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They Sounded the Same

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“Ahhh!” I screamed as I saw something jumping out of the corner of the bathroom. My mom rushed in. “It’s a frog,” she pointed out. “Calm down.” My first thought was that a frog would never be in my bathroom in Connecticut. Last night, I’d walked out of the airport, stepping onto Chennai soil. ‘There’s no going back now,’ I thought. Before we got on the plane in New York, my dad asked us to wave goodbye. “We aren’t going to come back here,” he said. Being ten years old, that felt very final. No one told me I’d start sweating buckets as soon as I stepped out of the air-conditioned airport. Next to me, my five-year-old sister wrinkled her nose. She was bundled up in a pink sweater, wearing a purple backpack. “Ewww. What’s that smell?” “It’s the sewage smell,” my dad informed me as he hailed a taxi. The only welcome we got from Chennai was a suffocating hug from the April heat. I had a house in Chennai, but it wasn’t set up yet. My parents built it in the early days of their marriage. Toni...
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Teaching Love Through Monsters

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What kind of books are we giving young readers? My class and I had a long discussion today about the kinds of things that young readers are reading these days. Around and after COVID, the genre of dark romance became extremely popular. One book, published around 2021 and still widely spoken about today, is Haunting Adeline . What's so special about it, though? Why do readers flock towards it like flies to honey? There is non-consensual sex, pretty much rape. There are graphic descriptions of that rape. There are things like trafficking, abuse, stalking, and basically other things that you would probably put a man in jail for doing to you in real life. And yet this book is extremely popular, with readers starting as young as fifteen, despite the trigger warning that appears at the beginning. It is important here to think about how influential writers can be on their readers, especially when those readers are young. A fifteen-year-old who reads this book is not necessarily going to i...
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Challenge Things

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The idea of challenging something can be an amazing place to start writing from.  A few days ago, I wrote a post about where you can get ideas from to write. This one is something that a visiting author, Anjum Hasan, who's here to conduct a workshop, said.  As reading for the workshop, she gave us a couple of short stories and excerpts from longer books. All of them seemed to be addressing caste issues. She told us that it was unintentional, but that it was an underlying tension and problem in Indian society. Unknowingly, all the pieces she gave us were about class, hierarchy, and caste divisions - and of course, their repercussions.  That's when she told us that these writers are writing about this issue to challenge it. She told us that if we are looking for inspiration to write about, we should think about what bothers us. What do we hate and want to change? If we think long and hard, we'd be able to find something that really speaks to us, that has been on our mind fo...
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Why are all heroes’ parents dead?

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Parents have to die for the hero to flourish. That is a pretty strange line. But think about it. Batman. Iron Man. Spider-Man. Harry Potter. Some of the most popular heroes’ journeys start with a loss they have never asked for. Their childhoods are interrupted and somewhere in the wreckage, the hero is born. Bruce Wayne does not become Batman because Gotham needs him. He becomes Batman because, as a child, he watches his parents die in front of him. Tony Stark does not become Iron Man simply because he is a genius with a fancy suit. It takes his kidnapping, his near-death experience, and the realisation that the weapons his family business produces are hurting people for him to finally change direction. Peter Parker learns that “with great power comes great responsibility” only after Uncle Ben is gone. That pattern is so consistent it’s kind of suspicious. In these stories, parents seem to be important sacrifices. They need to be taken away before the protagonist can become extraordina...
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The Fat Cat

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Today I attended an exclusive workshop about the art of storytelling by Geeta Ramanujam. She’s the founder of Kathalaya, a storytelling movement across India. She started her day with a story-like introduction of herself. One story wove into another and never bored us. After that, she made us introduce ourselves with a story about ourselves. Then, we settled in to listen to more stories, including a folk tale that we were part of reciting. By that I mean we reacted to the song-story, which formed a part of the folktale itself. Our big activity of the day was to work in teams to create our own little story using the elements we had talked about throughout the day. We had four words based on which we had to make and perform our story. The ones my team had were laborious, light, cat, and happy. Here’s what we came up with… Once upon a time, there was a fat fat cat. He was so fat, he could hardly be considered a cat anymore. One day, a bright light appeared in front of the cat. From it app...
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What’s so Great About Watching A Re-Release?

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I just went to Avengers: Endgame and absolutely adored it, even though I knew everything that was going to happen – except the end credits. As I watched and saw the theatre full, I wondered why this happened. It’s not just about this movie, but a lot of Tamil movies that were re-released were also received with equal energy and enthusiasm. One reason I came up with was that it might be because of the fact that it’s familiar. There are no jump scares. There isn’t going to be something unusual or unexpected. Usually, the movies that come back are years old. This lets the audience walk down memory lane, and it takes them back to who they were when the movie was first released. It’s comforting to know exactly what’s going to happen. You know the dialogues, when the villain is going to appear, when and where the hero will make his grand entrance. You know which joke is coming too. There’s no nail-biting anxiety because you know what’s going to happen. You can sit back and enjoy. These movie...
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Safety is a Right

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Yesterday, I had to take a bus home at night. I had to take an auto (tuk-tuk) to the bus station. I, too, like many women out there, had to call a friend and ask him to stay on the call until I reached the bus stop. It was a small little thing that has honestly become normalized today. Women do it unconsciously, hoping that it will help them stay safe. But I did think of this. In light of the Cornell 7 tragedy and a bunch of similar things happening in India, my Instagram feed has been full of tragedies. There are countless posts telling women how to stay safe: stay alert, don't walk alone at night, share your location, call someone while travelling, keep your keys between your fingers, carry pepper spray, watch your surroundings, don't trust strangers. And, of course, women should be taught to protect themselves. Our daughters should know how to recognise danger. They should know what to do when something feels wrong. They should be aware of their surroundings and have the con...
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Come on, you should try it

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At the core of my being, I’m just a girl who loves being with her brothers. However, the question is whether or not they like being with me. One thing that brought us together years ago was my brother’s love for Chilli Parotta. When I moved back from the United States, my cousin brother’s family and mine used to go out for lunch a lot. One day, my brother decided he wanted to go to Saravana Bhavan, which was my first inkling that something interesting was going to happen, for my brother usually preferred chicken and this restaurant was purely vegetarian. When we got there, he asked me if I wanted Chilli Parotta. At first, I gave him a confused look. I wondered why he wanted to give me something with ‘chilli’ in the name when he knew I had a very low spice tolerance. “Come on, you should try it,” he urged. I hesitated for a moment. But being a little girl who idolized her brother, who had five years more life experience than I did, I said yes. When it arrived, reddish-orange and steamin...
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Where do our Stories Come From?

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We often applaud our epics and think they are the most original and unique things to ever exist. However, if you look at them, they actually have similar elements. Let's look at three case studies: the Ramayana , the Mahabharata , and Homer's Iliad . First of all, all three of these stories are about a central war. There's the war that Rama and the Vanaras wage against Ravana, the Kurukshetra War between the Kauravas and Pandavas, and the Trojan War. All these wars are entangled with women - Sita, Draupadi, and Helen. (They're fought by men who think that a woman needs saving - for those of you feminists out there.) Something happened to these women: Sita was kidnapped, Draupadi was dishonored, and Helen was taken to Troy from her husband. (People just can't leave these women alone.) These women aren't mistreated in the same way, but what happens to them becomes entangled with the men's war. Secondly, there's an interesting similarity between Achilles an...
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A Little More Magical

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For as long as I can remember, some part of me knew I was destined to be a writer. You might wonder why a small child would think that. The answer is pretty simple. My name means writing. As a child who grew up hearing that, I realized that it was something important and that it was something that kind of belonged to me. My first memory of writing was back in the first grade. I had an activity in class to write a very short story, with illustrations. It was supposed to be a retelling of any classic well-known story. We were given simple white board books, blank canvases that we could turn into anything we wanted. I decided to rewrite the story of the three little pigs. I called it, The Three Little Fish. It was set underwater. I don’t remember much about it, but that was the first time I saw my name on the cover of a book, proudly lining the bottom of the front cover. I remember feeling a sense of fierce pride. This was something I had created and no one could take it away from me. I g...
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An Era of Our Own

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Taylor Swift didn’t bring the Eras Tour to India, but the Swifties brought it into the theatres in Chennai. I knew I was in the right theatre before I even reached the screen. There were girls in sequined dresses, friendship bracelets stacked around their wrists, and flashes of glitter wherever I looked. Some had dressed for specific Taylor Swift eras; others had simply arrived wearing whatever made them feel like a Swiftie. People were greeting friends, comparing bracelets, taking photographs and talking excitedly about the songs they were about to hear. It was November 3, 2023, and I had come to the theatre to watch Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, the concert film documenting Swift’s record-breaking tour. I had expected a cinema. What I walked into felt much closer to a concert venue. When the concert film arrived in Indian theatres, it brought with it more than two hours of Taylor Swift performing songs from almost two decades of her career. It also brought friendship bracelets, glitte...
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Metaphors for Translation

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So other professions find it kind of easy to describe their professions. Like a doctor, engineer, or teacher can sum it up in one or two sentences. However, a translator finds it hard to do the same. In today’s translation workshop, we looked at a few metaphors to explain the art of translating, and I wanted to talk about my favorites. The first one is about a bridge connecting two places. Both places are well populated and have dozens of little houses. There are lots of people on the bridge. So here, the bridge is the connector between two languages, doing the job of a translator. Additionally, all the people in the houses speak different languages, which represent the languages a translator often juggles with. The second one is an orchestra. Okay, so there are multiple different ways of interpreting this one. Firstly, the musicians are the ones interpreting the text - the sheet music. They all see the same things (their source language), and they interpret or translate it in their ow...
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Why Riordan?

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For my college project, the author I chose to study is Rick Riordan. (You probably guessed that from my posts.) Today, I was asked why I chose this author. Riordan was someone my brother gave me. When I came to India for a vacation, I wanted something to read when I was at his house. He gave me The Son of Neptune . I was around eight years old, and I tried to read the book. I couldn’t get past the first few chapters, and it made no sense to me. I tried it again a few days later and had the same result. I put the book away, and for the next two years, I claimed I didn’t like Percy Jackson. That’s a strange thing to think for someone who’s now writing multiple assignments on this author. A couple of years later, my brother handed me another book. This was The Lightning Thief. I told him that I didn’t really get Riordan and wasn’t interested in reading. He told me to try it again, and because I respected my brother, I did as I was told. I picked it up, settled into the couch, and haven’t ...
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The Gods Have A Coffee Shop

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My shift was finally over. Another long day of sitting at the same drab desk in the lobby of the Empire State Building, watching people come and go. You’re probably wondering what was so hard about that. My main job was keeping people away from Zeus. He had threatened to blast me out of the building for letting people up to the ‘six hundredth floor’ without an appointment. Yes. THAT Zeus. The one who often grew 100 feet tall and had a gigantic lightning bolt packed with enough nuclear energy to level a mountain and still have some to spare. Mortals didn’t know the six hundredth floor existed, but demigods did. The last time I let one of them up, he summoned me to his throne room. “If one more demigod enters Olympus without my permission, I’ll blast you off the top of the Empire State myself.” He had said it while holding a lightning bolt, so I believed him. I dusted off my dark blue suit and matching trousers, stood up, and stretched until something in my back made a noise that probabl...
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The World Won’t End if you Trust your Readers

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In an age where people are constantly at war with each other and there is very little trust among people in charge what’s the point of continuing to write? This is, of course, assuming that one primary purpose of writing is to create some kind of change in the world. So, this is in the context of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Here, the characters do nothing but wait for this man who never shows up. When we thought about why, we figured that it was the hope that Godot might show up that kept them waiting day after day. This is similar to what people these days are doing. They seem to have some kind of belief and trust in the people in this world - the ones who have the power to create mass destruction. This reminds me of something I heard in Jurassic World: Rebirth. One of the characters mentioned that humans are the only creatures in the world who have managed to create weapons that can lead to their own destruction. We can destroy humanity hundreds of times over. This is a scary...
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I Brought Damon Salvatore Into Class

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My professor was talking about Aristotle's elements of tragedy in today's class. During the discussion, he asked us who our favorite character was.  Without a moment of hesitation, I said Damon Salvatore. If I had had time to think about it in detail, I might have come up with someone else, but when put on the spot without being given time to think, he was the only one I could think of. We were asked to talk about our character in 2 minutes. Again, another time crunch. I started talking like a bullet train because I had a lot to say about the big bad vampire, Damon Salvatore.  After this, there was an interesting line my professor said. He said that the flaws we see in the characters we love are overshadowed by the fact that the characters are essentially good people.  I wanted to follow that thread just a little bit. When you think of Damon, you wouldn't immediately think that he's a good person. You'd think about his love for Elena. You'd think about how he pr...
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Stages of Editing

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Editing is one of the most important parts of writing a book - almost as important as the act of writing itself. There are four important things to remember when you’re working on your edits. (All this content is from a writing workshop I had today. I thought this information could help anyone else who wants to write.) First of all is structural editing. By that, I mean thinking about whether the story flow makes sense. Do the scenes make sense? Are the scenes actually doing something important for the story, or are they just there because you want them to be there? Are the scenes arranged in order? You need to think about how the plot works and what purpose the scenes have. For example, is the paragraph or scene you write exposition or exposition? Does it move the story forward or offer readers a little relief? Second, you need to look at your characters. You need to look at whether the characters match who you intended them to be. All your characters can’t sound the same, so it’s imp...
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Where can ideas come from?

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I’m sure so many of you want to write, but when you open up your notebook or laptop or whatever you use to write, you might wonder what to write about. I have a few pointers that might help you out here. I have some places you can get your ideas from. Firstly, you can get ideas from things you observe. Imagine you’re travelling on the bus on your way to work. You’re sitting opposite a young couple arguing with each other. You only catch snippets of the conversation, but your mind spins out of control when you hear whatever you hear. Of course, what you think might not be true, but I think you get what I’m trying to say. What you see and hear, and what your mind makes of it, is inspiration for something that could become a short story or maybe even a novel. It could be any genre, but all you had to do was listen. Anything you encounter could become an idea. Second, you can get ideas from things that you remember. Life is the best story. Life has ups and downs and is interesting. You mig...
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Kings Used to Pay People to Insult Them

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What’s a licensed fool? Is it someone who is paid to be funny and make jokes? Or is it someone who has a driver's licence and drives foolishly?  While the image of a reckless driver is funny, this is actually a really fancy name for someone who has permission to point out the foolishness or follies of a powerful person. In eras when criticizing a ruler meant losing your head, this fool was the only person in the palace who could speak the pure truth. It’s a technique used by Shakespeare and in Indian stories like Tenali Raman and Akbar and Birbal.  In King Lear by Shakespeare, the Fool is a tragicomic figure and loyal companion to the mad king. He uses riddles and sharp truths to highlight Lear’s poor choices. He's the only one who can brutally criticize the king without being executed or banished. He is also fiercely loyal to the king when his daughters abandon him.  If we look at the Indian stories, the fool – or court jester here – is often referred to as one of ...
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The poem without a name

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My professor told me that not every poem needs a name. I couldn’t find a name for this visual poem I wrote, so I’m just going to show you, and you can figure out what you want to call it. I think that suits it even better because the experience (or tragedy) I’m talking about is different for everyone, and you can call it what you want to. Without further ado, here’s my first visual poem.
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It Just Has to be A Sonnet

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When you try to express love, there is no form to do so greater than the sonnet. It’s been that way for ages. In today’s class, we looked at an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. It was the scene when Romeo meets Juliet for the first time. They talk about loving each other through a sonnet. Let me explain a bit… the play is written in verse, and Shakespeare is pretty much a master sonneteer. The exchange is in the form of a sonnet. It has interlocking lines (The rhyme scheme pattern) that show how the characters connect with each other. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the play here, but let’s shift focus to the sonnet. The sonnet was popularized by Petrarch and then later by Shakespeare too. Here’s the thing, though: sonnets are mostly written about unrequited love. Petrarch wrote the Canzoniere to his Laura. Shakespeare wrote to his Dark Lady and Fair Youth. Sidney wrote his Astrophil and Stella to Lady Penelope Devereux. Spenser wrote his Amoretti to his wif...
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Poems Aren’t Always Meant to Sit Still

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First of all, what is visual poetry? The meaning’s in the name. It pretty much combines written words with graphic design, images, and layout. Here, the poem combines the written text and the visual aesthetics to create meaning. The form and layout matter just as much as the words themselves. One of the assignments I had was to try to create a visual poem. Our poem was supposed to have a specific shape that matched what we were trying to write about. I’m just going to try to share my process, in case someone wants to try and dabble. Firstly, pick your theme. It can be anything as long as you’re passionate about it. Secondly, think of your theme and try to find a shape that represents it. For example, if your theme is love, your poem could be in the shape of a heart or two hands joining. It doesn’t have to be literal, as long as you can justify it. Third, once you have your shape, think of the words you can fit into it. Your poem’s text is only part of the poem here, but they are still ...
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Apparently there's a genre for this

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There are gods, monsters, ancient prophecies, magical weapons, and children who discover that their parents have been keeping some fairly important information from them. There are quests, battles, secret worlds and, for some reason, a surprising amount of sarcasm. It sounds like fantasy. Easy enough, right? Except that when it comes to Rick Riordan, apparently one genre is never enough. Look at the way his books are described, and the categories begin piling up: fantasy, mythology, adventure, children’s fiction, middle grade, young adult and, occasionally, urban fantasy. Goodreads gives The Lightning Thief several of these labels at once, while professional reviews tend to place it more firmly within children’s or middle-grade fiction. Riordan himself has described the book as a humorous work of fantasy. None of these descriptions are wrong. In fact, they all make sense. But put them together and another question starts to appear: what exactly makes a Rick Riordan book a Rick Riordan...
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