From Suniti Namjoshi, poet, a fabulist and a children’s writer who has written over thirty books. A selection of her writings is published in The Fabulous Feminist (Zubaan, 2012). Suniti was a speaker at the FiLiA2019 conference.

Letter to my sisters in FiLiA

Here’s a link your grandchildren or your children or you might enjoy.  I don’t who the website people are, but it’s fun. Butterfly Paint  https://seoi.net/butterfly/

And here’s a story (‘Best Frog’) I wrote for my granddaughter. Try it on your grandchildren or your children? Just change the name. (Alice’s parents perhaps liked it more than she did. I don’t think they’ve tried it on her yet, but then she’s barely three.)

I’m always taken aback by the way Lisa-Marie salutes us all as ‘Wonderful Women!’ And then I’m pleased. It feels lovely. And so, Wonderful Women, look after yourselves!

With love,

Suniti

BEST FROG

One day Alice walked down to the bottom of the garden and found a frog. The frog was frightened. She had only just stopped being a tadpole. She had never seen a child before. And she didn’t know whether Alice would bite.

“Please don’t eat me,” squeaked the frog.

“I don’t eat frogs,” Alice replied. She stared at the small frog. She had only seen a frog before in a picture book.

“Are you a frog?” asked Alice.

“Of course, I’m a frog,” the frog replied scornfully. “Don’t you know anything?” She was feeling more confident now that she had been told she wouldn’t be eaten.

“Why aren’t you green?”

“Because I’m brown?” replied the frog. “Who are you?”

“Alice.”

“No. I mean what sort of creature are you. Are you a little girl? I’ve heard of them.”

“Yes.  What have you heard?” asked Alice.

“That they wear pink, frilly clothes and shriek when they see mice. I don’t know about frogs.”

“That’s rubbish,” said Alice.

“Have you heard about frogs?” asked the frogs.

“Yes.  They steal golden balls and croak all night.”

“Well, that’s rubbish too,” the frog told her indignantly.

“Let’s play a game,” suggested Alice.

“What?”

“We could play with this ball.”

So they played and in time they became excellent friends. Alice considered the frog the best frog she had ever met and the frog thought that Alice was the nicest girl she had ever seen, which in its way was both logical and lucky.

Suniti Namjoshi