Source : The Hindu
Sixteen-year-old Yamini Prashanth is a published author of four works, including a book on poetry
Amid JK Rowling, Arthur Conan Doyle and a host of authors whose books line the library shelves of Vidya Mandir School, are a few volumes by author Yamini Prashanth. Why is that interesting, you ask?Because Prashanth is still a student of the school.
Author of three books, Prashanth is now making her debut in the world of published poetry with her book Beyond the Sunshine (Authorspress India). She is all of 16 years old.
Most of the poems in the book, she says, are a spontaneous flow of emotions that just happened to choose the path of poetry for expression. “None of the poems took more than two or three minutes to write. Poetry comes naturally to me. I have no clue what I am going to write before the pen hits the paper,” Prashanth says.
She has had her share of setbacks as well. While trying to get her first book published, her inbox was filled with responses like “We publish books for children and not by children.”
“I was surprised how age was a bar to decline the book. If I would have given them the manuscript without disclosing my age, they would’ve probably accepted it. I ranted about it in the TEDx also,” says Prashanth, one of the youngest TEDx speakers of India
She is also the co-author of an anonymous blog, which has poems that found a place in the book. The blog has emotional writings: a side of her which she keeps away from people.
Her poems, on the other hand, have been her way of keeping a diary. A yellow book whose cover reads ‘Today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday’ has been the bearer of her emotions and observations for the past five years. “That book made me realise that I am more of a poetry person. It contains all my writings, and as I flipped through the book, I realised that there are more poems that prose,” she adds.
Beyond the Sunshine is a collection of 54 poems — divided into eight chapters — covering a range of topics from love, and optimism to silence and anxiety.
Her favourite among them is ‘This too shall pass’, based on a story her father told her. She didn’t grasp its full meaning till several circumstances defined the poem for her.
“Another poem talks about the responsibility of the words we speak: how we should never feel insignificant, as we have words, and yet need to be careful as words can move mountains,” says the young writer has lived in more than five cities and travelled to over 26 countries.
For Prashanth, deadlines are chains to creativity. “I like writing at leisure. Even for this book, I wasn’t given a deadline. The only instruction from my publisher was that I should inform her after I complete 50 poems,” says Prashanth.
The biotechnology student, however, has no intentions of giving herself up to literature entirely. “I aspire to teach biotechnology. Writing would always be a part of me, but I would not take it as a profession as the pressure to write would kill my creativity,” she said.
Beyond the Sunshine will be released on April 22, 2018, at Odyssey book store
