“Frenny and Other Women You Have Met”, author Soma Bose’s debut book, was unveiled at its Mumbai chapter at Title Waves bookstore by acclaimed Director, Writer and Actor Amol Gupte and in the presence of award-winning film director Shrabani Deodhar and author Roshmila Bhattacharya.
The unveiling was followed by an interesting interactive discussion with Roshmila Bhattacharya moderating the proceedings and coming up with questions which aimed at delving into the different facets of relationships. Amol Gupte and Shrabani Deodhar chipped in with their insight into relationships and how their work reflected those thoughts. Roshmila Bhattacharya too recounted her tough journey as a working journalist to an established author.
The book by debutante author Soma Bose aims to celebrate the lives of regular non-working homemaker women, who spend their lives looking after their families, yet is not given the due credit. “Frenny and Other Women You Have Met” talks about the 5 different characters located in different parts of the world and their experiences.
In Soma Bose words- “A lot of times there have been discrimination between working women and not working women. It is always that people who are working are given accolades and people who aren’t working are not given any value. So, I really wanted to focus on the women who are at home looking after their families. They are doing a tremendous job and this book is for them. This book celebrates them.” Soma explained how she found her character Frenny, she said how challenging it is for authors making a debut but face the challenge and continue to write and passionately pursue giving it the best effort.
Noted Director, Actor Amol Gupte said, “I went through experiences from childhood about accepting knowledge from his grandparents and father preparing the turf for me as Marathi theatre, sangeet natak which made it easy for me with my relationship with my teachers and in the long run making me a child rights activist.” Amole spoke about inclusivity through his movies, expressing his desire to make another movie a befitting sequel to Taare Zameen Par and hope to create something conclusive both in content and form. He explained how the school system supported his films Stanley Ka Dabba and HawaHawai to make them successes and how there is hardly any market for children’s films and society had to be blamed for the situation.
Shrabani Deodhar spoke about her relationship with her daughter and son-in-law, how close they were to her and also about telling her journey through her films which was difficult for her as the film market demands were something else. She shared her experience about making a film on the first lady stunt artiste Reshma Pathan.
On behalf of the organizers Phreedom4ever, Chaity Ghosh, felicitated the guests while Subhojit Roy of Connections anchored the evening.
The stories of Frenny, Mrinalini, Shreyasi, Amiran, and Ananya are every woman’s stories as they navigate through life bearing their respective responsibilities towards their fathers, husbands, children and teachers. Soma Bose’s book, titled “Frenny and Other Women You Have Met” explores subtle and intricate emotions, hoping that her readers appreciate women’s lives and contributions in all their richly varied forms. The motivation to write such human-centric stories comes from Soma’s experience of growing up in the coal-mining town of Dhanbad in Jharkhand, India.
