KITAAB

In 1987, the year after she turned 40, Pamela Manasi got her big break when Dharamyug published her story ‘Jagtu’. Dharmyug was perhaps the most respected Hindi weekly of the time, published by The Times of India Group, and a major platform for Hindi short fiction writers. This was where you noticed and got noticed. Once this happened, the world of Hindi literature opened up for Manasi, who then wrote a string of critically acclaimed stories, published in all the big Hindi magazines of the ’80s and ’90s, such as Saptahik Hindustan, Sarika, India Today Hindi, Kahaniyan and, of course, Dharmyug. But this journey had not been easy.

“For a number of years, I wrote short stories and just kept them with me, until a friend convinced me to send them to papers and magazines for publication.” This, Manasi found out, was far more difficult than she’d imagined. With the great success of Hindi writing and magazines, something else was brewing in the world of Hindi literature in the ’70s and ’80s. Successful writers, some of the biggest names in the industry, were divided into cliques, and if you were not part of any of these groups, it was difficult to break in and get published. Matters became more difficult when some of these writers went on to become editors of the best literary magazines of the time, thereby controlling whose writing would find a voice. Several writers who did not belong to any group, like Manasi, lost out in the bargain. “There were several rejections in the beginning,” she says, with a smile, adding, “and sometimes I would not understand why. I remember this one time, a very famous editor sent my story back, saying he liked it and that I was a ‘born storyteller’ but he needed to see more of my work. I did not understand why — he had space for one story per issue and it’s not like he would have published several of my stories in successive issues. Then why, if he liked my story, did he not publish it?”

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