I wrote this story to retell a well-known (or so I thought) episode in the epic Ramayana — the story of Shurpankaha, who was Ravan’s sister, and whose nose Lakshman cut off because he was humiliated by her interest in him. Here is the Wikipedia entry of the story. I always thought that was a little shady (I mean, why cut off her nose?) so I wanted to reimagine and tell the story in a way that made sense to me. Writing the story was an incredibly satisfying process — my body was literally buzzing with excitement as I wrote.

I shared the story with friends and family, and to my surprise, only two people out of the twenty or so people who read the story picked up the Ramayana angle. Which was interesting too — one, because this was a bunch of good lessons for my budding inner artist. And two, clearly people aren’t as into hindu mythology as I thought. Which is nice somehow.