The Modern Magic Spell

By Pahal Bhasin

In the summer of 2023, I conducted a creative writing workshop, intending to empower girls by providing a creative outlet for their imagination. The aim was to do this for at least 30 girls from a government-funded school in India. The workshop started with a brief on plot creation and culminated in the learners writing original stories with the

• Language: English
• Publisher: 24by7 Publishing
• Release date: Feb 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9788196778156

Book preview

The Modern Magic Spell

Unleashing the magic of gender bias-defying tales

Pahal Bhasin

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First Published in January, 2024

Version 1.00

ISBN: 978-81-967781-5-6

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Dedicated to

My Inspiring Dad Jatinder

My Amazing Mom Shelly

My Role Model Sister Mehar

My Lovely Cute Sister Pragunn

And

EVERYONE who taught me something, believed in me and empowered me

FOREWORD

In her seminal work, The Cost of Living, the brilliant Delhi-based writer, filmmaker, architect, and activist Arundhati Roy writes the following list of imperatives, offering us a kind of cumulative manifesto with which we might approach our work on this earth:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

I can’t think of a more apt place to begin as I consider the stories in Pahal Bhasin’s ‘The Modern Magic Spell’ an excellent collaboration that speaks to the power