Chennai: My perspective about how a senior citizen should live changed after I met 83-year-old Mangala Kandur. The writer is a bundle of wit and energy that can never fizzle out.
Mangala is an independent woman; she lives alone at her residence in Teynampet. She is quite active on Facebook (“It was made for grandmothers like us,” she laughs heartily. “I often post my writings, selfies and photos with my friends.”)
She does her household chores with ease. Did I forget to mention how tech-savvy she is? Mangala’s fingers zoom across the screen as she sends me a message on WhatsApp and later accepts my FB friend request.
PENNING THOUGHTS
Mangala has written over seven books in Telugu, has contributed to many Telugu weekly and monthly magazines. How did her spark for writing begin? “I started contributing to the readers column in a Telugu magazine,” says Mangala simply. “I wrote letters to editors, essays and short stories.”
THE PROJECT
For the past 40 years, Mangala’s passion for writing has never dampened. One of her interesting literary works is ‘Navaraga Maalika’, a Telugu book she co-wrote with nine writers. She explains how the project came up.
Mangala has a wide group of friends and an active social life (Her 1,400+ FB friends and posts about her outings to Madras Book Club, cinema club and literary groups are a testament).
Naturally, whenever she shared her writings, positive comments flooded her FB timeline. Eventually, she started getting requests from people and a group of nine women got together for a compilation.
“They asked me if they could join to write stories,” she recollects. “I said, why not? We started writing and shared drafts over emails and discussed the plot through phone calls.”
What did they write about? “Different subjects like health, challenges faced by the visually impaired, retirement,” says Mangala. “I wrote about transgenders.”
She adds, “The stories are based on experiences of writers but they have merged it with fiction.” Once the book was published, the writers were delighted. “Many have taken up writing as a career,” smiles Mangala.
PLETHORA OF THEMES
The subjects she writes about might be considered taboo for some but for her, its a way of offering solutions. “I write about a problem and see if I can give a solution,” she explains. “I often tell people to seek out solutions.”
This urge has driven her to pen down sensitive topics such as the trauma faced by victims of sexual abuse. “I have written three stories regarding this,” says Mangala.
Her mindset changed when she lived in the US for over three years with her daughter. “I saw people empathise with such victims whereas, in India, society treats them cheaply. Many end up committing suicide.” It was also in America that Mangala learned the art of being independent.
83 GOING ON 18
“Many believe that when you are old you need to be dependent but that is wrong,” she asserts. “We want freedom. My children support this and tell me to enjoy life. But to be independent, it is essential to take care of your health and wealth from young age.”
Mangala also has another skill: handicrafts. “I make handbags, curtains, hats, dolls,” she says. “I also reused milk packets and made them into handicraft products.” For Mangala, age is just a number.