Sujata Parashar’s Fictional Versatility: Single Parent as Professional Gypsy

She knows as a female onlooker that women have a long way to go but as a writer, she is there to celebrate the feminine power in her books while writing entertaining stories.

She is a single mother, she is a versatile writer, she calls herself ‘Professional gypsy”. Bestselling author Sujata Parashar candidly confessed at the first phone call, “I’m an expressionist. I like to share my thoughts and ideas with others. My inspiration for writing is the need to express myself especially on issues I find intriguing, interesting or even disturbing”.As a female onlooker at society a feminist at heart, by which I mean I see people as people and not as a gender. To me it’s important that our society recognizes the immense potential Indian women have and give them equal opportunities as given to their male counterparts. Our society is still steeped in patriarchal mindset but thankfully the modern Indian woman is no longer shy of sharing her mind and taking a stand about things that matter to her.Her first novel, In Pursuit of Infidelity happened accidently. She was intrigued by the status of a group of married women she was interviewing for a social project. In her fertile mind, which she later realized she started weaving a story unconsciously and fortunately penned down the first few pages the same day in the evening after her return to her home. Her curiosity about life and society is at the root of her creativity and this is true of many of her books.She has questions to which she didn’t get satisfactory responses to from her immediate environment. She branched out into writing all genre of books but fiction is her first priority. She knows as a female onlooker that womenhave a long way to go but as a writer,she is there to celebrate the feminine power in her books while writing entertaining stories.

Her first novel, In Pursuit of Infidelity continues to sell even after 13 years of its release. Her second book, In Pursuit of Ecstasy (recently republished by Rupa) is a YA novel and she is happy she wrote a youth centric novel dealing with their issues and challenges She also finds The Temple Bar Woman (fiction) and Going Solo – Raising Happy Kids as powerful reflections.

Recognition came her way in abundance. She won theGlobal Women Leaders’ Award at the 10th World Women Leadership Congress(Feb 2023),the Iconic Women Creating a Better World for All Award (2022) by WEF, PVLF Author Excellence Award 2022 (non-fiction), Best Fiction Award 2021 presented by A3F Foundation,Women Achievers 2021 by ApekshaSandesh News,Karamaveer Chakra Award 2019 by iCongo and UN,100 Women Faces Award 2018 by Womennovator and COWE,Karmaveer Chakra Award and Global Fellowship 2015-16,Short story of the Year Award 2012 by Pomegranate Entertainment Pvt Ltd,Poetry Book of the Year Award 2012 Butterfly and the Bee.

In Single Parent- Childcommunication she feltthat the points discussed here holds good for all parents, single or otherwise,where they must learn to listen to the kids and also make it known to them that the parents are there to lend a willing ear to their problems no matter how small. The book also features 11 single parents [both dads and moms] and their quotes with their photograph and a small intro to their lifestyle choice. Furthermore, there is a questionnaire at the end which has around nine questions for single parents to fill out.In all, Going Solo;Raising Happy Kids,a book for single parents – and about single parents. is a short read of about 80 pages and is a good guide to single parents and will surely help them handle social situations and also raise their child with confidence.

Sujata Parasharis currently working on a non-fiction. It is a book on artists. The research is taking much time and there’s still time before it is released. This is her third nonfiction. Sujata is wonderful in dealing with the real-life stories of single moms – and single dads. She not only writes fiction, in reality she is a crusader for the single moms. There is such a lot of support available online and offline to single parents that they don't even know about it.Fifty other single parents have contributed to the book thus giving readers insights into different single-parenting ways and experiences. Though she deals with the real world of harsh reality in her many fiction, her favourite genre is Romance. She is a voracious reader even in her daily world of the digital activities and she likes to read all kinds of books.

Sujata is a Master’s degree holder in Human Rights (IIHM, New Delhi) witha PGDiploma in Travel and Tourism Management (IITTM, New Delhi). Besides she has completed several short courses on Emotional Health, Talk Therapy, Expressive Art Therapy and Psychosocial Care and Support trainings. She rightly calls herself a professional gypsy. She started her career with an international airline, Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS – a European carrier) and then moved on to work with the hospitality sector in Singapore before returning to India and joining the social development sector and working in different projects mostly related to adolescents, women and youth. It was during the second half of her career in the development sector that her interest (and experience) in dealing with emotional health of women and youth led her to start her own talk-therapy based platform The Talk-it-Out-Express (TiOE) to help people recognize, understand and express their emotions better.The Talk-It-Out-Express isa platform to enhance emotional wellbeing. She had more than 15 years of work experience in the development sector and initiated her own platform only in 2019. Writing continues to be her mainstay and when she is not working on a novel, she is either involved with TiOE or takes up interesting writing assignments by the corporate sector (commissioned work). She’s also the vice-president of Women’s Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (WICCI) Arts Leadership Council, Delhi chapter.

Foher, activism is expressing herself. While she works in the development sector, as a writer, she is also a social activist.She expresses her ideas, she loves to provoke her readers with her thoughts, she tackles issues and offers insights about women issues. This is nothing but activism. Her latest book on single parenting, Going Solo – Raising Happy Kids was an act of activism. Single Parent households are soon going to be the reality of our age but the social conditionsare still not conducive for this group. As a single parent herself (and a psychosocial trainer) she developed the hand guide to attract attention and to offer solutions to single parents in happily raising their kids and themselves. What Sujata’s book does is to bring this issue to mainstream and hopefully we will see many more books of this kind from her and from other authors as well. Sujata rightly focuses that the hard-working women of the world do the heavy lifting of raising kids with strength and courage on their own. Whether by choice or happenstance, these women are a village all unto themselves, and as another best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver said, "Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws." Sujata too waits for the change in the social outlook to the single mother in our society. “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. We’re the change.” This quote by Barack Obama from one of his famous speeches is also the social message from Sujata.

Dr Ratan Bhattacharjee, an International Visiting Faculty, USA and a trilingual columnist and Poet may be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com

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