Kiran Manral's Blog, page 18
December 17, 2017
In the Verve: AN ERA OF EMPOWERMENT: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS GIVING WOMEN A VOICE
Social media has given women strength in numbers and the courage to raise their voices. Leveraging this new-found power to the utmost, they are fearlessly sharing their stories to great impact
A few weeks ago, the internet had its Arab Spring of sorts. Women across countries and continents were posting their tales of sexual harassment under the hashtag #MeToo. On Facebook, Twitter and on blogs, #MeToo became a rallying call to women — and men — to state and acknowledge the very real elephant in the room — that of the universality of sexual harassment. It began, quite innocuously, with an article by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker, which exposed the powerful Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein’s exploitation of women in the industry over several years, with actions ranging from harassment and exposure, and most damningly to rape. The article had a domino effect. It not only effectively destroyed Weinstein’s career, but also led to a cascade of similar accusations against not just powerful men, who abused young women, but also against powerful men in Hollywood, like Kevin Spacey, who abused younger men.
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In the Scroll today: Publishers insist writers stick to one genre. But what if they don’t want to be a ‘genre author’?
Well-meaning folk in the publishing world shake their heads disapprovingly. Stick to a single genre, they advise me. You will confuse your readers. Your readers pick up a book by you, expecting a sunny romance with the mandatory happy ending complete with doves and violins in the background, only to get blindsided by a spooky tale. Will they ever trust you again? Dour marketing teams step in, faces so grim one might think they’d spent the morning drowning puppies. Marketing a multi-genre author is difficult, they say, your books can’t be slotted conveniently on one shelf, they get scattered. Readers who might want to read older books might be disappointed when they realise the previous work is nothing like what they’ve just read. You’re dividing your audience. It hurts your “author brand.”
Read the entire article here
Of Mile-high Manspreading: In the Times of India today
In the @timesofindia today: In a widely shared tweet, author Kiran Manral wrote about how travelling alone as a woman was a nightmare. “There’s the leg spreader, the elbow into your breast, the hand that slinks from the back around the side,” she tweeted. Manral told TOI that she was reminded of incidents when she was in her 20s and 30s. “I didn’t have social media back then. I never confronted anyone. I would just give them a dirty look. I am 46 now, so I am left alone.”
Despite these policies, Indian fliers — male or female —don’t score too high on etiquette. “When you are travelling in a plane, contact with another individual is a no-no,” adds Manral. “This whole thing is about not respecting personal boundaries.”
Read the entire article here
At the Femina Project Eve Andheri Store Launch panel discussion
Honoured to be among the six inspirational women invited by Femina to speak at their panel discussion on success stories and our journey. At the FeminaProjectEve panel discussion last evening, at the launch of the Project Eve Andheri store with Miss India and IPL host Rochelle Rao tabla maestro Anuradha Pal director of Nil Batey Sanaata and Bareilly ki Barfi Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari Editor Femina Desiree De Andrade TV host and anchor Mini Mathur and fashion designer to bollywood Sonaakshi Raaj Thank you Tanya Chaitanya and Desiree de Andrade for inviting me. It was a pleasure to be there.
December 13, 2017
The Married Feminist this week: What We Women Really Need in a Marriage is a Wife!
All the married ladies in the house, I have a simple question for you. In your marriage, who is the one in-charge of maintaining a social life, keeping up social interaction with friends and family and making sure birthdays are remembered, festive greetings are dispensed and keeping track of the developments of the lives of near and dear. Ah, now that we are clear that the ladies are in a majority on this one, it might as well be an acknowledged fact that women are the ones in a marriage who take on the bulk of the emotional labour.
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We’re the ones saddled with the listening, caring, organising, coordinating, and all the drama that accompanies this job function. It must be so nice to sit with one’s feet up, and let the drama unfold around one and be completely detached from all of it.
While the male partner in a marriage (I write primarily from the heterosexual perspective of a marriage, for the simple reason that this is my personal experience), might be great at managing the kids in their extracurricular sporting activities, or helping with the groceries, etc, it is the little nitty-gritty that goes into managing the day-to-day that they seem glaringly oblivious too. The keeping in touch with family, remembering birthdays and anniversaries, all the coordination of pick up and drop, school PTAs, play dates and what have yours invariably is hefted onto the daily schedule of the wife. As a friend said wryly the other day, as she juggled between two children to be picked and dropped to different sporting activities and dinner to be made, groceries to be shopped for, and more, “What I really need is a wife.”
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November 27, 2017
In the India Today Woman: Embrace your sexuality
Why women need to shed their inhibitions and come out of the sexual shell in order to be liberated.
Kiran Manral
Author, Mumbai
Of all the disservices that we women do to ourselves, the most common is that we do not consider ourselves sexual creatures. Blame it on the conditioning we’ve been slapped with all through our growing years and add to it the Madonna-whore dichotomy that the patriarchy imposes on us. The fear of being judged for being sexual creatures makes most women play down their sexual selves and desires.
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On CJP.org: Feminism and the Rights of the Indian HomemakerWithin the Home, Her Rights are a Work in Progress
#feminism #home-makers #patriarchy | join us
Feminism has had its own journey across the Indian subcontinent and touched different women differently. In this exclusive blog, author Kiran Manral examines the evolution of feminism and its impact on the Indian homemaker.
The feminist movement, a movement for the equality of genders in all aspects, is not new to India. In fact, the first phase of the feminist movement in our country began in the mid eighteenth century when voices began to speak out against the barbaric practice of Sati, followed by the initiation of women into the freedom movement, and interestingly, seeing the participation of women not just in the non violent movement but also in the combat positions with the Rani of Jhansi regiment in the Indian National Army. This was followed by the post independence movement, which sought to give women the right to equal wages for equal work, right to education, equal political rights, as well as the right to inheritance and property amongst others.
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November 26, 2017
An interview on the ProEves site
Let’s hear from Kiran Manral who published her first book, The Reluctant Detective in 2011. Since then, she has published eight books across genres till date. Her books include romance and chicklit with Once Upon A Crush (2014), All Aboard (2015), Saving Maya (2017); horror with The Face at the Window (2016) and nonfiction with Karmic Kids (2015), A Boy’s Guide to Growing Up (2016) and True Love Stories (2017).
Her short stories have been published on Juggernaut, in magazines like Verve and Cosmopolitan, and have been part of anthologies like Chicken Soup for the Soul, Have a Safe Journey (2017) and Boo (2017). Her articles and columns have appeared in the Times of India, Tehelka, DNA, Yowoto, Shethepeople, TheDailyO, Scroll, Buzzfee, New Woman, Femina, Verve, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Conde Nast Traveller, DB Post, The Telegraph, the Asian Age, iDiva, People, Sakal Times and more. She was shortlisted for the Femina Women Awards 2017 for Literary Contribution. She is a TEDx speaker and a mentor with Vital Voices Global Mentoring Walk 2017.
Read the rest here.
November 24, 2017
Bombaywaali with Pooja Shetty Deora
Founder of Imagica and Director of Adlabs Entertainment Limited spoke to SheThePeople.TV’s Ideas editor, Kiran Manral, at this month’s edition of Bombaywaali. Deora has set up India’s first IMAX, its first theme park IMAGICA, and has produced various movies like ‘Tere Bin Laden’ and ‘Rita’.
On starting IMAX
My father was a technical science-related business, and I realised it is not for me. They have 90 per cent market share, what will I do? Can I do something else? I always wondered.
Six months before I graduated, my father said that he wanted to set up the first IMAX experience in India. He asked me if I wanted to join, and I said of course. My father had done the ground work in terms of identifying the land, we came in at the finishing stages. My father is good at the big picture, the smaller aspects and building the organisation. Hiring people was left to us. It was a great learning experience. I had a similar experience with IMAGICA, where I had more responsibility.
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November 23, 2017
In Scroll: ‘Why I’m not ashamed to be called a chick lit author (and you shouldn’t be either)’
Yesterday · 08:30 am
Kiran Manral
My very first published book, I must confess, had a green stiletto on a pink cover. My second had a lipstick and a heart. The third had a girl in a bikini. I was, to my consternation and confusion, turning into that terrifyingly “puerile” creature – a “chick lit” author.
This rather tarnished position of the chick lit author really hit home when, at an august gathering, I was asked what I write, in much the same tone as one might ask a sufferer whether they were the carriers of a life-threatening infectious disease. A helpful soul in the immediate vicinity contributed, rather loudly at that, “chick lit.”
There was a perceptible freeze in the atmosphere. Folks edged away from me like they might from someone who had just removed the machete she carried around in her oversized handbag for moments like these. A brown tan hobo, if you must know, with wonderful grainy leather. The hand bag. We chick lit authors remember these details.
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