Hi there,

Welcome to my online home. Glad to have you visit.

Mmm … so where do I begin? At the beginning, of course. I’ve wanted to be a writer at least from the time I was twelve. Remember saying that out loud to a gathering of teachers and classmates as part of the obligatory what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up speech.

Writer? Uh-oh. Nice. Are you … um … going to write like Madhavikutty? Concentrate on your studies. That’s more important.    

So, I concentrated on my studies. A decade and a half went by and I acquired some prim and proper alphabets that could be affixed to the tail end of my name. At least I wrote on the sly.

Time to ‘settle’ down. Writing? Later, later. There’ll always be time.  

Settled down, cooked, cleaned, cared for the elderly, battled bosses, met deadlines, always met deadlines, never missed a deadline, nurtured other people’s kids, worried about them, brought up my own, worried some more, scrimped, saved, grew fat and never ever wrote. Two decades flew by. Me? Teetering on the brink of sanity.

Writing? Seriously! And at your age! Dreams for yourself? Wonder if it’s even appropriate.  

Now, or never! Appropriate? Bah!

So, that’s my story. Nothing extraordinary. The story of thousands of women.

In 2018, I quit my job and devoted more time to writing than I had ever done. Haven’t regretted my decision for a moment. That’s the highlight of the day: wresting those hours and wrestling with the words. The hardest thing however was sending out work that must have seemed juvenile due to years of neglect.

Here’s a formal bio:

Veena Narayan is a writer who quit her job to enable her to devote more time to writing. She is a post graduate in English Language and Literature and also has a degree in education. Her work has appeared among other places in Outlook, Scroll, Desi Books Review and Jaggery. She is currently working on a novel (her second) while her first one is with an agent. She lives in Kochi, a coastal city in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Want to keep in touch? I’m not on social media. I did try but failed miserably. Don’t seem to have a yen for it. Might try again. One never knows.

Here’s a way to keep in touch. Pen Page is a newsletter I send out once a month (well, I sometimes miss a month or two) to share things I find interesting or just to say hi. Interested?   

You may unsubscribe any time.

Thanks for visiting.