Pink Pen Diaries: Episode 1 - Mona Dash

After running Writersmelon for more than a decade now, I feel it is not just enough to do things you like, it is even more important to keep doing them regularly, almost like a marathon. Writing, reading or talking about books, we at Writersmelon have always tried to re-invent ourselves for our readers.

With world coming to a standstill during the pandemic, news turning noise more often, it is indeed the company of good books and great authors that managed to keep a lot of us sane and creatively inspired.

We started Pink Pen diaries, with aspiring author Amrita Purkayastha, a culture enthusiast and someone who wears the batch of a proud Feminist. What does it all mean? Well no better way to know than to join us on Instagram @writersmelon every Wednesday at 8pm IST.

With a goal of meeting incredible authors from around the world, of course virtually via live or recorded videos on social media, we started with our very first guest yesterday. If you still care for written word like most of us do, then here’s a short account of Mona and her work that came up during the conversation. Enjoy reading (and watching) and do join us next time !

Mona Dash is an author, a beautiful poet and someone with whom all of us and especially our host for this series, Amrita could completely relate to. Both did engineering and went to the same Management school in Bhubaneshwar, India. While Amrita spends her day cruising through PowerPoints and Excel sheets in her corporate life, Mona somehow finds extremely supportive colleagues at work who attend her poetry readings and thus, she’s able to juggle between her day job and writing. Mona has published a couple of novels and poetry collections in the UK as well in India and has read out some very interesting excerpts from her work during this live session. I have tried to gather a glimpse of that through her website – https://monadash.net/- .

Untamed Heart : This is Mona’s debut novel. It is story of Mohini, struggling to hold ground between tradition and contemporaneity and her coming to terms with herself and the world around her. In Mohini’s dilemmas, we see the India existing in many tiers: the sanctimonious middle class India, the India of the emerging, educated upper class, the corporate India, the NRI India and the evolving female India. Opening at a critical moment in the protagonist’s life in New Delhi, the bustling capital of India, the novel takes the reader through a labyrinth of Mohini’s past, her present, her roller coaster emotions, her complex family life and her uncertain future.

A Roll of the Dice : ‘A story of loss, love and genetics’. This book is her memoir. A story spanning ten years, records in extraordinary detail, both medical and personal, Mona’s long and arduous journey to motherhood, reminding us that children do not always come as naturally as leaves to a tree. With an introduction by Professor Bobby Gaspar of Great Ormond Street Hospital, a pioneer in gene therapy, the details of SCID (Severe Combined Immuno-Deficiency) meticulously recorded is a must-read for anyone facing a similar set of challenges. A memoir with a beating heart, the book makes a vital contribution to literature in the field.

Mona read out some heart touching poetry from her collections,

A certain way : Contains poems that explore religious, spiritual and mythological themes.

The Immigrant’s song : You can read the poem here,

I hope Mona and her work inspired you to take on writing and take on the world in general. A quick google search, landed this quote from Goodreads by an American historian & author Aberjhani.

“A world without poetry and art would be too much like one without birds or flowers: bearable but a lot less enjoyable.”

Stay tuned for the next session !