Once upon a time…

 … in a congested city far, far away, there lived a little girl. She was brought up on a healthy dose of stories. Ghost stories, tales about groups of friends (Dil Chahta Hai style), childhood stories, narratives of adventure, mystery and magic. And of course, Disney manufactured fairytales. The stories came from very different sources, as different as the storytellers.

She heard them from her grandfather, her mother, her grand-aunt, her building’s watchman, and even the maid who came to clean the house twice a day. Elaborate plots with princes and princesses, about evil step mothers and flying horses, about crows that could talk, and dragons with kind hearts.

As she grew up, she realised that she could make up stories too. She could fly away to fantastic lands, get the man of her dreams, have incredible adventures— all through her imagination.

Then came a time when she started writing these stories down. From single lined notebooks in between classes, she graduated to word documents on her laptop. What started as timid meanderings gradually became a strong, confident voice.

These days she writes when she isn’t studying, or marking essays, or working on papers of her own.

Will she make it? She nods confidently. Failure is not an option. Never was, she says.