✍️Submit a Writing Prompt ✍️ - Page 37

Originally posted by: melodyofflowers

Please make this thread active

How exactly? It is an open thread, just that people don't really come around.

Originally posted by: minakrish

How exactly? It is an open thread, just that people don't really come around.

Oh I thought it is a closed one. Sorry di

A closed thread, by definition, doesn't allow anyone to post in it, requesting to make it active.

Anyway, the spirit of your request was that you want to see writing prompts. Here's a prompt based on a challenge that I gave myself for this story:

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/marathi-tv/5333913/au-adha-tuca-ahesa-a-piratica-vanava-uri-pe-ala-fan-fic

https://www.indiaforums.com/fanfiction/3855

Write a story in which a character's thoughts are shared with the reader in such a way that an upcoming plot twist known to the character is neither given away nor contradicted until the character says it aloud.

Originally posted by: melodyofflowers

Oh I thought it is a closed one. Sorry di

You wouldn't have been able to comment if it was a closed thread.😊

I have a prompt in my mind, any of you may use it

She is a naive princess, the heir of her kingdom as per the wish of her late father. He is a cop entered the kingdom to make her aware with the wicked intention of her own elder brother the second heir after her for the kingdom, whom she considers that he loves her the most.

Please keep chatting to the minimum.

Thank you.

Fanfiction Forum DT

This prompt is based on a challenge I've given myself for a chapter in an ongoing fan fiction.

Prompt: write maṅgalāṣṭakas that comment on the nuptial situation within a wedding story.

Maṅgalāṣṭaka is a ritual that takes place in Marathi weddings as soon as the muhūrta (auspicious hour) begins. Everyone stands up and two tall people hold a white cloth marked with a svastika as a curtain in front of the groom. On the other side, the bride who has been worshipping Gaurī-Hara in silence and solitude is brought to face the curtain. A karavalī from the groom's family stands behind him, and a karavalī from the bride's family stands behind her, each being an unmarried girl holding a kalaśa. Then a series of eight verses (aṣṭaka) invoking auspicious (maṅgala) entities is recited by the purohita performing the wedding, or by any wellwisher of the couple.

Typically, each verse is written in Śārdūlavikrīḍita metre - four lines of nineteen syllables each (ˇ is a short syllable and - is a long syllable):

---ˇˇ-ˇ-ˇˇˇ-, --ˇ--ˇ-

The auspicious entities invoked may be the names of Gaṇapati in one verse ... the holy rivers of India ... the fourteen jewels produced by the churning of the ocean ... the seven Mother Goddesses ... the nine "planets" of astrology ... nowadays, even the eight grammatical declensions of Rāma's name! Alternatively, a maṅgalāṣṭaka verse may express a wish for the couple's married life, or humourously describe the wedding of a divine couple.

A maṅgalāṣṭaka verse that invokes multiple auspicious entities typically ends with the Saṃskṛta words kurvantu vāṃ maṅgalam - may they create auspiciousness for both of you, or including the entire wedding gathering, kurvantu vo maṅgalam - may they create auspiciousness for all of you. If only one image is invoked, the usual ending is kuryāt sadā maṅgalam - may s/he perpetually create auspiciousness. This refrain is kept even if the rest of the verse is in Marathi. Everybody joins in when the person reciting the verse reaches the refrain.

Each verse is followed by a proclamation, śubha-maṅgala sāvadhāna - fortunate and auspicious, pay attention! Everybody says the proclamation loudly together and sprinkles the couple with whole rice-grains (akṣatā), a supply of which is handed out to everybody before this ritual begins.

After the eight maṅgalāṣṭaka verses, or fewer in modern weddings, the curtain is dropped, allowing the couple to see each other for the first time on the wedding day. As they garland each other with varamālā, and perhaps their friends prolong the ritual by lifting them up out of reach, the final verse in Upajāti metre is recited, punctuated by śubha-maṅgala sāvadhāna:

tad eva lagnaṃ sudinaṃ tad eva

tārā-balaṃ candra-balaṃ tad eva

vidyā-balaṃ daiva-balaṃ tad eva

Lakṣmī-pate te'ṅghri-yugaṃ smarāmi

It alone is the season; it alone is the lucky day

It alone is stars' power and moon's power

It alone is scientific power and destiny's power

Husband of Lakṣmī! Your pair of feet I remember.

Govind Ballal Deval's musical play Śāradā (1899) is my inspiration for this prompt. The message of Deval's play was that old men are inappropriate husbands for young girls, and he lost no opportunity to mock the incongruity of fourteen-year-old Śāradā being forced to marry seventy-five-year-old Bhujaṅganātha. These are the maṅgalāṣṭakas at their wedding:

Zhālā s'āṅga vivāha Śambhu maga ye Kailāsi Gaurī-save

Gaurīlā dusarī Jarā savata tī, tīte na te sosale

Bole krodha-vaśā, "Aśā vivaśilā kā āṇile re gharā?"

Bhyālī aikuni tī Umāça vadhuçe kuryāt sadā maṅgalam

The wedding with rituals was over; then Śambhu came to Kailāsa in Gaurī's company

A co-wife for Gaurī was that other, Old Age; she couldn't bear it

Worked up with rage, she said, "Why did you bring home such a powerless one, man?"

Umā heard and got frightened; may she alone perpetually create auspiciousness for the bride!

Zāīcī kalikā vadhū, vara dise dhattūra hā vāḷalā

Pūrṇ'endu-pratimā vadhū, vara dise Rāhūça kī vākalā

Mīn'ākṣī su-radā vadhū, vara radāvāçūni mand'ākṣa hā

Lāvī zoḍa kulāla toci vadhuçe kuryāt sadā maṅgalam

A jasmine bud's the bride; this groom looks like parched datura

Full Moon incarnate's the bride; why, the groom looks like Eclipse looming

Fish-darting-eyed's the fine-toothed bride; this groom's toothless and dim-eyed

The sculptor who paired them up - may he alone perpetually create auspiciousness for the bride!

The nuptial situation in my story is that the bride is a robber, so that is what my maṅgalāṣṭakas must convey.

Whoever takes this prompt is free to adapt it to any other nuptial situation.

My sarcastic comments about the Marathi daily drama Piratīçā Vanavā Urī Peṭalā could be a writing prompt:

As Savi goes on procrastinating about telling her mother Sharada the truth that she is married to Arjun ...

Savi will marry Parikshit, wearing a sweater to hide Arjun's maṅgaḷasūtra. ...

Sharada will look over Savi's shoulder during a video call with Arjun's stepmother Krishna'i, but Savi will insist that she was talking to Shehnaz Madam and it's cosmopolitan to address one's boss as Āīsāheba. ...

Sharada will learn that Savi is in Kavathe-Bhairavgad and will show up with Paras, the friend whose name Savi had used in her excuse to get away from Arjun's family and visit her mother. When Paras introduces himself to Arjun and Savi walks in, she will convince Arjun that Paras left Dubai to work as a rickshaw driver out of patriotic fervour. ...

Borrowing an idea from Alf Layla Wa Layla, Savi will pack lunches for both Arjun and Parikshit, and when they meet in Mumbai with identical half-sandwiches, they'll fit the pieces together.

Prompt based on a fictional Supreme Court of India that takes its duty to the Constitution seriously:

The Supreme Court has ruled that all marriage laws that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation are unconstitutional, and therefore unenforceable. Parliament must quickly craft non-discriminatory statutes to remedy the situation that no one in India is married, ever had married ascendants, or can get married hereafter.

Prompt for Imalī (3rd generation), but it can be adapted to any other characters:

Who cut Gattu's hair?

Alaka - her name means "hairstyled" after all!

Jugnu - the most stylish person Gattu knows

Noyonika - earning her keep during convalescence

Sonali - plenty of sharps from the photo frame she smashed

Amrit - the man with the best hair, no kiṃtu paraṃtu about it!

Ashu - next time Catchu saves him, bad guys shouldn't pull Catchu's hair

Bulbul - after getting her lollipop stuck in his hair, of course!

Shankar - disguised as a barber on his mission to rescue Imlie^3

Bunty - as revenge for Gattu shutting down his ālū pūrī ṭhelā

Manno - no, she doesn't add "s" to English words; it's just his hair rustling