The recent event, The Women Writer’s Fest 2019, by She the People TV by Shaili Chopra and Kiran Munral saw a huge gathering of writers and bloggers at Title Waves in Bandra.
The topics discussed included Women in Advertising and Men writing women characters. The first two sessions of the day were not only the most interesting with different viewpoints coming to the fore but were also the most applauded. Each session had a moderator and the speakers happily obliged the audience with photographs at the end of the session.
The first topic was Women in Advertising. The speakers included Sushmita Mukherjee, Manjima Bhattacharjya.
Each of them bought a different perspective on how women were expected to be in the fashion/beauty industry. The facts and the myths associated with what beauty really meant. Manjima is the author of the book Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry. She said on the occasion,”There is a material basis for everything in the modeling world. There was a very fair model who actually did dusky makeup as that was required of her. So perhaps dusky works more than fair”.
Sushmita Mukherjee television and film actress said that one should not aim for perfection as it is very demeaning. “Beauty is who you are. We never ate salads and diet food to look a certain way like today’s youth which is so diet conscious,” opined Sushmita who is also an author.
While the second session was equally informative with the men authors on the panel. They discussed what it was to write female characters and the kind of research that went into it.
The genre ranged from women in mythology to horror and writing a desi Sidney Sheldon. One of the speakers said that his editor wanted him to have sympathy for the women when he wrote. While the second speaker said that being a horror writer was a rather unique experience for him and that he did a lot of research on women and learned through interaction before writing.
Mythology has been a hot favourite among our Indian writers and so this was discussed as well. One of the authors presents there rightly spoke about how mythology and the women characters in mythology have influenced Indian writing. He explained by narrating Satyavati’s character’s in the Mahabarata.
Indian writers like Arundhati Roy (For The God of Small Things) have won international acclaim like the Booker’s Prize; and also some have won the Pulitzer prize in writing. And Literature events and festivals like the Jaipur Literature Festival have also taken India on the global platform.
So events like the Women Writer’s Fest help authors in connecting with their audiences and also provide them with an opportunity to speak about their writing.
Article by Divya Jain
Never heard of this Writer’s one but it certainly seems interesting. Good information!