The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) is geared up for City Scripts – the second urban writing festival that celebrates writing in the city.
The ‘Writers in the City’ seminar, hosted by the IIHS as part of the festival, showcased Tamil writer C.S. Lakshmi and Indian novelist Kiran Nagarkar under one roof. For an hour, the two regaled the audience with witty anecdotesand unabashedly shared experiences of their own creative journeys as writers in the city.
When asked if she thought her writing empowered women, C.S. Lakshmi, who writes under the pseudonym ‘Ambai’, said, “Before we start doling out the term, let us asses what ‘empowerment’ really means in our country. We hand women sewing machines and kitchenware and call this empowerment. Every feminist writer strives to break this stereotype. I call it breaking the rules.”
The seminar celebrates the works of writers who have lived in the city. Kiran Nagarkar, one of the most influential novelists in the country, whose Ravan & Eddie trilogy unfolds within the backdrop of harsh but vibrant Mumbai, said, “At a certain point, the writers in the city become the writers of the city because they’ve trudged through the gritty underbelly of the city and witnessed its horrors.”
City Scripts will be held from February 3 to 5 on the IIHS campus in Sadashivnagar.
