Meet Manya Harsha who is probably the youngest established poet in India. She is only nine years old and has already won five titles for writing over 55 beautiful poems, published as a book titled Nature Our Future. Her proud mother, Chitra, says, "Three years ago when I attended the parent-teacher meeting at Vibgyor High School, I found that Manya was the mischievous child in her class. One of her teachers mentioned that she is good at skills like acting and writing and suggested that she channelise all her energy in improving this talent. From then, Manya started writing poems on simple things that she came across, whether they were in her classroom or from when we travelled to different places. The first poem she wrote was titled Mother. She read it to me on my birthday. She has also written poems like Butterfly, Soldiers, Patriotism, Trees, Mathematics, Grandmother and much more. Every time she'd write a poem, she would read it in class and all her friends cheered her on."
While Manya wrote the poems, her mother would carefully check the spellings to see that there were no mistakes. In the past four years, she had carefully collected all the poems that Manya has written in the hopes of getting it published one day. And that day came in June 2019. "I approached a publisher called Raindrops and showed them a story called Thanks Giving written by Manya to get it published. At the same time, I showed them her poems. They were equally happy to see the beautiful poems written by her and suggested printing the poems rather than the story. The book has earned her a lot of recognition," says Chitra.
Manya's style of writing usually includes a lot of rhyming words and she spends at least two to three hours to write these short and unique poems. Manya credits her school for improving her writing skills. She says, "The school that I study in does not stress much on exams and marks, which gives room to improve skills. Until class IV, we don't have to face any exams. But every month, the school calls us for a meeting where we need to explain to our parents whatever we have learnt. Currently, I am reading R K Narayan's Malgudi Days and this kind of book reading skill has also helped me improve."
In a span of just one year, Manya has been conferred five titles including 'Youngest Poet of India' from Vajra World Record, 'Grand Master' from Asia Book of Records in the Book on Nature Written by a Kid category. She has also been conferred the 'Youngest Poet to Write a Book on Nature' title from the prestigious India Book of Records, 'Youngest Female Poet to Publish a Book on Nature' from World Records India and very recently, 'Youngest Poet' from Golden Book of World Records.
