Do what you want to do and this student duo lives by the mantra, “Don’t let the world determine your concept of happiness.” Many people have began to explore their passions during the lockdown because they have nothing else to do, and this student duo built a community for writers.Taran Malhotra and Nishtha Agarwaal, both residents of Ahmedabad, founded Inked Stories in an attempt to bring recognition and appreciation to undervalued and under-appreciated writers.
“We met online during the lockdown. We met through mutual friends and instantly felt at ease, as if we had known one other for a long time. We both had a spark that just worked. We shared a lot of interests, especially the creative side, and that’s where our journey began. Inked Stories, a writer’s social media community, was founded.
We never felt appreciated because we worked in a very different industry, and this demotivated us. We understood sometime along the way that it wasn’t just us, but that there were others in the same boat with us, and that’s when we decided to do something for them, for the youth.
It’s been over a year on this new journey, and we’ve published stories giving life to the words of those in our community. We have conducted events, competitions and much more. Our primary focus is on collaborations and campaigns. Through these we try to create an awareness in the society. We have had a few collaborations with NGOs for the same. We included 2 to 3 liners every morning in one of our campaigns, “Drops of Joy,” to offer the audience a cheerful start to the day. In another campaign called “A Millennial Story,” we host a live Instagram podcast series where we select people from various walks of life and have a one-on-one talk with them to learn about their path and gain inspiration.
We created “Enchanted” in collaboration with Unshackled Poetry and Amator Insanus, an anthology that mixes the essence of quotes with the essence of the soul. Composed of a few heartfelt quotes, the book speaks about happiness, nostalgia, loneliness, love, heartbreak, hope, motivation and success. A collection that offers an insight to the various phases of life, challenges, outcomes and our actions. It seeks to offer more comfort to the human mind and stitches together different perspectives throughout life.
Accepting the new normal our motto is to ‘voice the local’. We have motivated individuals to speak what they feel and express themselves and have turned into nothing but a little family of over 450+ writers who just love this platform a lot.
As humans, we usually underestimate ourselves, and that’s what we had been doing our whole life. But these vibes gave us happiness, which we think we couldn’t get through anything else. The smiles and the happiness we spread daily amongst our team, we’ve realised there could be nothing better than that.
Every individual has a creative side inside them, it’s high time we unveil it. Through the stories we publish, we feel that we can change the perspective of individuals and ultimately the world”, exclaimed the co-founders of Inked Stories.
Further down the line, Inked Stories plans to launch a few more campaigns related to raising voice for/against social stigmas. They really want to support the society for a good-cause, and that is what they have been trying to do since the very beginning. Apart from this, they are planning more events, book publications, merchandise and also expanding to a one-stop digital marketing agency named WeCraft Stories to support local and budding artists who don’t get a platform elsewhere and the rest remains a surprise!
