Fates and furies | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Fates and furies | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Pooja Pillai |Updated: July 20, 2019 11:30:43 am

Fates and furies

Anger is a powerful emotion, but it seems a little reductive that a show of female power should occur mainly within this paradigm of violence and retribution.

The imaginative world-building attempts in many of the stories is admirable, but they frequently come off as laboured.(Source: Amazon.in)

In a 1990 interview with the Paris Review, Margaret Atwood said, “Men often ask me, ‘Why are your female characters so paranoid?’ It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.” Her words resonate with many, particularly in the wake of the #MeToorevelations last year. Indeed, occasionally over those turbulent few months, it felt like the relationship between various genders would always be marked by mistrust and paranoia. Turning the tables on their (mostly male) abusers appears to be one function that some of the stories in Magical Women serve. This short story anthology, edited by Sukanya Venkataraghavan, writer of Dark Things (2016), is about what it means to be powerful and magical, especially for a woman. As Venkataraghavan writes in her Editor’s Note, “We need to tell these tales embedded in our culture and imagination, about magic we have forgotten we possess, or are told we don’t, because the world is afraid of a female who knows she is powerful.” And so there are stories like ‘Gul’ by Shreya Ila Anasuya, ‘Gandaberunda’ by SV Sujatha, ‘Earth and Evolution Walk Into A Bar…’ by Sejal Mehta, ‘Tridevi Turbulence’ by Trisha Das, Venkataraghavan’s own ‘The Rakshasi’s Rose Garden’ and ‘Apocalyptica’ by Krishna Udayasankar, in which a woman (or women) takes back her power, even if it means following a path of destruction.