Her story, her power!
Byline: Bhuvana Shridhar
In a city powered by code, caffeine and constant motion, another current runs just as strong. Behind the glass towers and gridlocked evenings, Bangalore’s women are turning pages that echo with goddesses, grit and self-discovery. This Women’s Day, the spotlight shifts to stories where women are not footnotes in myth or society, but the pulse at its centre.
From ancient scriptures to crowded inner-city lanes, a powerful literary wave is taking shape. Different canvases, distinct voices, one unmissable thread – women reclaiming narrative space. In Bangalore’s buzzing book clubs and bedside stacks, these stories are sparking conversations that are bold, intimate and unapologetically female.
Against this background, Our Bangalore reached out to a few such authors who are bringing fresh perspectives to the page and sketching women characters in a new light, often drawing richly from myth and fiction.
Shadows of a sunbound
Taking her cue from ancient Hindu scriptures and epics, particularly the Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads and the Mahabharata, city author and former investment professional Saiswaroopa Iyer has turned the spotlight firmly on the woman at the heart of the story. Her recent novel Saranyu, Surya’s Wife is a sweeping mythic retelling that centres on female identity and self-realisation.
In a city that has shown a robust appetite for myth-based fiction, Iyer’s work arrives as both revival and reinvention. She breathes vivid life into an ancient tale, threading it with emotion and urgency while drawing out women’s inner voices that often remain muted in traditional narratives.
Through Saranyu’s journey, from a radiant goddess bound to the Sun to a woman who creates her own shadow, Chhaya, and steps into her own power, Iyer examines a woman’s right to define herself. The narrative confronts imposed identities and underscores the strength found not just in brilliance, but in embracing one’s shadows.
“I wrote Saranyu because I wanted to find the silence between the verses. I wanted to explore what she felt as she stood before the blinding radiance of the Sun, and why she chose the solitude of Tapasya and explore her self-rediscovery. It is high time we reclaim the feminine perspective, not to ‘give voice’ (for that would be an arrogant claim), but to unearth the wisdom we have lost for decades,” she says.
Reading Saranyu feels like holding up a mirror. Its themes of personal struggle, aspiration and the urge to carve out identity on one’s own terms resonate sharply. Saranyu stepping away from Surya’s blinding light to create her own shadow strikes a chord with many women walking the fine line between independence and tradition.
For Iyer, the mission is clear – place women at the centre of the myth, and let their complexities lead. Her storytelling leans into self-definition and empowerment, where ancient lore meets contemporary dilemmas with striking clarity and purpose.
Known for her Draupadi and Rukmini, Iyer’s mythological retelling is a definite pick for this year.
She chooses to rise
If Saiswaroopa Iyer turns to the Sun for metaphor, Nitya Neelakantan looks within. Another narrative stirring animated conversations in book clubs and across online forums is Mahagauri. In this vivid mythic novel, Neelakantan threads women’s stories with unmistakable feminist undertones, placing transformation, not divinity, at the heart of the plot.
For Neelakantan, Mahagauri is not merely a mythic retelling. It is an inward journey. This is not a goddess descending from the heavens to dazzle the mortal world, but a character negotiating the weight of everyday choices. The metamorphosis is not celestial. It is deeply personal.
Mahagauri rises from silence, from doubt, from the burden of expectation. She confronts fear, reclaims her voice and learns to inhabit her own power. She does not transform because she is blessed. She transforms because she chooses to. And that distinction gives the story its edge.
Neelakantan’s literary contribution feeds directly into contemporary feminist conversations, highlighting strands of Indian feminism that are rooted in culture yet fiercely self-aware. Her intent is clear – she wants readers, especially young women, to recognise their own steps as acts of self-definition.
“Women who write about women are changing the way people perceive characters,” she says.
Originally trained in hotel management, Neelakantan moved from corporate training roles to writing and wellness after leaving her job. Her fiction often blends Tamil folklore, ancient alchemy and formidable female protagonists, drawing from temple traditions and history.
Her earlier works, Rudrabaan and Nabapashanam, carry the stamp of mythological fiction and fantasy with bite. In Mahagauri, that bite turns introspective, proving once again that in Bangalore’s myth-loving circles, the goddess is no longer distant. She is thinking, choosing and rising.
Grit in every page
While some writers mine distant histories or lean into non-fiction for material, Banu Mushtaq turns her gaze to the street, the courtyard and the cramped inner rooms of lived experience. Her canvas is not celestial. It is immediate.
She draws from the raw, everyday realities of Muslim and Dalit women she has witnessed and read about, grounding her fiction in voices often pushed to the margins.
At the heart of Mushtaq’s work lies a simple but piercing observation. “Women have always been good at understanding others, but harsh on themselves. We hold ourselves up to Olympic level benchmark for everything. I want women to be unfiltered in their kindness towards themselves,” she says.
Her short-story collection Heart Lamp, and its Kannada counterpart Edeya Hanate, which won the International Booker Prize, stands as a stark mirror to women’s lives within these communities. The stories capture pain, resilience and the quiet resistance woven into daily survival. There is no gloss here, no ornamental myth. Instead, Mushtaq’s prose is steeped in social memory, activism and empathy.
Readers have responded in kind. The collection has been praised for its raw, unfiltered portrayal of women’s lives and for what many describe as its “chaotic, crowded real-India” storytelling, intimate in detail yet universal in emotion. It is fiction that does not look away. It insists that you look closer.
In a literary landscape where myth is being reclaimed and goddesses are being reimagined, Mushtaq reminds readers that the everyday woman, navigating layered inequalities with grit and grace, carries her own epic.