SPECIAL FEATURE:

These Claustrophobic Spaces
Indian Writing in English: Issue No: 104, July-August 2022
Curated by: Dr Charanjeet Kaur

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Without in any way diluting the call of Virginia Woolf, let us, for this Feature, expand the scope of the original statement of hers to accommodate all those who suffer claustrophobic space deprivation - physical as well as mental:

• Women who use the kitchen/balcony/ a corner of a shared bedroom/ a nook in the sitting room to find some space for themselves – to read, to think, to write, to de-stress, to make that important phone call;
• The elderly/ young couples who face physical and mental constraints in their own homes;
• Patients who need special care and isolation in the case of severe illnesses like the COVID 19 pandemic when the need to follow social/physical distancing is imperative;
• The student/ researcher who has to complete a course, a project within a given time;
• Persons for whom mental space is a dark alley due to psychological/ social pressures;

and so on and so forth.

Just a few representative situations to trigger our contributors’ minds to enter into these claustrophobic spaces and build imaginative worlds around them, in the form of

• Fiction - about 2500 words
• Flash Fiction - not more than 03 of 400 to 500 words each
• Life stories - about 2500 words
• Poems – 03 each contributor
• Short plays - about 2500 words
• Book reviews – about 1500 words

 

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An annual feature is more or less a time for introspection and an inventory of the year gone by.

 

“The Library in the Mind” will be continued from this year’s Feature into the next year. “For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice” (Woolf, again.)

 

I look forward to receiving articles on the books that have shaped the minds of our writers. This time, I hope, the focus will also be on Indian writers who are seminal influences. In my own case, I would definitely cite Mahashveta Devi, Munshi Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto and Amrita Pritam as abiding influences, apart from the writers from the West.

 

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Particularly welcome will be Interactions/Conversations with authors who publish a significant book in 2021 and early 2022 or those who receive any of the prestigious literary awards for the year 2021.

Reviews / Review articles of books published in this period will, of course, help in marking important reference points for the total literary corpus of our times.

Your contributions may start coming in right away. Let us say, all contributions should be with me by 25^th April 2022.

My email id: ch_jeet@yahoo.co.in

Phone number: 9820440157 (WhatsApp/ Message/Telegram preferred; phone calls will also be welcome).