 to an evening with Magical Lumexen. This is the fourth session of the Antel Inside Science Fiction Book Club and also a last for 2020. A few things before we begin. Just keep your mics on mute and when it's time for the Q&A, we'll tell you to unmute yourselves and you can ask your questions. For those who are new here, I'm Vijay Lakshmi. I am the author of Strangely Familiar Tales and I also write on a regular basis for women's web. My co-modulator today is T.G. Shenoy. T.G. Shenoy is an SFF enthusiast and a columnist and critic. He's the writer of India's longest-running weekly SF column, New World's Weekly for Factor Daily and the Speckfix column for Bangalore Mirror. He also curates the SF track for the Bangalore Lift Fest. He has featured in podcasts such as Tale Harate Kannada podcast and events such as Sri Lanka Comic Con to talk about SFF in general and Indian SF in particular. He hosts to Bolly Go, a fun SFF quiz every Saturday. He's also an advertising and marketing professional and is currently a consulting partner with Celsius 100 Consulting. And today, of course, we are here to speak to three wonderful writers, Sukanya Venkatragawan, Shreya Sivam and Nikita Devpande. Sukanya Venkatragawan is the author of Dark Things and the editor of Magical Women, a feminist fantasy anthology published by Hatchet India. She started her writing career as a film journalist with Filmfare and then went on to become entertainment editor at Marie Claire India. Sukanya has also been part of the creative team, including scripting and research for shows such as Look Who's Talking with Niranjan on Zee Café, Design HQ Season 2 for Fox Life and Coffee with Karan Season 6. She is working on her next book. Find her on Twitter as Suku06 and on Instagram as Suku. Shreya Illa Anasoya is a writer from India who writes cross-genre fiction, including fantasy, horror and slipstream. They have shot fiction out in several anthologies in India, including Gul in Magical Women, edited by Sukanya. Their work has been acknowledged with a total award for creative writing in English and a Sangam House residency. Find them on Twitter as Threshold Rose and on Instagram as Dervish Tansen. Nikita Deshpande is the author of the novel, It Must Have Been Something He Wrote. Her short stories in the anthologies Magical Women published by Hachit and Grandpa Tales published by Scholastic and a poem in the world that belongs to us published by HarperCollins. Her writing has been published in the Rampus, Grazia, Scroll, BuzzFeed and First Post, among others. She was awarded a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship to work on her fiction. Find her on Twitter as D. Blue Ruin. Welcome, everyone. Chenoy, you have called Magical Women as one of the essential reads of our times. You want to tell us why? Yes, because as I've said enough number of times, I mean something like this was long, long, long overdue. Especially given the fact that what I liked best was the time at which it came, you know, when lots of things were changing and all and it sort of harked back to the tradition of feminist SF that we have in India. In fact, one of the oldest or the first pieces of feminist SF from anywhere in the world was from India, you know, in 1905, which is, you know, 115 years ago by Begum Rokaya Hossain, Sultana's Dream, which was about this utopia, which is ruled by women. It's called Ladyland, right? And this book came about a decade before Charlotte Gilman's, what do you call it, book hurling. So, and from then on, we've had a lot of such stories coming in. So in a sense, it was a straight line from there to Magical Women. And what I also like best was the fact that, you know, if you look at the writers, whether it's in India or in global specific, most of them who are, let's get the Vanguard and sort of pushing it in all sorts of directions are women and ordinary writers, right? So in that sense, the sort of, everything sort of came together in Magical Women. And for me as a fan of science fiction fantasy and horror, the sheer range of stories was fantastic, right? And each of them, I mean, the epigraph of Magical Women, as you can see, you know, may we never be held hostage to old narratives. That was so brilliantly well chosen because each of the stories reflect that. And the stories range from science fiction to urban fantasy, you know, to sort of agitalism and time travel across the spectrum of all the subgenres possible. And the way it sort of also looks at mythology and, you know, familiar tales, but does it fall under what I call mid-sploitation? I mean, that's big nowadays, mid-sploitation, right? You just take and you just put one random remix for, you know, old myths with added Junker beats. This wasn't that. This wasn't that. This is fresh takes, right? Be it on the three goddesses by in the story Apocalyptica or Krishna or the Shankar, right? Or the take on Savitri by Nikita, the way the thing of revenge comes across by Sukanya about the Kodesan Gul in Shreya's story. Each of them are even Tashanmata's story, you know, about this girl who's creating worlds. I mean, there's such a lot of symbolism and metaphor just sort of running through it. So that's why I said, you know, anybody who's interested in the genre in feminist SF must read this. I mean, that's why it's essential. I had a brilliant time reading and I personally have gifted it to so many people for their birthdays or generally, you know, sometimes books you just give for no reason. This is one of those which I've often gifted. So without me rambling on further, I would like to just ask Sukanya, I mean, how did this come over? What are the experience of putting it together? I mean, such a fabulous thing. What is it like being the editor? Was it like herding cats or how was it? I want to start off by saying, Shenna, you've been a wonderful comrade and supporter for science fiction, fantasy as it exists today in India. You've been really wonderful. Every time I connect with you, I feel like I shouldn't give up on writing these stories. And thank you for the motivation, encouragement, love, everything that you shower on as for writers sitting in our houses, wondering who's reading our book. Coming to your question, I wish I had some great story to tell about why I decided to do a book like Magical Women. But the truth is, if there are any writers out there, the truth is, everybody hopes that some fairy, writing fairies will come and finish your book for you in the middle of the night. Nothing like that ever happened. So I've been writing my book since second book since 2016. And Magical Women was a way to procrastinate. I was literally like, how do I not write my book, but still seem like I'm doing something relevant. And the best way to do that is to get other people to write. And Bo Treya and Nikita are grinning now, but secretly I think they were sticking pins into one raggedy Sukudal at some point because I was like, give me one, change this, change that, do this. No, that's a joke. No, that's not what I did with them. But I also wanna say that I'm really happy to be talking before I go back to why and how Magical Women happened. I'm really happy to be talking to these two women here because they are not to sound ages, but they're probably two of the sort of youngest people, at least when Magical Women started. And the kind of, you usually expect, I've at least met a lot of young writers who feel like, oh, my first draft's so great. Like, why did that editor ask me to write more? Or my language is great. Why are you asking me to change this? And I think these, both Nikita and Shreya, you have no idea the amount of work they put into what is already an effortless piece of work. It is, what they write is so effortless, but they're not afraid of the hard work that comes after that bit of effortlessness that you put in, which is your first draft or your after draft. And was it like herding cats? No, it was like being in a coven of wonderful witches, sharing each other's magic. And I didn't have to, I mean, I've had some weird experiences with editing, not just Magical Women, otherwise too, but not with these two women. I think they are very receptive. The reason that they are only growing in their craft and in their careers, respectively, is because they are very receptive. And I'm very glad that I chose like, I think they were literally one of two of the first people I asked to be in the anthology and I haven't regretted it till today. Now coming back to why Magical Women happened, yes, I'm still writing that book, I haven't written that book. So I think Magical Women too needs to happen because I'm still writing that book and I'm wondering how to procrastinate. I just wrote to a bunch of writers, some really, now when I look back, I was like, how did I have the audacity to write to these writers? And asked them to be part of this anthology. Some were friends, some became friends. And I have to say, most of them were really nice. They responded to my rather long and extremely polite email. I'm not very polite in real life, but I was very polite in that email. And they all said yes, and that's how this beautiful book happened. And Shenna, I really wanna talk about, they keep saying that being a writer is a very lonely job. It's a very isolated job, but not for me. I think that the only reason I stay a writer, every day I wake up and I wonder, am I still a writer? The only reason I am still a writer is because I've got my community around me, is because I can reach out to Shreya and say, I'm having a bad day. I haven't had a bad day in writing for a long time because I haven't written in a long time, but when I do, then these are the people I reach out to. And I know they do reach out to me sometimes. So I think the joy, forget everything else, how relevant it is and why, all that. I think it was just a joyful thing to do for me. Because I discovered 14 writers who were so wonderful. And I would, like for me, I would have them in another anthology like this. Like, I would be like, really, with these 14 writers, let's do it. Did you say you ramble, listen to me now? No, no, no, see, I'm all for magical women too, but I'm also all for your second book. And the bar has been set by magical women, right? I mean, the writers in it, like, wonderful from SV Sujata, who wrote D. Maranthas of Chottanikara, the Krishna Uday Shankar, writer of the Arivartha conicals, right, to Tashan Maitra, writer of Liars. And the funniest story in the anthology, Grandma Garam's Kitty Party by Anandya Tantris' writer, Shweta Taneja. I mean, that was wonderful. I mean, when I say that it spans the genre, I mean, I'm so glad that there was room for some humor in it as well. I mean, it's just sort of the who's who of it. So which is why I asked you, it must have taken some effort to sort of put this together and make sure and all apps, right? Which stories to tell and all of that. So I did send them a brief, a broad brief. I said, I want stories of, I forgot about my brief, but I think it was something about, let's retell the stories. Let's subvert the fairy tales, you know, let's give the goddesses a new outlook. And I think I didn't say anything beyond that. And I think each of them, the ones who wanted to reach out to me where the ideas did, and we discussed the ideas, the ones who wanted to just write and send me, they did that. But overall it was mostly, mostly a collaborative, very receptive environment. And I mean, for me, I wanna say that editing it, I came from a very humble place when I edited this book. I didn't come from a place where I'm the editor, so I'm gonna show you how to write and I'm gonna show you how to do. I came from a very humble place because each of these writers literally taught me something. And every time I would read the stories and I would read the reworked drafts or we would go back and forth on the edits. I was like, I don't know about them, but I know I'm learning so much from them. And I think that's the beauty of making a book like this. No one goes away empty-handed. Everyone gets something out of it. And I mean, I know what I've learned from Nikita, I know what I've learned from Shreya and I continue to learn from them. And I think that's, I mean, was it hard? Yes, I mean, sometimes, I've also been Mr. Techno Noob, I might miss a mail here or... I have literally asked Nikita, how do you use Google Docs? And she has literally called me and explained to me bit by bit, this is how, because I've never used Google Docs to edit. I've just edited on Word and then I've put it on, this is how, what kind of a noob I am. But so, I mean, learning happened on all levels for me. So I think it was, like I said, yes, it's a, I'm glad that there are people who think it's a relevant book, it's an important book, it's a book that's very much needed. But for me, it's just the joy of collaboration. And it's the joy of finding like-minded writers, writers who spark that magic in them and are not afraid to show it to the world. Because a lot of times you have writers who are like, I have this really weird story and I don't know how to put it out in the world. And if a book like Magical Women can help you put that into the world and say, don't be afraid to write that weird story, it's all right, you know, there are readers for it, there are people who are gonna celebrate that story. But I think we need to have more such books. Absolutely, I agree, I mean, I am one such writer who had weird stories and definitely Magical Women gave me that confidence, like yes, these stories can be told. So I really do owe that to all of you. But yes, coming to the individual stories, Shreya, your story, Gul, is one of my favorites from the anthology, it really got under my skin in many, many ways. And I love that it's a love story, but it's also a very political love story. You know, the personal is political and you're commenting on the politics of that age. I want to know how that evolved in your mind when you were writing it and also how you combine your interests for, you know, cutscenes and their culture with the writing. Actually, the seed of Gul was a myth about the gramophone which was new technology in the time that it's set. It's set in the late 19th century, especially around the first war for Indian independence in Lucknow. And very soon after that, in 1902, the first gramophone recordings were made on Indian soil and a lot of leading singers at the time wouldn't record because the myth was that it could trap a bit of your soul if you did. And so a lot of the great Ustaz of the time, actually, you know, this is apocryphal, of course. There were many other reasons. You know, music was a protected sort of knowledge and particularly male musicians did not want to give it away publicly and freely because what happened with the coming of the new technology was that, of course, the realm of performance changed and the music then became something you could play at home, right? You didn't have to, there wasn't this verified space of the, you know, mehfil. You didn't have to be a courtier or you didn't have to be a Nobel landowner, a very privileged person to be able to enjoy music in your own home. And, you know, many, many things changed and I'm completely, I love this kind of Iran history because so much new technology changed so many things about the performing arts. But this particular myth stayed with me because I don't, there's something really resonant about it. So the very heart of Gul is the idea that the gramophone does trap a little bit of you and I made it, I asked myself, okay, what if this were true? And then the political bits of it, honestly, I'm just interested in 1857. I'm particularly interested in the role that women played in 1857. That's only just being talked about. Nikita and I were talking about this earlier and she pointed out to me how there are films like Begum Jaan this year, which in mainstream conversation, introduced the idea for the first time that women played pivotal roles in these histories. But of course, we've known this for a long time. Scholars have been doing work on this since at least the 1980s. But you know, it takes time for us to receive this sort of research. And as someone who just enjoys history and reads history and research is quite a bit of history, it just seeps into my fiction. And I just thought it was super incredibly compelling how, you know, there were these women that were, there was strict and swift retaliation against them by the British right after the mutiny. But precisely because of the, you know, very important roles they had played in the mutiny. Having said that, in Gul, I do thank you for saying it's a very political story because all the reviews are like, oh, love tenderly told love story between two women. And I do, I mean, I think, yes, of course, it's a love story and love is very important. And I think love is also very political, but it's also political with a capital P because she's talking about the ways that women performers are marginalized in history. Yeah, so I actually started with a gramophone and I then started thinking about the history of the time and then it just sort of happened. I'm not the sort of writer that is very good at plotting in advance. Initially actually Gul and Munya were sisters, blasphemous. And then, you know, Gul was a sort of older sister figure, mentor figure to Munya, Munya was a younger performer and Gul disappeared and the disappearance of Gul was the main mystery. But I think around draft two, it just wasn't working and then, you know, Gul is based on a number of people. Let's just put it like that. So something made me change the plot and then over time it became what it is, finally. Now I wrote it now about two years ago. So just thinking back now, I think that most of it just happened because I was interested in the history and it just kind of came through me. I didn't set out to write a love story or a 1857 story or a music story. They just all kind of came together. I hope that makes sense. So I'm not writing to get it right. Sorry, I wanna add that her story was initially titled Gramophone, which will tell you a lot about what her core idea was. I mean, she's right. She wanted to start with the idea about the Gramophone and the rest just happened around it. I think it's, it bloomed in her. It also tells you I don't know how to title things. Yeah, I was like, let's paint it now. It's not a short film. That would also have been a bit of a spoiler, I guess. Yeah. I mean, Gul of course was one of my favorite stories from it. I mean, there's reason to love each story on its own. Also, the other story that I really liked was Nikita's story, The Girl Who Haunted Death. I mean, especially because of who it is about. It is about Savitri. And usually, whenever we talk or anybody talks about the ideal woman or the ideal wife, it's like, oh, Sati Savitri. I mean, it comes. And for anybody who's read Amar Chitra Katha, I mean, it was one of the earliest Amar Chitra Katha comics that they made because the story of Savitri and Satyavan is so central to our anthology. And I sort of loved the, you know, how Satyavan comes back and what happened between those scenes. So I just wanted to, you know, now that I've an opportunity to ask you, face to face, I'm asking you, you know, what's, you know, how did this come about? And especially given the time, I mean, given the fact that Savitri is so central to the idea of this devoted wife and the climate isn't so good for people to, you know, giving such a spin on such a character. I won't say more for fear of spoiling it, but where you little vary about any adverse reactions that could, this thing, so how did it come about and how was it perceived and all of that? I mean, in a sense, we should be glad that the people who object usually don't read too much of spec-fig, but still. You basically answered, I think, what I had assumed was that the people who would object aren't the kind who would end up reading this. And I'm happy to be corrected and told that I'm wrong or maybe not, I'm not sure. But thank you for the love that you've shown this story, Shanoy, I should say that first up. And I think it's exactly what you just said. It was the idea of taking apart this image that we've had of this perfect wife, this woman who's held up as an example and to then sort of press on certain pain points of what women experience today. I feel like desire is something, it's such a strong thing that as much as I'm translating from Hindi in my head, but as much as you talk about it, it's less. I know that sentence formation sounds wrong, but it's because I'm thinking of it in Hindi. But so the idea was to explore this woman's desire because I think the first thing that we lay to rest to the moment we think of a married woman is outside of these boundaries, she must have no desire. And so I definitely, definitely wanted to explore that and wanted to see, wanted to even take her down parts where she got to explore her sexuality as well. And again, like you said, in terms of thinking about whether I was afraid of the response, maybe one part of it is that privilege is there. So I was insulated a little bit from even thinking about that fear. But I think the real thing that sort of keep me up at night is the kind of stuff that you spoke about, like exploitation. I feel like when what Chimamanda, sorry if I'm saying the name wrong, Chimamanda Dichye says in the dangerous thing in assuming a single narrative or a single story. That sort of thing keeps me up at night more, showing a character who has a marginalization that I don't have any lived experience of wondering what a real person who had that experience while timing. Wondering what a real person who has that experience feels when they're reading the book, hoping that their feelings are not hurt, their lived experience is not minimized. Those kind of things keep me up a little more at night than the other crowd. So I think we were covered for fear there. I don't know if I answered it correctly. Yeah, you did, I mean, and it's a nice way of putting things and how it came about. And I must say that the story sort of brought out everything that you said that you set out to do. So wonderful, Vijay? Yeah. So can you, my next question is to you about Kasey's Rose Garden, which again, is one of those stories that I really, really loved. And I really appreciate that you said that it channels rage and it does that, but it does that in a very mature way in the sense that even the punishment or the vengeance or the justice or whatever you want to call it, it takes the form of creation and growth without giving away any spoilers. It takes on a very positive spin. And as one of the audience members, Anushree has pointed out, it also offers a lot of kindness to the people who are affected by it. So I'd like you to tell me how you made those choices and tell us a little bit about that. So one is that I feel like there's enough aggliness in the world and we could do with a little more compassion and kindness, even if it comes from a place of rage and anger. We may think that everyone is not worthy of it, but I think everyone can be better for a bit more of beauty and kindness in their lives. And I know I sound very goody-goody when I say it, but it's really true, especially when you look around today, it's just, it's more of a kindness towards yourself. You know, because anger is a kind of violence that just, it's really hard to live with. And my Rakshasi is not comfortable with her anger either. She hopes that she doesn't one day have to do what she does. She is not comfortable with her anger, she's not glorifying it. She's just doing it because she has to at this point, she hasn't found the path to redemption yet in that sense. And as for, you know, the kindness towards each other, see the neighbors, they gossip about her and they, we're always scared of what we don't understand. And I think that's especially true in our society, when it comes to women who are slightly odd or different. And I know there are many here right now. You know, we've all faced it. You all faced that fear, that kind of manifests as malice or gossip, or slander, or just plain unkindness or bullying because they couldn't understand who we are. And I feel like if you're going to return that to that person, you know, when you're very young, you want to say something backwards, you go older, you're kind of tired, you don't want to retaliate the same way. I did something today. It said, how I respond to something that I don't like is I just don't give it energy. I don't give it my energy. That's how I respond if I don't want to be part of something. And I feel like she's kind to Minnie in the end because what is she going to gain out of being unkind to that woman? And what will she be passing on by being unkind to a woman who's already very aware of what she has done to perpetuate her husband's evil in that sense. She knows. She can't punish Minnie more than Minnie's being punished by just being herself in that sense. So yeah, I think the bottom line is just a little more kindness and my Raksha see, I mean, she wants to be, she hopes for the same kindness towards herself. She's tired of the anger. And I think that's something a lot of us identify with. You know, exhausted from our anger, we are. And if we could turn that, and I think that's the point of a book like this, the point of the stories we write, we turn our anger into roses, which are stories. Okay, before we go into the, just one, since we are on the topic of the Raksha sees rose garden one of our participants initially put a little note about what you wanted to write about the Raksha sees rose garden. So can I just read it out? She says, it defied the women are women's worst enemies trope by the end in such a fascinating way. Then she's a, you know, such a lesson, you know, era chose to be kinder to Minnie than usual, consider it enough to understand why Minnie missed Mr. Munshi so much. It was such a beautiful rendition of the thought that we should try and forgive our mothers for the feminists that they could not be and the miracles that they could not perform. It's beautiful. I also want to say our mothers have always tried their best. I mean, they've been, you know, I mean, I look back now, I think my mother's probably on the most feminist people I've known without even knowing that the word exists. I don't think she knew. I don't think she made much of the word when she was young. I don't think she knew what it meant. I just knew that she was raising her daughter. In times when it was really difficult to raise a daughter the way you would actually like to raise one against all odds. And feminism is not one straight line, it's not one thing, it's not one size fits all. There's all sorts of feminism and it's flawed. There's no such thing as a perfect feminist. You can be a feminist and still have a few per patriarchal views, but if it comes to the core of it, you might do something that's really feminist and progressive. I've met a lot of my grand, like people, my grandmother's age, for instance, who still say, a girl should get married by the time she's 25. Otherwise, you know, ladka nahi melega types. But I've seen her take a few stands for the women in her life, which you wouldn't expect a woman of her age to take. So you can have those views, but when it comes to a particular situation, I think every woman, there's something that sparks within you to be feminine. And I think everyone's just doing their best. Well, not everybody, but most people. I mean, I'm glad you brought that up because this is something that I want to ask. So Kanya, you, Shreya, Nikita and even Vijaya, you know, a couple of things, comments that I read with regard to magical women from some women critics or readers was that, oh, it isn't feminist enough, right? I mean, I don't have the answer to that. So I will just keep quiet and let you all answer the question. I've said my bed. I'm going to let Nikita and Shreya take this and if Vijaya has anything to add. I mean, I rubbed my palms, so I might as well. No, I rubbed my palms when I heard that, so I might as well get in. I mean, I feel it's fair for me to speak for my story and then let maybe Shreya take off and Sukanya take off from that. But I feel like I unabashedly love writing love stories that I have like zero shame about it. Even if there's magic, the magic is secondary, the love is important. And for me, when I write about love, I feel like what love does to us is a beautiful softening of the soul or who we are. And if that doesn't come through, so I'm saying this because one of the criticisms and I feel like all criticisms are valid, like they make some criticisms that are based off of not actually reading the book, I would probably not give them that validity. But if someone's read the book and has a criticism, that's valid because it comes from their perspective, their reading. I feel like this, there was this major criticism of the book being extremely stuck and clinging to traditional ideas of femininity. And I definitely want to speak up for that because there's, we are in a time where mainstream interpretations of feminism can be about women behaving like men. Nothing wrong with that, but I feel like there should be space for everything. If people would like to, if there are women who have fine freedom and joy in doing certain things the way that traditional masculinity interprets them, that's great for them, but there has to be space for that softness and that joy. And in fact, I feel like that softness and that joy should be like a bug that we transfer to everybody, like let's convert everybody into softies, even if they don't end up showing it. So yeah, I feel like, and I feel like this term feminist is something that we've applied after, right? When we set out to write stories, these stories embody our beliefs. They're not, or embody certain things we wanted to explore. They're not necessary, we didn't necessarily set out to be feminist with an F, with a capital F. We probably were going out there to tell a story and if that embodies who we are, what we believe in for women, about women, then that is a happy accident for me. Shreya. Yeah, I'll let you take it. Yeah, Shreya. Can I get a sense of why they thought it wasn't feminist enough? Because I would love to respond to specific criticisms, but I don't know what it means to not be feminist enough. I guess that itself answers the question to a large extent, but Vijay, do you have anything to add to that? About it not being quote unquote feminist enough? I mean, taking off from where Nikita said, like there's not like one thing that differs all of feminism, it's just there is a plurality of feminisms and each one sees it in a different way. So it didn't work for someone and I guess that's on them. It's not on the writers. I also do want to say that, I mean, look at this anthology. It's only 14 people, right? It's one editor in one year, in one time, in one place. And it's 14 women and non-binary writers writing about a vast variety of subjects without having spoken to each other. Nobody said, hey, I'm putting 2% feminism into my story. So you take care of 5% and the rest of you. And I also think that there isn't an inherently male or masculine way or inherently feminine or whatever female way to be in the world. I'm a non-binary person. Most of the time present extremely femme. But that doesn't mean that, that doesn't mean anything really. Like if you, the more you sort of unpack what these ascribed gender roles mean, they mean different things to different people. So if the stories are imperfect, I say I celebrate the fact that they are imperfect. And I think perfection is sterile. I think perfection closes possibilities. So if it is imperfect, I would invite people who'd want to write something that they find more compelling to also write it. And this is not me saying, oh, critics don't write and therefore they are critics. Not at all. I write book criticism. I interview, I really cherish the genre, the entire exercise of literary criticism. But I do think that criticism also has to be, it has to be, you know, if it's a creative response, then I think one of the things I would like to see is a feminist enough book. I actually wanna, what I wanna say is I feel like what Nikita said, nobody's set out to write a feminist story. Like you don't do that. You start from an emotion. Nikita started from a gramophone. Sorry, Shreya started from a gramophone. Nikita started from wanting to explore Savitri's mindset a little more. I didn't know what to write till two days before going to press. And then I wrote a story. So no one is sitting and thinking how feminist can I be in my story? I think you just write and no one's story is perfect. And I'm okay with the criticism. I'm glad that that person tried to all the stories and thought whatever they did, it's not a problem at all actually. And I'm very old, Shreya. This kind of chill comes from perimenopausal hormones. Telling you, you reach the state where perimenopausal will have this chill. I'm also, I mean, like I said, one of the criticisms was, one of the reviews was that everyone is so angry. I said, I'm sorry, but they're also angry. Have you met us in real life? They're very angry in real life. People will scare you. You just met the characters. Then someone said that the character, only the pretty people have powers in the book. I said, I didn't know that feminism was the weapon of only plain people or so-called perceived plain people. I didn't know that only the ugly people could be feminist. I like that beautiful people can also be feminist. Maybe you don't attribute it to the beautiful people. Someone who looks really gorgeous. Maybe you think this person's not. So that's your problem with feminism. Because you think that feminism or a feminist has to be a certain way, look a certain way. And that's not true. Everyone, someone who you don't think fits your idea of being a feminist can also be one, the most beautiful, gorgeous woman who probably gets Botox and fillers and you know, wears heels to a trick or like mountaineering. Maybe even she's like feminist. I'm rambling and Krishna is asking me to shut up. It's lovely to hear you ramble. But it's nice. It's quite interesting. I'm sitting here listening to all of you and getting perspectives on feminism. But we do have a Q&A plan. So before we take questions from the audience and there have been a couple of them, could I request you all to do a quick reading from your stories? Right? Shall we start with you, Shreya? Shall we start with Nikita, please? Because I don't know what I'm reading from. Me neither. Okay, so Nikita, I saw her copy of Magical Women at a bookmark. So which means that, yes. Is it Nikita? Like a stop. She was taking notes during this thing which she will now later read and think about and ponder and put in her next journaling workshop. And Nikita has bookmarks. Nikita is Nikita. A nerd, basically. A nerd. But basically right now she's the escape clause. So while she does her reading, you can figure out what you will read. So over to you, Nikita. No, I was taking notes. It helps me pay better attention. And also there were some people were dropping some excellent recommendations in the comments and I did not want to miss those. So yes, I very much took notes like a nerd. Sorry, I'm just going to read now like a opposed adult person. For those of you who haven't read the story and that's fine, this particular scene that I'm reading is set in a desert fair. That's all you need to know. And I will just go ahead and read. Chenoy, will you stop me when I'm over time because I might just go on and on? I can go, just stop me. Where are we? I said, looking away. When that smile, it was not soft. It was sharp and cutting. Somewhere bright and colorful. A glorious sunset seared the sky. We stopped to hear a gypsy woman sing. A scarlet goon that covered her face so that only the blue statues on her neck were visible. Her voice was high and loud and gruff. A young man played the Raban Hatha by her side, his eyes closed in devotion. The gypsy song boomed across the mela, rising higher and warmer than the newborn campfires, silencing boisterous goat herds, demanding the attention of sleepy camels and wary travelers. Next to me, death opened her fist in a small graceful movement, like an infant's yawn. Please know not the woman I thought. How could she silence her now like that mid-song? But death's hand waited, open, next to my own. A moment later, I understood. I opened my own fist and took her hand in mine. What is she singing? I asked, leaning so that my head could rest on her shoulder. Her song is a question too. Her nose turned to bury itself in my hair. Something throbbed in a hidden part of my body. She says she has found every God and Goddess you can name, every kind of heaven, every saint and sinner known. So what's the question? I raised my head to look into her fiery eyes. She sighed, where should I go to find you, my love? I put my head back on her shoulder, digging into the warmth of her body. We walked on the sands long after the fires had become pops of ash, flying on the backs of desert winds. We sat side by side with our backs against somebody's tent. I watched her skin shine in the moonlight. All this time, so many hours, she had stolen this slice of time for my joy in a place that was alive in every green. I asked questions, so many of them. Could God's remember being born? This job of hers, did she think it a drudgery or a privilege, which she always work alone? What happened during wars and famine? And didn't it confuse her to hop across time like that? Some questions she answered and some she evaded cleverly by leaning in, half laughing and half sighing into my clavicle. Finally, she held a slender finger to a spot on the wet in the very middle of my bottom lip. No more questions, she said, pulling away the finger and bringing her lips to mine. If you asked me what it was like to kiss deaths, I would say it's like drinking moonlight while at the bottom of the deepest ocean without ever stopping for breaths. To weave your hands through her hair and hold the nape of her neck is to reach across the horizon and touch the part where the light never reaches. At some point that night, I fell into a deep honey-pick sleeve with her head buried in my chest. When she shook me awake, it felt like a century had passed. Wonderful, thank you. So I was just reading as a thing, you know, and that was the bit I liked most, you know, when you think of death, you think of this yamma on a buffalo and all of that, and then suddenly, you know, death is a hur, like, okay. Sorry, I forgot to say earlier, I'm just butting in for a second because I forgot to say earlier, but I was actually, and Shreya reminded me in the comments, I was actually trying to reinterpret my problematic favorite story also. Like, while I told this Aabuki story, my thing was I want to, I want to retell money that comes, they'll say. So what you see is an unholy marriage of the two, and that's why your, what your imagination of death is, and my imagination of death is totally borrowed from, you know, they'll say, and yeah. Basically, it means I should go back and reread it, which is always a good thing to happen. So thank you for that. Shreya. Nikita, sorry, I'm just butting in. Nikita once told me that Gul and the girl who haunted death are really similar, and they're like, and I took me a minute to understand why, and when she explained it, it was beautiful. Do you want to explain? Quickly. See, I became editor there. I feel like, and Shreya can add to this, but I feel like they're story siblings because the beloved of the stories, I don't want to spoil too much. I really do want new people who haven't read the book to read it today, but today or whenever. But I feel like the quality of the beloveds in both our stories is very similar. The way that they are loved, the passion and the dirt with which they're loved is similar. And their interpretation of love towards the people who love them is very interesting. I mean, there's a lot of, I'll speak for my story, there's a lot of cruelty that passes for love, and it was also interesting to explore that in the story. Always better at writing than explaining stories. Sorry. For that. Okay, Shreya. I just want to say another line about Nikita's wonderful story, which is also one of my favorites from the anthology. And I also very much agree that we are story siblings. I once heard Nikita say that, you know, Dilsey has a song that sort of explores love through the seven stages of Sufi, the Sufi understanding of love, which is, of course, where devotion and romance can mix and it can become very ambiguous. Satrangi Re is the song. So it goes from attraction to death. And death is, of course, also a melding of the beloved with the lover. And so if you are rereading Nikita's story or reading it for the first time, maybe that's a nice thing to look up as well, because I found that that was very well expressed. But those seven stages of devotion were very well expressed in her story. I love that you remember this better than I do. Thank you so much. Now, please read. I'm a fan, ma'am. What to do? All right, I have no... Okay, so since Vijay Lakshmi is here, I'm going to put her on the spot. What part of it should I read? Because I don't know. I have bits marked out, actually. Thank you very much. See, this is why moderators are excellent people. Yeah. They have bits marked out. Okay, so I have something which begins the really political part of it, which goes, you know, the pill of high standing wearing crisp cotton woven by hand. Let's do that. All right. All right. So this is the beginning of Gul. And I begin with Adrian Rich. A woman in the shape of a monster. A monster in the shape of a woman. The skies are full of them. This is from the poem Planetarium by Adrian Rich. The halls of this vast house are windy. There are domed lamps and carpets woven to dizzying intricacy, covering every inch of the floor. Honoured guests decline on bolsters, the scent of jasmine, wafting on their expensive wrists. Fragrant blossoms that are dares for the taking. But take it from this old courtesan that are unseen women everywhere. So you will not know them, even if I tell you their true names. Step into the shadows and there they are, filling the halls. Women who knew how to arch an eyebrow or make a body remark at just the right moment or laugh wildly, just as they pleased. Expert musicians of their time, breathtaking poets, dancers who could put any master of yours to shame. I know these women. I knew them. Of them only very few survived the bloody tides of the mutiny and its aftermath. The old order in which they had had a place, perhaps sometimes a precarious and strange one, but a place nonetheless, collapsed entirely. Begum Hazard Mahal's unending war ended. Lucknow fell and the pale ghosts who arrived to plunder this land and bit down on its jugular. All our patrons and paramours scattered, many were hanged, many more exiled. That was the moment the axis of our world shifted. And precisely because it was pivotal and bloody, it is the moment they recount the most. Lucknow of 1857. But what is far more brutal is the slow passing of time. What the pale ghost started, the good people of this land made sure to finish. People of high standing, wearing crisp cotton woven by hand, lovers of music and culture all. People who couldn't move a finger without walking on the backs of those who washed their fine clothes and scrubbed their inherited mansions clean. They rung our necks. They smiled as they did it. Over the next few decades, those of us who would not or could not afford to hide our origins were pushed, pushed, pushed, whirling away from the centre of the mehfil to the corners where most of us lingered, where our daughters linger, where their daughters will linger until the last one perishes. Some of us survived it. Some through marriage, some by hiding our true names. Some by becoming safe embodiments of the very world they had destroyed. I, Munni Begum, survived by doing all of the above. This is how you still hear my voice echoing at you from the years that stretch between us. This is the plain truth. I am among a handful who were lucky and then there was Gulbadan. Thank you very much. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Sukanya, over to you. I'm going to read... There's no suspense in my book story as such, it's called The Rapture Sees Rose Garden. So, immediately you know there's something weird about her rose garden. And I usually read the beginning. So, I'm going to read from another space, though. I'm going to keep it really short. She hadn't been able to save them. She hadn't been able to protect herself. What was the use of this magic? She had wandered for decades as she woke up from nightmare after nightmare alone, cold and angry. What was the use of power if you couldn't use it when you needed it the most? Then she had begun to understand as the familiar rage showed in other situations where at its peak, she was at her strongest. The magic spilling out of her like a thunderstorm. She didn't know how to control it and she didn't want to. She didn't know, sorry, her mother's magic had been music. Her father's was linked to love. Hers was just rage. And she finally understood. You couldn't explain magic or the found it sprung from. You could only use it in the way you best knew how. And so she did. Rage was her magic. She lived through time creating wild blooms out of her anger, her sorrow. She left behind entire cities of whispering flora, mysterious gardens, alive with the men who let her down time and again. The betrayer who couldn't love her back the way she wanted them to. She thought of the men who had cursed through the ages without a second thought. Turning women into wines and rocks. Kings who had banished their queens. Wipes punished for their desire. Daughters sold off in brutal barters. She was all women. Their heart breaks in violations of the wounds in her own body and soul. In the collective experience, a turbulent river bounding through her veins. Rage was her rose garden. Wild, strange and whispering. Never fading. Rage was her rose garden, yes. So we still have a little bit more time. We'll take questions from the audience. If you're on watching this on YouTube, you can type it in the chat and it'll reach us. Or if you're here with us on Zoom, you can type it in. But there's already one question from the audience. I think it's from Krishna itself. The question, it's a question to the panel. Those three of you. From someone who knows you, so I'm not seeing where it comes from. So the question is this. What do you think is the difference between men writing women and not men writing, not men slash women? You have to see the question. Where is it? I can't see it. One second, I'm just putting it into the chat now. Yeah. What do you think is the difference between men writing women and not men writing, not... Sukanya, Shreya, Nikita, you're all welcome to take this. I don't know, man, I just write. I feel like... I don't know, I'm going to give a very stereotypical answer. So please feel free to fight with me. I totally am game. But I feel like all this whole burden that's been put upon women about you're the more empathetic ones or whatever, and we've been conditioned to carry that weight of the empathy, I think it's made us... And Shreya, you can button and tell me if that's different for you. But I feel like it's made us... It's made it easier for us to slip into other people's shoes. So when it's non-men or women writing non-binary people or women, I think I'm making an informed guess, writing men, they can still slip into their shoes more easily. Whereas when it's men writing women, I feel like that slipping doesn't happen as seamlessly. I don't know. I'm sure there are men who do it really well. I'm just spitballing here. Also, I want to say that this happens especially with women writers. We don't owe you a suffering in our stories. I mean, if we want to write it, we will. Just like we don't owe you feminism in our stories. We are allowed to write a really flippant, fun story if we want to. I feel like with women writers, especially there's this whole expectation of tell me how you suffered and tell me how you grew as a person because you suffered. Yeah, we most probably are going to write a story that has that in the core, but you know, owe you that. Well, you know, there is that the persistent complaint of the way that certain male writers, certain men identifying writers, particularly cis men, and specifically cis men actually, the way that they write women in extremely sexualized ways. And I mean, I know where that frustration and anger is coming from, a lot of non-men writers talk about it. There's a lot of jokes about it. But I also think I don't know if I want to essentialize based on, yeah, like definitely I do think that socialize, gender norms and socialization play a big role in the way that trans, non-binary women people write their characters. But at the end of the day, writing is an identity is not a singular thing and writing is not a singular thing. These are both really complex things. So I really hesitate. I mean, I know tons of wonderful, I mostly, I gravitate towards books that are written by non-men writers, but that doesn't mean I don't read men. I think there's a lot of wonderful men writers who write great, complex, feminist books. And I also don't think that because the story is fun or frivolous, it's not feminist. So I do think that these questions are best answered in specific contexts for specific books rather than these kind of very big, general statements. I do think, having said that, I do think it's very important to acknowledge historically whose writing has been read seriously as literature, which genres have been taken seriously and which have not. And who are the writers who are still not taken seriously? And that's not just women. It's a whole lot of other social, economic, political locations. Whole lot of other people are not still not, their writing and their work is still not taken seriously. The entire genre of romance, for example, if you look at the way it's spoken about. And within, as all of us who like speculative fiction, we know how it's treated alongside when you, it's a strange sort of binary between what's literary and what's not literary. And I think these things are really just kind of not interesting to me anymore. I completely agree with you that these are best answered in specifics. Like they say, all generalizations are false, including this one, it's like that. For example, I mean, we have in attendance, Gautam Bhatia, whose debut novel, The Wall was out earlier this fabulous novel and had a very strong female character. And it was very, as he's mentioned, he says that sensitivity rates become particularly important in this context. And I know that he's mentioned, when we had, even he was the guest on the first until when he was talking about how it underwent sensitivity rates and all that sort of a thing, given where he was coming from and what he was writing about the character. So, yeah, I mean, yes, these kind of things are usually better taken in specifics. To go on to the next question, who's asking it again, when is magical women to coming? When my procrastination reaches its peak again, like a desperate peak, which right now it hasn't, but no, I'm kidding. I actually have been thinking quite seriously about it. Let's see next year, 2021 will come bearing gifts. Yes, please postpone your procrastination. We'll see. I'm just going to throw in one more thing to sort of add towards Sukanya said that in this time in 2021 and in 2020, a lot of our other magical women whose names are in this index have published are publishing some excellent work. I would not procrastinate. You have any given point, five drafts open. I'm talking, Krishna, I'm looking at you. Krishna recently has a book out, Shreya has a book coming out soon, a chapbook coming out soon. I know that Kiran has had something recently. Yeah, the kitty party murders. Yeah, yeah, so we move now and it's really fun. It's the fun read I needed. I'm really enjoying it, if Kiran's watching it, she should know that. And Krishna Uday Shankar's Coward Prince was out very recently, the prequel to the Arrivartha Chronicles. That is a fun read. So there's a lot of books. That also comes to, I mean, it also talks about, I mean, not Kiran's book, not Kitty Party, but in general, when people say, hey, but in India, do we have science fiction fantasy writers? Who's writing? What are they writing? There are 14 in this book. Look up their work first. Please do not get me started on that. Please, let's get you, but that's another session or two. Yeah, correct. Then we'll all be here way past our bedtimes, and the cows have already come home, so let's not. So now my standard answer is you want to read 14 writers who've written science fiction fantasy, at least one story. Please pick up my book. Please pick up magical women. There are 14 writers. No, every time somebody says, oh, there's no science fiction or fantasy in India. There's no specfic in India. What, when somebody asks me that question, what I hear is, I personally don't know about it. That's what I hear. Right, I mean, just, they're there. I mean, it's out there, and we are all screaming. I mean, Kamit Basu has been writing fantasy novels since 2002 or three. Yeah, I read Game World when it came out first, and I was like, I can't believe someone's inside my head. Like the strange worlds in my head are suddenly in a book. Like, how is this possible? Because you didn't know that Indian writers wrote books like that. He's been doing it for a very long time. I think Gautam has a very pertinent question. Yeah, so, I mean, I'm just looking at the questions and we'll make this the last one. So Anushri asked, why do you think Indian SFF is so less read in India? This is generally coming from a reader, book club runner perspective, that's Anushri. Gautam Bhatia, adding on to it, says, how do we ensure that books like Magical Women have a reach and get a larger hearing? There are a lot of book bloggers who say they're looking for diverse books, but when you actually see their blogs, you just end up reading the harpers, the orbit, you know, sort of tour, front lists. How do we connect writers with audiences? Yeah. I actually feel like why, it shouldn't be the author's burden. Unfortunately, it is. We should be just sitting in our caves with our cats writing. This should not be our problem, ideally. But yet, especially in India, I see authors promoting their books in a way that is, I mean, so unsupported actually. And I think this is, I would throw this right into the publishing arena. I would ask them, like, if you've commissioned a book and you've paid an author a certain amount of money to write it, why wouldn't you publicize it better? Why wouldn't you give the book a chance? I really, because I remember I went when Magical Women was coming out, I went to this bookshop and I said, you know, Magical Women had come out. I went to this bookshop, they're very friendly, they're lovely people and I was like, I don't see my book, where is it? And he said it was on display and I said, why isn't it on display anymore? He said, no, Chetan Bhagat's book is coming. Economics. So my point is, if bookstores and publishers are not gonna work together to give us a better chance, then how much can we do? We are, our job is to write. And not every writer promoting their book doesn't come easily to, you know, the number of DMs we get from so-called book bloggers who just want a free copy and I'm really gonna say it here. There are some very sincere ones. There are some lovely book bloggers and reviewers and I am happy to have them read my book. There are other people who just look on the lookout for free copies and freebies from publishers and they are going to put like one line review which is not even English most of the time, you know. And I am like, if you are not gonna send it out to the right people, if you're not gonna push the book. Because my question, and I've got this question has come to me for the third or the fourth time and I'm like, why am I being asked this question? I'm only the writer. It's my job to send that email with the final draft of the publisher. The promoting bit should not be on me. I should be told this is the place where you have to go to sign your books. This is the date, then you have to be on this call. I mean, on this whatever event. It shouldn't be on me. I mean, I said that ashrat is lovely. This is not a rant about ashrat please, but it is also a rant about it. I mean, it's a rant about publishing in general. It shouldn't be a writer's problem. The fact that our books are not available out there. We should be writing our next book. We shouldn't be promoting our books to this extent at least. I mean, it's lovely. I love talking to people. I love sending my books. I love doing interviews. Not talking about that part. I've rambled and I've ranted. Somebody else please take over. No, but to address this, how do we connect writers with audience? Yes, publicity budgets, publishing budgets low. But this, with our exposure to social media, there has never been a better time to be left on your own conversely. Again, it has its pros and cons. It's like what Sukanya said, you're being left to do this work instead of actually focusing on what you should be doing, which is writing, getting the next bit of the writing done. But it's an interesting way to connect and everybody is sort of doing it. Like if you look at like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in politics is using social media to connect with a voter base in some next level way. Of course, the volume of the audience that follows her is also something next level, which some may hear. I mean, hopefully that means that, you know, there'll be a future where your readers are so connected to you across the platforms that you're on, that the moment that you sort of announce that our next work is coming, the right people have already received the message. Hopefully, I don't know. Yeah, if I may, coming in as a reader of the genre and from that perspective, I mean, writers and publishing a part, I honestly feel that a lot of times we readers just like don't talk about the books that we love enough, don't recommend it a lot enough. I mean, we like it and we probably once Trey mentioned. So if we as, I mean, if you're running a book club or you have a blog or even if you have a Goodreads account or if you can spend some time, just put us, you know, recommend the books that you love to your friends and a reader, Goodreads review, you know, have discussions about these books in your book clubs rather than just always choosing, you know, quote unquote serious books or, you know, Hugo winners, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So a day will come when an Indian SF now wins Hugo. So maybe you can, that time you can get a best of both worlds. But until then we need to support our, our, the good books that are coming from here are speculative fiction writers. And things are changing, things are changing. Yeah. I think it's just hopefully going to accelerate, you know, in the coming. I also feel like the idea of it, I'm talking about specifically fantasy fiction now. It gets confused with the whole mito. Midsportation, what I call it. Yeah. Because I remember I went to the school book club and I was going to read something from Dark Things for them. And I asked them, do you want to hear, do you want me to read the bit about the Rakshasa? Should I read the bit about the werewolf? And they said the werewolf. And I was like, that's because somewhere we, it's a very long road, you know, to make our, our, why isn't a Rakshasa as, or a Rakshasi as cool as a mermaid? Why do kids today still, you know, we're still looking at Western concepts, which are cool, which is great. I love, I love mermaids and I love unicorns and variables too, but somewhere these Rakshasas and Apsaras and Yakshis are not cool enough for our kids yet. Or Apsaras are not cool enough for our kids yet. It's a very long road to make it cool for them in that sense. And somewhere this whole mythology, this whole books that have come, they're not helping, like, you know, not helping in making, helping the cool quotient, at least, where a kid of 11, who's 11 or 12 today says, I want to read that book, not Harry Potter, which is fine, please read Harry Potter. So I still read Harry Potter. I'm going to jump in. I do think that, I do think that people read a lot of speculative fiction in India. I'm particularly thinking of, I grew up in Calcutta and Bengali fiction has a whole lot of, all kinds of genre work, which, you know, I was lucky enough to watch in film form as a kid, read in different ways. And I also think that, you know, cross-genre work is interesting because somewhere these categorizations are only useful for publishers, right? A lot of work is literary and uses a lot of myth and folklore. A lot of work is, maybe there's a police procedural that's written a certain way. So I don't even beyond the point think about, you know, this being useful to anybody except genre snob and publishers and bookstores. But on Gautam's question of how to get, you know, I honestly think publishing in India is very different from, you know, if you look at, I've recently started looking at publishing, the way publishing works in the US just because I took a few workshops on writing fantasy and writing horror with the Clarion West workshop because it came online this year. And I urge anyone who wants to write speculative fiction from India to sign up, they have scholarships, they are absolutely amazing. And what I really like about that community and, you know, this really speaks to the inequality in resources that we're looking at that, you know, is across all kinds of fields, not just writing and publishing. But if you look at the amount of resources that they have that writers can access, grants, you know, communities, classes, workshops, degrees in writing, master's degrees in writing, awards, you know, full, full-fledged community. And we, you know, we can barely form a community here. We're quite lonely, I think. And we're working in silos. And I wonder what a good way to build community would be. And I think Gautam's Chenoy's point about, you know, promoting each other's work is well taken because we are a community. We do owe it to each other to support each other's work. And which is why I'm really grateful, Nikita, that you brought up, you know, everybody's work that's been published that was in Magical Women in the last year. But I also think that diaspora writers have to step up their game. I think that I'm really looking to diaspora writers who have a whole lot of, you know, big audiences. They are wonderful writers. And I think that they are also, you know, I think Shweta Thakrar, for example, has a beautiful story in Magical Women. And she is somebody who always, you know, makes it a point to talk about diversity in speculative fiction in the US. And I think that diaspora writers can do a lot of good for writers who are based in India because we know that their stories are being read. There is an audience, you know, maybe even a global audience. And, you know, my tongue is firmly in my cheek right now. And, you know, I'm looking to agents. I'm looking to mainstream publishers. I'm looking to small presses. I'm looking to everybody to seek out these stories because they are being written. They have always been written. You know, it's not like I'm thinking of even medieval South Asian fiction that the fantasies always been written in the subcontinent. So there's nothing new about it. There's no like, oh, I am, you know, in 2020 going to write the first XYZ book of this very specific subgenre. No, it's all been written. You know, we're part of a huge tradition of writing. And, you know, I do look to agents abroad, publishers abroad to seek it out. And I do, I disagree a little bit with Sukho here in that I do think it's also our job to make it known that this writing is being done. No, no, I'm not saying that it's not our job. I'm just saying it becomes only our job. Yeah, no. I take your point, absolutely. But I also think that community building is part of our, we are called to do that. And I think that you are very good at doing that. And I'm really happy to be part of this community that, you know, as a result of magical women being in existence. And without it, I probably couldn't write, you know, we all have day jobs. Nobody is getting six-figure advances. Publishing has changed. Let's face it. I mean, just one thing, like when Sukho said, you know, okay, I want to read about werewolves and somebody says that I tell them first, go read in the Pramit Das, The Devourers. Yeah. We are not werewolves and it is completely unexpected. So, you know, this shimmering twilight-y, this one, yeah, did that too. But if you really like werewolves, give this also a shot. And don't just ignore it because it's Indian. Yeah, I guess that's it. Vijay? Yeah. One last question or it's a comment which y'all could comment on, which is again talking about how best to promote our work. Varini Ji says that I think the best way is to collaborate with student communities and college-level lit-mans in order to ensure more reach for Indian author books. First, I heard of people analysing the same 50-year-old book again and again in our college magazines. Good point. I want to say plus one to Indra Das' The Devourers which is one of the most gorgeous fantasy magazines. Indra Das' The Devourers, that book got me out of the reading rut. Yes, yes. Yeah, one of the most beautiful fantasy books I've read in the last few years. Yeah, sorry, I'll let you answer that, Shuku. No, no, I said good point. I was agreeing with you about The Devourers. It got me out of a reading rut. And it's a gorgeous book. I like how we all become very solemn and very serious. Yeah. Somebody quickly asked me- The topic is like that, but it's fine. I'd like to just say that, you know, for anybody who's not read Magical Women, please go read Magical Women. Also Vijay Lakshmi, my co-motor, it also has this book called, you know, yeah, yeah. My copy is there, right? Piyar had got it by my book, this thing. And she also has a book called Strangely Familiar Tales. Please check that out. If you're looking for more recommendations on Indian SFF- Get your own Twitter list, Twitter page. You will get all your recommendations there. I mean, just this year, if you look at it for a minute, Samit Basu's Chosen Spirits was out. It's been shortlisted for the Gigi. Wonderful book, Gautam Bhatia's The Wall Was Out, and really impatiently waiting. Book two, but please check out The Wall. It's fantastic. Krishna Adeshankar's Cowherd Prince Was Out, Lavanya Lakshmi Narayan's Analogue, Virtual and Other Simulations of a Future Was Out. There's such a lot of wonderful work that's coming out, you know. And this is just from this year alone, the ones that I really enjoyed. So please read all these books. He did read Nikita's. It's not science fiction fantasy, but he should read. It must have been something he wrote. It's a funny, lovely, warm, beautiful book with a strong female character. Right. Okay, I'm not gonna say anything. Vijaya, over to you. Yeah, I think what he did was romance. We need to roast him. What? Now I have to come alive. I mean, I think we're at time for the day. So even though this is really, really nice, and I would like to keep this going, we'll have to say bye to everyone. I hope everyone will go get magical women and all these other books that we've mentioned here today and read them. Thank you, Sukanya, Shreya and Nikita for being with us. Thank you to the Hasgeek team who've done all this background work for us. Thank you so much. Thank you, Shenoy, for being an awesome creator, as always. And to the audience for all the great discussion that you all have generated with your questions. So take care, see you all. And yeah, see you in the new year. Take care, everyone. Thank you all. Thank you all so much. And even though I sounded really grumpy and exhausted, I'm quite nice. You can contact me on Instagram or Twitter. I promise I will be nice.