Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Documenting a viewpoint Sadhna Shanker

An Indian Revenue Service officer, now posted as Commissioner of Income Tax, New Delhi, Sadhna, besides being a wife and a mother, has hosted and acted in tele-shows on Doordarshan, has a set of academic degrees to parade, co-authored a book in three languages, has been scripting articles for Indian and international newspapers and journals besides running a regular column in the Hindi daily, Dainik Bhaskar.

Also, she is dressing up her first novel and has just recently compiled her articles under the title, ‘When The Parallels Meet’.

An achiever in her own right, Sadhna, underplays her achievements, saying: “I think all women are great at multi-tasking. In India, even if you are a stay-at-home woman, you are doing many things at a time.”

Sadly, she says with a laugh, “Our men are bad at it.”

This evolving of roles has a direct connect with a changing India. “We are in exciting times, fast-paced and madly interconnected,” she says. Things that would take five years to happen are taking place in two years’ time, she elaborates.

So, almost all her compiled articles in the latest book weave in this transformation in simple words.

Opening up a world that shows a small-town youngster’s discovery of the Internet to a friend winning the custody of her child in a messy divorce, to villagers sending kids out to the cities to study, and more. Her 168-page book, published by Alokparv Prakashan, cans these waves of change.

“A lot of this is economy-driven. The economic boom has given a lot of confidence to our people, including youngsters,” says this alumna of Japan’s Yokohama National University. With so much happening around us, it is then not a surprise that a lot of people have put pen to paper. Personally, turning into an author has helped her become more sensitive towards her surroundings, unconsciously. “I now look at the layers,” she says.

Enjoying her stint as a part-time writer, Shanker is giving final touches to her debut novel.

“It is about three friends and their choices, not necessarily of their liking. I feel that my mother’s generation lived for others while my daughter’s generation lives for themselves. But our generation, now living the ’40s, has lived for both others and themselves. My story will ring around this idea,” she explains.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail