Camera: Athar Rather
Editor: Ashish MacCune
Fiddling through the maze of words since the age of six, Anoushka Sabnis turned a New Year resolution into a book with 52 poems. All composed by her!
My mom and I were making a list of New Year resolutions and one of the resolutions was to write one poem every month. I started writing then and because I liked it so much I didn’t stop. So I ended up writing 52 poems at the end of the year.Anoushka Sabnis
In January 2016, the young girl of nine and her mother listed down twenty interesting things she could take up in the upcoming year. Of the many things on the list, one was to write a poem every month.
Her mother, who has always been a pillar of motivation for her, promised her a trip to Disneyland if she fulfilled any of the resolutions.
Anoushka did not stop with 12 poems – she ended up compiling a book Once Upon a Verse with poems she wrote every week of the past year. At the end of each poem, she wrote a personal footnote chalking out the rhyming scheme and her thoughts while composing the poem.
From sunrise to sunflowers to serendipity, Anoushka writes about it all in her poems which she regularly updates on her blog, “Kiddy Lane.”
Constantly enjoying the applause and attention from her family and peers, the highlight for Anoushka was when Congress MP and author Shashi Tharoor congratulated her on Twitter.
Currently studying in the sixth grade in one of the reputed Delhi schools, Anoushka thought of taking up writing when she was five years old.
She not only writes but also illustrates her own compositions. She dreams of becoming a designer when she grows up but also hopes to hold onto writing and thus she proudly calls herself an Authorista (author-cum-artist-cum-fashionista)!
She wishes to meet Roald Dahl’s ‘five-year-old genius Matilda’ in real life and loves to read JK Rowling’s Harry Potter. But guess who her favourite poet is? “Myself,” pat came the reply.
So did the promised Disneyland trip ever happen?
You bet!!
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