Festivelle #BossLady dinner

Last Saturday, the wonderful duo of Shruti Seth and Gul Panag invited me to a sit down dinner to celebrate Festivelle Boss Ladies. I have a soft corner for Festivelle, I must confess. Back in its first edition way back in 2016, I along with Shunali Khullar Shroff co-curated the wonderful panel discussions that went on through the two days of Festivelle, and it was a positive, energising experience.

The evening at The A Lounge at IndiaBulls was thoughtfully organised and curated, right from the hostesses down at the lobby level to guide us to the venue, which given my navigational abilities would have had me wandering through the premises for the rest of the evening, to the wonderful table arrangements, and the carefully planned seating which we promptly fell to disrupting because we wanted to sit next to each other. The room was full of wonderful, accomplished, high powered women and because I hadn’t worn my glasses (vanity prevents me from the spectacles and dry eye prevents me from the contact lenses), I went across and hugged the wonderful Ruchi Narain mistaking her for an old acquaintance, after which I promptly stayed put in one place didn’t dare wander away from between Shaili Chopra and Shunali Khullar Shroff in case I went over and hugged more people I didn’t know at all, even before the sparkly had hit. The evening’s proceedings opened with Malini Agarwal aka Miss Malini talking about how we needed to expand our circles of solidarity and how she’d managed to create this lovely initiative called Malini’s Girl Tribe. Post which we had to all introduce ourselves in three words or three sentences, I forget which, but at this point I was three glasses deep in wine and I only hope I did not crack some ribald joke which had everyone staring at me in horror and distaste. I was sitting with the very fab Malishka Mendonca, Shunali Khullar Shroff, Shaili Chopra, Naiyya Saggi, Nupur Asthana, Meghna Pant, Ruchi Narain, Shivani Malik and the complete hoot of a conversation we were having made all I ate escape me completely at the moment. The roomful of ladies included television stars, radio jockeys, dietitians, writers, journalists, entrepreneurs, celebrities, business women and more.

We came back home laden with goodies and warm fuzzy feel goods, and the sense of being part of a wonderful sisterhood of women who were there to build you up and not tear you down. More power to the sisterhood of the Festivelle BossLadies.

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Interview | By liberating women, we are also liberating men: Author Kiran Manral on feminism

Thanks Shreya Thapliyal for this kind interview in The Statesman.

“In an exclusive interview to thestatesman.com, author Kiran Manral talks on a range of topics including social media influence on life, the perception of women, and #Metoo; she also has some advice for aspiring writers.

“Ever since I was a child, I had a very overactive imagination. I was constantly telling stories,” says Kiran Manral when asked about the reason she decided to write novels. This should, however, come as a surprise. An English graduate from Mithibai College, her blogs—thirtysixandcounting and karmickids — were among the most talked about blogs of the time.

The social media and our over dependency has almost made us delusional. We co-exist—the real world along with the digital bubble that we have created around us, with the lines blurring now more than ever.

Manral agrees, giving an example of how her son’s Instagram has young school girls posing in a “highly sexualised” manner. There is always a pressure to appear a certain way, she says, “but there should also be an awareness that this life is not entirely real”.

As a society, most of us define women on how we look. This pressure is not just for young girls, it can be tiresome for women who are hitting forty or fifty. Manral takes this question lightly and says she has come to accept the reality of not turning heads anymore.

As a woman, says Manral, she has witnessed all of that but what is upsetting is that once you reach that age, they become invisible.”

Read the entire interview here

With Sophie Hannah, Philip McLaren, Nilanjan Chaudhary and Bhaskar Chattopadhyay on panel at the Bangalore Lit Fest

Watch it here

The Lives of Indian Girls and Women, with Janice Pariat and Preeti Shenoy and me at Bangalore Lit Fest

Watch it here

“Missing, Presumed Dead makes for a troubling read…” New Indian Express

Thanks Anuja for the kind words:

By Anuja Chandramouli

Express News Service

A searing look into the bare bones of a dysfunctional marriage played out against the backdrop of encroaching madness, Kiran Manral’s Missing, Presumed Dead makes for a troubling read. The author is too smart a storyteller to provide convenient or contrived answers to the questions that pile up with dizzying momentum. Yet the reader is not left hanging or frustrated. It is a satisfying yarn that is meaty, evocative and likely to keep you mulling over it, long after the last page has been reluctantly turned. Manral knows how to give her readers what they want while leaving them asking for more.

Aisha Thakur finds herself in the unenviable position of being fully aware that her marriage is dead but decides to stick to the corpse no thanks to the recalcitrant remnants of a once powerful passion that refuses to kick the bucket. And of course, there are tedious things such as duty and parental obligations to her son and daughter to be considered. If that were not bad enough, Aisha lives in constant terror knowing that the lurking chemicals in her cranium may unloose the same demons that claimed her mother’s life which if left unchecked will take her and everything she loves and once loved as well. Then a stranger shows up at her remote mountain abode in the middle of a vile storm, claiming to be her half-sister, and suddenly Aisha’s life stands poised to take the plunge into the doom that was inevitably going to be her lot.

The protagonist’s long drawn-out defeat to the monsters both within and without plays out painfully and with profound pathos, leaving the reader sick to death with anxiety and fighting back tears at various junctures during the course of her downward spiral. Aisha’s innate insecurity and vulnerability are exacerbated by both her condition as well as circumstances. Prithvi, her better half, originally comes across as a bit of a cad with rage issues and designs on her ancestral property but by choosing to tell his side of the story as well, Manral casts him in a more sympathetic light. The harsh truth is that even the best of us are ill-equipped to deal with disability and for flawed souls just trying to get by, it can turn out to be the wrecking ball that leaves nothing but devastation in its wake.

In the end, Aisha as well as Prithvi are sitting ducks for predators who seek to prey on the weaknesses of others, having zeroed in on the scent of blood. Having made her way into town on an errand, Aisha is trapped in more ways than one and is left to the mercy of a charming stranger who offers her hospitality and a way out for better or worse. It is hardly surprising that she takes him up on the offer, given that she holds her wellbeing so cheap. Therein lies the true horror in this moving saga that will leave your head and heart reeling.

Read the original here

Bombaywaali Summit, Oct 27th, The Hive, Great Eastern. Details below.

The @SheThePeople.TV Bombaywaali Summit brings together an evening of engaging discussions. The panel on women driving the food scene in Bombay is moderated by Antoine Lewis, eminent food writer and has Gauri Devidayal of The Table and Magazine Street Kitchen, Chef Sanjana Patel, Executive Pastry Chef at La Folie Patisserie and Anisha Rachel Oomen editor and co-founder of Goya Journal. Our second panel on Women making music curated & moderated by Nirmika Singh, editor, Rolling Stone has Youtube superstar Vidya Vox, manager extra ordinaire Lily Ahluwalia & Entertainment lawyer, Priyanka Khimani. The fab duo behind BooksOnToast Sharin Bhatti Nair & Anuya Jakatdar curate a panel on women turning their passion into content with Mae Thomas, indie music podcaster Maed in India, Sakshi Juneja founder of Gaysi & the super popular Youtuber Prajakta Koli. Women breaking barriers on screen has producers Rangita Pritish Nandy, Ashvini Vardi, film maker Shikha Makan with writer Jaya Misra & is moderated by Kiran Manral. Founder, Shethepeople, Shaili Chopra moderates the next discussion with screenwriter Vinta Nanda, Sushant Singh, Actor and General Secretary CINTAA, journalist Janice Sequeira & actor Saloni Chopra. Tickets: https://lnkd.in/fHvS3BN The Hive, New Great Eastern Mills

KarmicKids makes it to academia: Mothering Narratives in Contemporary India by Sucharita Sarkar

Delighted that Karmickids which began purely as an effort to document my son’s growing years, and my journey as a mother, is now part of academia as a chapter in Sucharita Sarkar‘s Ph.D Thesis on mothering narratives in contemporary India, with a special focus on mom blogs written between 2000-2013. Congrats Sucharita Sarkar, it has been a long journey and I am honoured that Karmickids could be part of your journey to a doctorate too.
While the blog on which the thesis is based, is now closed, the book I wrote based on the blog did go on to become one of the top five books on parenting in India in 2015, the year it was published. If you haven’t read it, here it is

Karmic Kids: The Story of Parenting Nobody Told You on Amazon : 

 

On Jaya Bhattacharji Rose’s blog: Missing, Presumed Dead

Popular writer Kiran Manral’s latest novel is a thriller called Missing, Presumed Dead. It is about Aisha, a wife and a mother, who goes missing. She has a history of being “mentally” fragile although it is not very clear if it is a genetic inheritance from her mother or a bit of manipulation on her husband, Prithvi’s, part to keep Aisha heavily sedated. But this is not all the inheritance that Aisha has to contend with—it is also the very real fact of the property and other immoveable assets she stands to gain from her parents. A possible reason why Prithvi does not abandon her completely though he would rather spend days away from his family with a travel bag always ready in the boot of his car. He has also moved the family to a remote hill station in northern India, ostensibly for the protection of Aisha. It is not a happy marriage and Aisha remains very stressed. It is not made any easier for her husband and their two children by her OCD for maintaining cleanliness at home. Aisha’s place in the home is taken by her illegitimate half-sister, Heer, who had unexpectedly materialised at her Aisha’s doorstep. Coincidentally it happened a couple of days before Aisha’s mysterious disappearance. This is where the plot thickens.

Missing Presumed, Dead is a rivetting thriller for most parts of the novel particularly when it grapples with the puzzle of Aisha and Heer’s story and how Prithvi gets embroiled in it too.  Kiran Manral’s strength has been mostly writing romance novels with inevitably the women characters etched very well. These are her strengths. She understands the space they inhabit beautifully, how the silences of women communicate far more than it seems and how they negotiate spaces continuously every single day. She also understand the romance novel space very well with the perfect lightness of touch, moving the plot smartly without overdoing it with details but focused solely on the romancing couple. Transiting to writing thrillers ( and this is not her first thriller), Kiran Manral has got the right pace in plot movement, the characters are far from flat and are easily imagined in the flesh and blood, and though there are details in the novel to build suspense they are not entirely sufficient. Thrillers tend to be packed with tiny, tiny details that it is impossible to understand the plot if every little sentence is not read and understood. It is like a large canvas with tiny details etched in. Writers of thrillers leave little to the imagination and ensure that every detail in the room/space inhabited by the protagonist is described as is their interaction with other charcters. Also much of the fast paced plot is conversation driven. Parts of this are true for Missing Presumed, Dead making it captivating to read but something is still lacking. Perhaps if Missing Presumed, Dead had been a short story it would have been a fine example of crime fiction. Be that as it may it is still a good read for it is a confident step in the direction of seeing Kiran Manral blossom as a crime fiction writer.

2 October 2018 

Read the original here

Missing, Presumed Dead in the Hindustan Times

Missing Presumed Dead review in eShe

Missing, Presumed Dead

By Kiran Manral (Amaryllis, Rs 350)

If you’re looking for a thriller with dash of psychological drama, extramarital relationships and the idyllic settings of a hill station, this is the novel for you. Exploring the crippling boundaries of mental illness while taking the reader through the throes of a bad marriage and the introduction of ‘the other’, the book keeps you hooked to the end. A prolific writer with several books of various genres under her belt, Kiran’s latest offering will delight her fans and those looking for a gripping read.

Read it here