But The Ideology Needs To Live On…My winning story for Muse of the Month August @Women’s Web

The Muse of the Month series by Women’s Web focuses on stories that pass the Bechdel test and are written on inspiration from a new prompt every month.

The requirement to pass the Bechdel Test is it should have at least two well crafted, named women characters

• who talk to each other
• on topics other than men or boys.

This month, the prompt was “Just Living Is Not Enough…”

and story “But the ideology needs to live on..” made it to the list of top five winning stories for the month.

Here’s a snippet of the story –

Mukti confirmed the late running of the train with the coach attendant. Keeping the Miss Marple novel on the tray in front of her seat, she dialed her father in frustration, “Baba, you can reach the station by 10:30 p.m. The train is late by an hour and I am not even halfway through my journey yet.

After hanging up, she felt bad for her father who was staying up late tonight to escort her back home. With the rising incidents of crime in her hometown, she had stopped pretending to act indifferent and chose to exercise precaution instead. She was considering a call to her boyfriend when the train screeched to an abrupt halt.

Suddenly the AC compartment had an inflow of goons carrying lathis, rods, and sickles. They started scanning the faces of the passengers, especially that of the ladies.

Mukti was scared to death. She had started dreading the annual trip to her native Bhirugram of late. The town with more than fifty percent of the tribal population of Adivasis had seen a marked rise in Maoist activities. Despite the fact that her house was far away from the jungle where the Adivasis resided, people in her locality had also started getting affected by the ongoing tussle between the police forces, the State Government and the Adivasis labeled as Maoists.

Her father, a school teacher in Bhirugram had been disappointed at her decision to move to Mumbai for her doctorate but chose to stay supportive. She had been pestering her mother about their relocation to Mumbai since her father was due to retire in less than a year, but her pleas went unheard.

Read the full story on Women’s web here.

Author: Sonia Chatterjee

An alumnus of Presidency College (Kolkata), Delhi University, and XIME (Bangalore), Sonia Chatterjee holds two post-graduate degrees in Chemistry and Management and an MFA in creative writing from Writer's Village University. With eight years of experience in the banking sector as a Branch Head, she took a sabbatical from the corporate world to start her blog soniasmusings.com. Her blog consistently featured in the Top Indian Blogs list from 2019 to 2024. Her articles have been published on various digital platforms such as Women's Web, Youth Ki Awaaz, Tuck's Magazine, and Period Magazine. She was invited as a speaker at the Breaking Barriers, Kolkata 2018 event by the Women's Web, at the Women Writer’s Fest, Kolkata, 2020, and the Crime Writers Festival, Kolkata,2025. Sonia has written two detective thrillers titled ‘Deal of Death – Introducing Raya Ray’ (2019) and ‘Diary, Deceit, and Death – A Raya Ray Adventure’ (Vishwakarma Publications, 2024) and a non-fiction book on true crime titled ‘The Sanyasi Who Became a King’ (Sristhi Publishers, 2025). Her book ‘Diary, Deceit, and Death’ was shortlisted for the PVLF Awards 2024-25 in the Best Fiction Category. Sonia lives in Kolkata with her doctor husband and nine-and-a-half-year-old son. View all posts by Sonia Chatterjee