Greek mythology has it that Pegasus, the winged horse, born of the sea-god Poseidon and the gorgon Medusa (she of the stony gaze), was a conduit of creative energy for the Muses – the goddesses of literature, science and the arts – themselves. You may know the Muses as the sources of inspiration for artistic endeavours. The artist and photographer Dora Maar was known to be the muse for many of Picasso’s masterpieces, for instance, and the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were each other’s muses.
Now where does Pegasus fit in? Everywhere that Pegasus stepped, the story goes, a spring shot forth. When Pegasus set his hoof down on Mount Helicon, the residence of the Muses, the sacred spring Hippocrene was born. The Muses drank from it and, charged with artistic inspiration, defeated the daughters of Pierus, who had challenged them to a song contest (Jhankar – Mount Olympus edition?)
From then on, the winged horse has been the icon for artistic pursuits. (Literally! Pegasus is part of the iconography for innumerable corporate brands, such as the Reader’s Digest magazine and other entities that would like to signal an association with creativity).
Fittingly, the M.O.P. Vaishnav Book Club is named for this spirit of the Muses, the channel through which the Muses make themselves known to those seeking them, opening the door for inspiration to strike.
Thus it was that for an hour and a half on August 5th, students listened agog as author Ms. Meenakshi Girish – an alumna of the B.A. Journalism programme at M.O.P. Vaishnav – headlined an Author Speak session at the College, describing her enviable freelance career as a content creator, and treating the audience to a teaser from her book, a primer on building just such a career.
“Don’t settle for less or try to broaden your audience by charging less. If you want to scale up, you need to attract the right people and charge your worth. You need to break free from your mental prison and let your value shine.”
As this excerpt was read out from her book, ‘The Freelancer’s Mindset,’ the young minds in the audience were no doubt churning with mental calculations to arrive at the net-net of the freelance life.
- No boss to please on the daily.
- No performance appraisal form to fill with the Damocles’ sword of commensurate incentive hanging over one’s head.
- No office politics.
- No mad rush to clock in, and no resentment when you can’t clock out on time.
- No need to approach a boss clutching a leave application in a sweaty fist.
On the other hand:
- No regular paycheck.
- No employer-provided health insurance.
- No nest egg put away against a rainy day.
- No coworker to surprise you with a pair of jhumkas like the one you had admired on her some day.
- No lunch companion.
Ms. Girish addressed these and all other burning thoughts and questions in the course of her session.
Marking a departure from previous Author Speak sessions, this one featured a live interview between the author and Sri Smruthi S, a second-year student of B.A. Journalism. The questions, while primarily centred on the skills required to transition from the security of corporate life to the adventure of freelancing and solopreneurship, also dealt with creative spheres like writing, publishing, podcasting and video content creation.
What started as an interview soon transformed into a high-energy interaction, with a barrage of curious questions from the audience.
The conversation, in short order, turned towards a looming issue that many individuals must contend with on entering the modern corporate paradigm: work-family conflict. As one might imagine, any newly graduated student comes into the corporate world with hopes of a rewarding job. However, poor work-life balance, the continuous stress of deadlines, over-work and under-payment: several rookies quickly tire of the job that was once the dream – not because the job was bad, but rather due to an intolerable ‘corporate culture’. With the responsibility of helping the family, or at least making good on the years of education resting on her shoulders, she can neither quit nor experiment with a new stream. Ms. Girish addressed this dilemma, which is all too common.
She is no stranger to this predicament. Employed earlier in a secure corporate job, she would come home each day completely drained of energy, just to take a breather from what felt like a meaningless rat-race – until one day, her parents suggested that she quit her job and take up freelancing full-time. This was a major turning point that came with a host of uncertainties: Is freelancing as a full-time pursuit financially viable? Sustainable? Challenging? Risky? Her questions were soon answered. Today, she is a successful freelancer with over six years of experience, having served 70+ clients with their content creation needs across various industries.
Back with a bang for the academic year 2025-26, the M.O.P. Library and English Department, in collaboration with the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) and The New Indian Express, presented Ms. Girish’s session for the voracious readers of the Pegasus Book Club, and other interested students.
Author Speak has, over the last few years, opened students’ minds to diverse perspectives. They have heard from, among others, Dr. Priyanka Bagdi, a cancer survivor and author of a book on her wellness journey; Ms. Shwetha Sivaraman, entrepreneur and author of a self-help book on embracing dissatisfaction as a sign of personal growth; and historian Dr. Chitra Madhavan, author of several books on Indian temple history and architecture.
Every bibliophile knows the pleasure of curling up with a good book – to escape into the world built by the author in the case of a work of fiction, and to revel in facts well-recounted or an argument meticulously crafted, in the case of non-fiction. ‘Author Speak’ is an approximation of the same feeling. If that translates into a book-reading habit, or even better, if the creative bug bites, one can imagine that winged horse snorting in triumph with a flutter of the wings and a swish of the tail.
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