Paradise Prose is currently dormant, as I’m busy getting through university reading and preparation. Thank you for your patience!
All articles filed in Writing
Home: A Poem
I wrote this poem in light of the events in the news recently that have made the word ‘home’ a politically charged one, and also as a memory of my personal experiences that put into question what home might be.
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An English Literature Workshop with Myself, Age 14
Humbling, funny and cringeworthy – that was my experience of writing this scene imagining myself as a mentor to a teenage version of myself. For all the earnest young writers and English students out there!
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The Dress: A Fairytale…Or Is It? – A Short Story by Shreya Manna
In childhood, it’s possible for us to see, even believe, in the magic of fairytales. But as we grow older, there’s no reason why we can’t take our grown-up problems and laugh at them, thanks to the superpower that being human gives us: the power to tell stories. This fairytale is really a story I wrote for myself, to capture the circus of our minds that only we can hear.
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Unperfection, A Poem
Unperfection by Shreya Manna Teaching myself how to unperfection Reminds me of that time I tried to do A water slide and chickened out only To sheepishly return because The queue I spotted on the other side Was way too long. And I was hoping To return to earth sometime very soon. In the little…
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Sapling in the Woods (A Poem)
Beneath my feet are crunching leaves, martyrs to the world’s law, And above me the canopy, shaking leafy branches in a tribal dance, Like a million green eyelashes in the sky’s eyes Nobody is listening. The gnarled limbs of the trees spread to claim the sky Gather the sun like gold, loot, I look up…
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Waterfall (A Poem by Shreya Manna)
Sometimes I feel like a waterfall wrestling with gravity I am heavy and torrential and endlessly crashing against granite. Somehow I spill into the canals dug by words, Slowing, a stream, rolling along soft clay. What I see is a stream of consciousness moving forward. What I see is the endless play of elements as…
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Dear God, Why Did You Make The Night? (A Poem)
It shocks me beyond words to think of the horror that the girls in the Muzaffarpur children’s home in Bihar have faced. This poem cannot come close to expressing the damage that such sexual, mental and physical violence does. Nevertheless, I had to write about it. This poem is for those girls and their immeasurable…
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A Flash Fiction Experiment: The Boy in the Glass Case
Monday afternoon, you step into the clamour of the school bus. You walk past the boys from the younger years busy with their usual jostling and jabbering. Peals of laughter pierce the air, mysterious objects are thrown around, and someone spills a packet of crisps on the floor. The older ones at the back are…
Read More‘Unaccustomed Earth’: Lahiri and The Subtle Art of Short Stories
It is rare to find that one book on my reading list leads so effortlessly into the next one, but no sooner had I emerged from Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ did I stumble upon ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ by Jhumpa Lahiri, opening with this vivid epigraph (above). Long having claimed her place on my ‘Favourite Authors’ shelf, Lahiri brings her skill with the short story form to a life of travel and rootlessness.
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