THE WRITERS’ CARNIVAL

It was a bright, sunny day when we reached Saptaparni to be a part of the writers’ carnival organized by Nivasini Publishers. To be honest, being a writer, I was feeling excited, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it back out awake.

My assumption was completely prejudiced and biased.

It was an illuminating experience. I picked up many writing tips, some new, some lost and forgotten, and some that I already knew. The carnival involved four great writing personalities in Hyderabad talking about how and why kids should write and in what ways it can help them. I was enthralled by the entrancing lives that these people led and while speaking to them, I realized that no matter how crazy or silly I was, my imagination would never be as good as theirs.

The first speaker was  Meetu Chawla, who is an education specialist, and also my mother, so the fact that she was speaking on Mother’s Day was almost rhetorical to me. She may as well have been saying, “Don’t you see? It’s Mother’s Day, yet I am still working. You should learn a thing or to from me!” Anyway, she gave us writing tips, told us the good and bad news of being a writer, and told us about playing with words, using wordplay techniques such as Spoonerisms and Portmanteau, and how to learn new words.    It was a fun talk as we created our own words, such as scrumpilicious and fantabulous, and switching the letters of words thike lis ( like this!)

The next speaker was  Janaki Thunga, who was an author and 75 years old. She also gave us writing tips. If you thought that the talk would be boring, you were wrong. This talk was brightened by a huge amount when she told us about the experiences she had while discovering these tips. She also showed us her various books and how she had used her tips in them.

The next speaker was Mrs Cheryl Rao, who is also an author. She gave us writing tips in quite a funny way. She gave us the tips, told us how she uses them, and also told us what catastrophes took place with her writing when she did not follow them.

The final speaker was 17-year old Ms Varsha who works for the Times of India and is one of their 10 star correspondents. She told us about the writing methods that got her into TOI at age 13, she spoke about the job of journalism and she also told us that while writing articles, the first draft that you write is the original you. If you try to change it, then you are trying to see to it that the reader feels happy. But as there are so many readers it doesn’t matter.

By the end of the day, I was surprised and astonished about the writing endeavours and feats that people had achieved. I was also fascinated at what a pinch of hard work can do. I now knew that thanks to these enlightening people and this enlightening carnival, my writing will improve by leaps and bounds .