of a funnier book that I’ve read in a long time than Bridget Jones Diary. Third, why would anyone want to rain on the parade of Indian writers, even ‘women’ writers? Why this desperate quest for ‘meaningful’ solemnity in a time of bubbling optimism? Meaningful solemnity at a time of hopeless irrationality and pessimism, at the time of our ‘woman’ Prime Minister, Smt. Indira Gandhi, was fine. But today’s woman, thank God, has forgotten that time, left it behind her, hopefully for good, and can actually drink Absolut vodka with Schweppes tonic without being sent to jail for it. And hurrah for it!

Of course, when there are a million ‘women’ writers, and they’re all writing the same thing, the discriminating eye of that ultimate auditor, the customer, will decide what stays and what goes. Till then, allow all us ‘women’ to crawl out of our monasteries of silence and do what we love to do, that is, write what we love, love.

Cloud 9 Minus One » women writers

Storytelling – The Female Way

Oh Woman Writer