1950s-1960s
Writing for her college literary magazine the Minor Bird in Chatham College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Prema was encouraged when her story Ink, won the best prize for writing.
On her return to India she began writing short stories and serialised mystery novels and researching the best places to publish them. As her friend and fellow writer, Shashi Despande said, “If today, there are many more publishers for novels than there were some years back, it is an entirely different picture as far as short stories go.”
The market for short-stories was limited – from publishing in the Sainik Samachar, an army newsletter, Illustrated Weekly, where Kushwant Singh encouraged writers, to local Sunday newspapers like the Deccan Herald – and Prema spent as much time finding avenues to get her stories published as she did writing them.
International markets were no easier. Reader’s Digest International and Short Story International, published by International Cultural Exchange, did publish her stories alongside those of Woody Allen, Paul Theroux and Doris Lessing, but there was no income to be made from her profession.
Teaching, working as a drama critic at the Indian Express, and juggling being a mother and wife was work enough. She would often write after 11pm when her children were asleep, only to be up again at six in the morning to make breakfast and packed lunches and start her daily routine.
Theatre was still her first love in these early years.
The Songbyrde Foundation, on the first of November 2024, released Going Home, on the day of the annual festival of Diwali, to commemorate the publication of The Paper Package, written during her college years about the festival of lights. It is the first in a three-volume set of short-story anthologies dedicated to publishing the complete works of the author.
1970s-1980s
Continuing this merry-go-round through the Seventies and Eighties, she had some respite in 1980 when the last of her children finished high school and she had a little more time to focus on her writing.
She was commissioned to create her first anthology of short stories, The Blue Convertible, by The Writers Workshop, and also published her play Gandhi, Man of the Millions.
1990s-2000
Torn between working as a playwright and short-story writer, Prema found new direction when her husband was posted to Tiruchirapalli in 1981, the city closest to her ancestral village Angarai in south India. She found a deep sense of belonging and moved to writing short stories more actively, a prelude to her next solo anthology A Fine Gift For Lakshmi. As many critics commented, there was a real “south-Indianess” to the stories.
Returning to Bangalore in 1985 as an empty-nester with a retired husband, Prema did a third degree, in Business Administration, at the age of 60, topping her class. She used drama to teach communications, integrating role-play and becoming a leadership coach. Rahul Dravid, a friend’s son from the Indiranagar neighbourhood, and the captain of the Indian cricket team at the time, was one of her many mentees.
Prema wrote a few more unpublished plays – My Dear Ba, dedicated to Gandhi’s wife Kasturba, and The Waiting Room, a two-hander about how two strangers share their life stories in a waiting-room at a railway station.
Even as her plays were getting international recognition and her short-story writing was mixed with essays on life, a segue to finding a publisher for her first novel, Water on a Lotus Leaf, was part of her transition to a new life stage.
In the late 1990s she had to dedicate most of her energy to the rapidly declining health of her husband, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease and had a mild stroke.
2000-2017
Nearly a decade of mourning, post her husband’s death in 2000, resulted in the shift to writing short stories and short plays. Her work became more bold, experimental, challenging norms and chasing forgotten dreams.
She started Songbyrde Publishing in the 2000s and worked with writer’s collectives publishing new works, lending her name and experience to their creative energies.
In 2012, her final solo anthology Butterfly Dreams was published. In 2013, she published her final collected anthology with Inklinks, a group of women writers in Bangalore.
Solo Anthologies
The Blue Convertible
The Writers Workshop, 1985
A Fine Gift From Lakshmi
Foreword by Malathi Rao, reader in English, Delhi University, professor of English, Miranda House, New Delhi. Launched at the Oxford Bookstore, Leela Palace Hotel, Bangalore by Prakash Belawadi.
Songbyrde Publications, 2007
Butterfly Dreams
Launched at the Bangalore International Centre by Prakash Belawadi, Ammu Joseph and SG Vasudev, master of ceremonies, Jyothi Subbarao
Songbyrde Publications, 2012
Collected Anthologies
Many Rooms Many Voices
A collection of short stories. Edited and introduced by Dr. Cheriyan Alexander, foreword by Shashi Deshpande, preface by M Veerappa Moily, former Chief Minister of Karnataka. Launched at Shankar’s Book Store, Bangalore.
Katha Lok, Bangalore 2000
Bhelpuri
A collection of short stories from Inklinks women writers from Bangalore. Foreword by Shashi Deshpande. Launched at the British Library in Bangalore and unveiled by professor Malathi Rao.
Songbyrde Publications, 2009
The Shrinking Woman and other stories
Edited by Meenakshi Varma & Annie Chandy Mathew. Launched at the Reliance TimeOut Bookstore, Bangalore and unveiled by Teresa Bhattacharya, former Chief Minister of Karnataka.
Unison Publications, 2009
Door In the Wall
A collection of short stories from Inklinks Women Writers from Bangalore
Notion Press, 2013
