It is a new month. And last month has nudged me to be lil bolder than usual. I have picked up 3 books to be read across June and it is something I haven’t done in a while. What you ask? Setting a monthly reading target when my quarterly work target is already on the board.
In this month but – these three women give me hope.
Banu Mushtaq – Quietly writing for years in Kannada, never tiring of being a mouthpiece of lives that have borne the scars of patriarchy, misogyny, violence, injustice. About women and children in India, and her own tryst with words and destiny.
Alice Winn – Dyslexic till she turned nine; following up with reading furiously then. An observer of psychological wreckage brought upon by WW I, her debut novel coalesced her thoughts into a love story. About the misfits, and their equally searing story.
Hilary Mantel – A towering name in literature, overshadowing her disturbed childhood and illness-riddled youth in England. Her pen emerged above all, taking the very things troubling her and turning them into tales of sharp social commentary.
Well then. Let me not ‘settle’ for a tempo; let me make one of my own, even when it is fraught with doubt and the worldly asks of diminishing significance.
To June. And her women. 🥂
SEEMITA DAS 