A lifetime dedicated to writing plays and short stories
Writing over a period of seven decades, Prema Sastri is considered a pioneering Indian author writing in English.
Primarily known for her avant-garde short stories, and gripping three-act historical plays, Prema is featured as an author and playwright in the Who’s Who of the top 100 Indian authors writing in English by India’s Sahitya Akademi.
Prema began her career as an writer in the 1950s at Chatham College, Pittsburgh.
The Minor Bird, the student literary magazine, published her first short story A Paper Package.
In 1985, the Writer’s Workshop published The Blue Convertible, her first solo collection of short-stories.
The first edition of A Fine Gift For Lakshmi, published in 2007, sold out in a few months.
She published her last anthology of short stories, Butterfly Dreams, in 2012, five years before she passed away.
Shivaji and Gandhi establish Prema as a trailblazer
Prema went on to writing and directing plays with the Bangalore Little Theatre. She later started her own production company, Kalidasa Theatres.
Her first play, Shivaji, published in 1974 under her pen-name Lata Narain, played to packed audiences.
Produced by Kalidasa Theatres, the play debuted at the Ravindra Kalakshetra and toured across India.
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Coronation Tricentenary Celebrations Committee released the play and commissioned its production in New Delhi. That same year, the play won a national award.
In 1987, The Writer’s Workshop once again published her play Gandhi: Man of the Millions. Kalidasa Theatres debuted the play in Bangalore, at the Ravindra Kalakshetra.
With both Shivaji and Gandhi capturing the national imagination, Prema established herself as a pioneering Indian woman of letters in English.
London and New York showcase her literary mastery
In 1994, Prema’s one-act play Across the Border made its debut performance in Watermans Arts Centre in London. Set on the border of an unnamed country, with unnamed characters – a Brigadier and a General, with two foot soldiers – the story is a universal tale of the futility of war. The play received rave reviews, standing ovations, awards for direction and acting, and brought some in the audience to tears.
In New York, the Pan Asian Repetory Theatre did a reading of the play with Madhur Jaffrey in the role of Kasturba.
Groundbreaking work with writers in English in India
In her later years, Prema was an active member of Katha Lok. This informal group of writers in English include both published and unpublished writers. Writers meet and read their stories, get instant feedback, and listen to authors sharing their experiences. The group published Many Rooms Many Voices as a collaborative venture.
Prema also was an active member of Inklinks, a writer’s collective focusing on women writers in English. The collective published two anthologies of short stories, Bhelpuri and Door In the Wall, which featured Prema’s stories.
Embracing the digitisation of print, Prema’s novellas Water on a Lotus Leaf and Where Peacocks Fly were first published online by Induswomanwriting as serialised chapters of the books. She also contributed short articles, children’s stories and a few short stories to the collective when it was started in 2009.
In 2017, the writers in collective paid touching tributes to Prema as an inspiration and pioneering author of Indian literature written in English.
The Songbyrde Foundation has just released Going Home, the first volume of three anthologies covering her work between 1950-1960. In the second volume, her short stories are written between 1970 and 2000; in the final volume, her work covers stories written between 2000 and 2017.
