A writer and a muse
I am fascinated by the medium of the short story - how it compresses so much within the space of a few pages. Characters grow, plots advance and new ideas are revealed. Short stories are what I love to read as well as write. Of late, I’ve also been trying to broaden my horizons by reading in Indian languages rather than English alone. (Some might say that English has also become an Indian language, but you know what I mean). I fear that with more and more of us using English as our first language, our beautiful languages will get wiped out. Or have their status diminished to a very basic level - where we use them for buying bhindi at the bazaar but do our ‘real’ thinking in English. It is already happening.
So, dear readers, I was thrilled to find recently, Pratilipi, a monthly magazine for Hindi as well as English writing from India. The layout is beautiful, easy to navigate and there is a lot of interesting writing, from writers new to me. Here, a beautiful short story by Sangeeta Gundecha, ‘Kathaakaar’/'The Writer’. (in Hindi.)