In a short story by Chandrika, a writer from Kerala, the protagonist, a housewife, dreams of writing poetry. The lines of her poems come to her as she chops vegetables, cleans the house, washes the dishes, and every time she thinks of something, she leaves her work, rushes to her notebook and paper, and writes it
down. One day, inspiration strikes her when she is in the shower.
She runs out, naked and dripping, oblivious of the open windows of her house, and quickly puts her lines down. As evening falls and the light begins to fade, she
writes the last few lines and just then, hears her family returning. She quickly picks up the piece of paper, tears it into bits and throws it away. The author now tells the
reader that if she wishes to read the whole poem, the only way to do so is to piece it together from the story!
Chandrika’s story is a powerful statement about the kinds of silences that still surround
women and women’s writing, not only in India but all over the world.