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These book lovers are trying to create platforms to promote Indian literature
Updated On: 02 April, 2023 11:09 AM IST | Mumbai | Yusra Husain
A viral Twitter conversation recently asked the vital question: What is the Indian version of Goodreads? It may still be niche, but there are a few book lovers trying to offer you the same space for desi reads
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Prakruti Maniar, 29, co-founded Purple Pencil Project in 2019 while pursuing her Masters in Chicago. The platform has 360 original book reviews and 600 essays. Maniar is also building a digital library. Pic/Satej Shinde
Prakruti Maniar was baffled when she was handed over English translations of the poetic verses of Gulzar and Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s iconic Hindi poem Madhushala during her Masters in English literature at Mithibai College back in 2017. The course module was to learn about Indian literature and Maniar chose to read the text in the original script itself. “Surprisingly, I too had not thought of Indian literature outside of English,” says the 29-year-old, adding, “because growing up in the 1990s meant having a command over English was a functional, economical and aspirational need. This came at the cost of uprooting and disassociating from our mother tongues.”
But that thought kept troubling Maniar. In the first year of her MA in digital humanities at Chicago’s Loyola University, the Malad West resident started work on a research paper titled Creating a Database of Indian Literature: Theory and Practice. This came from a realisation that the definition of Indian literature was highly westernised, looked at from an American and European perspective and did not feature Indian authors, women authors or regional language books even in a simple Google search. The language lover converted her words into a website, Purple Pencil Project (PPP), and hopes to make it the Indian Goodreads giving desi authors, the languages and indie publishers a deserving space and voice.
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