COVER STORY
16 | STORIZEN MAGAZINE JULY 2019I write stories that I want to read but I
can’t seem to find. For instance: I
want to read about the women who
lived through the cataclysms of
Partition and the Emergency and- I know what the men did, there
are history textbooks and novels
written about their valour and
violence, but it’s the silent stories of
the women that intrigue me. Can a
regular Indian woman save the
nations’s most iconic monument?
When I wrote the Mehrunisa trilogy, I
didn’t want to create a Jane Bond but
an everyday heroine who could be a
role model for girls. In Radiance, my
protagonist, Niki, questions: “It is our
epic, the story of India. And yet, how
whereas Karan-Arjuna-Krishna sprout
like weeds.”I grew up amidst women who made
me realise that Draupadi was alive and
living amongst us. For a girl child in
Punjab, there couldn’t have been
better role models. I always tell my
daughter: The power of the story lies in
the hands of the storyteller. As women,
we must dig them out, dust them off,
dress them up, imagine them, grow
them, tell them — Our stories. If others
differ, they have to find and write their
own stories.many women do we know, or have
heard of, who are named Draupadi?
The one epic female character in
India’s greatest epic finds no takers,What according to you is needed
to write books in a sensitive genre
like yours which covers
disturbing events like partition,
riots, terrorism etc?"I grew up amidst women who made me realisethat Draupadi was alive and living amongst us.For a girl child in Punjab, there couldn’t havebeen better role models."