Sci560: In Your Words
About:
What does a city remember—and what do we remember of a city? A street turned unfamiliar. A building lost to time. A fragrance carried on the wind.
As part of Sci560, we invite you to respond to a set of writing prompts that dwell in the textures of urban life—real or imagined, remembered or reimagined.
We are inviting writers aged 18 to 30, based in Bengaluru, to respond to a series of writing prompts drawn from contemporary literature that explores the many ways we live in cities. These excerpts—from writers like Anjum Hassan, Michelle Mendonca Bambawale, Karan Mujoo, Unmana, Aishwarya Jha, and Tiffany Tsao—span places like Goa, Jammu, Singapore, and Bengaluru. They reflect on migration, memory, routine, dislocation, and small rituals of belonging.
Writing prompts can be seen on the form below.
You are encouraged to submit a short piece— essays or poetry—that engages with your own experience of a city. It could be the one you grew up in, the one you live in now, or one entirely imagined. What matters is how the city becomes a part of your story.
Shortlisted writers will be mentored by Jayapriya Vasudevan, literary agent and founder of Jacaranda Literary Agency, in a series of closed workshops. Under her guidance, you will refine your piece for a public reading in July 2025.
Timeline:
Call goes live: 23 May 2025
Call Closes: 15 June 2025
Writing workshop and Mentorship session: 13 July 2025
Public reading and Showcase: 20 July 2025
Participation Guidelines:
The deadline for submissions is 11:30 PM IST on 15 June 2025.
You must be between 18 and 30 years of age to participate.
You must be a resident of Bengaluru or be present in Bengaluru for the writing workshop and as well as the public reading.
You can submit a maximum of three responses per person.
Your submission must be in English.
Please include the title of your work in your submission.
Your submission can either be an Essay or in the form of Poetry.
For Essay Submissions, Word count: 800 to 4,000 words. Choose a length that suits your story—short personal reflections or longer explorations are both welcome.
For Poetry Submissions, Length: 10 to 60 lines. This can be one longer poem or up to three shorter poems (total not exceeding 60 lines). Style: All forms are welcome—free verse, spoken word, narrative poetry, haiku, or experimental forms.
Entries must be submitted in .doc or .pdf file formats. The file should be named as follows: YourName_Title_IYW2025
Text within the submission should be formatted in Calibri, size 12.
You retain all the rights to your work. By submitting your work, you will give Science Gallery Bengaluru the permission to use your submission during Sci560, and your submission will be archived on the Science Gallery Bengaluru website.
Your submission should not have won or placed in other competitions, or have been published in an official capacity in other magazines, exhibitions, etc.
Writing Prompts:
Siolim and I have changed. Not sure for the better, but we have changed. In the 70s, Siolim was truly pastoral. Coconut trees and fields were everywhere. A few grand old houses. The Chapora river. Hills to climb. Backwaters to explore. The iconic St Anthony’s church with its legend of St. Anthony holding the snake, a landmark. Other than the church and the Chapora river, everything else has changed.
We reached Jammu around nightfall. The contours of the city were dark and alien, the air damp and viscous. We were woefully unprepared for the dual assault of heat and humidity. The multiple layers of clothing we wore did not help alleviate matters. In the truck, Papaji and my father shed their pherans. But in the taxi, out of a sense of propriety, my mother and Byenji kept them on and suffered. As we went deeper into the city, on our left, appeared a canal filled with murky, olive-green water. On our right was a market facade punctuated by alleys at regular intervals. These alleys led to Talab Tillo—the locality where Papaji’s cousin had found accommodation for us. Our taxi, following the truck, took a right turn and entered one of them. The road inside was narrow with open drains on both sides. Crumpled milk packets, straws, plastic bags, black slush and sewage peeking out of the gutters welcomed us to our new neighbourhood. A few minutes and a few turns later, the truck and the taxi came to a stop. We disembarked from the vehicles and were greeted by the sight of a dilapidated 12x12-foot hovel with a tin roof and crumbling walls. This was our new home.
A horn erupted and set off a concert—autorickshaws and motorcycles and cars and buses contributing loudly. Shwetha’s hands clenched on the steering wheel. Nilima considered how circumscribed her life usually was; she took the metro or an autorickshaw to office in the morning, and after work she usually walked to a place nearby for a quick dinner or for supplies she could cook on her one pan over her induction stove. Her occasional days off were for browsing books on Church Street or carrying a book and some snacks to Cubbon Park for a solitary picnic. Occasionally, she met a new acquaintance or date at a bar—a friend of a friend, or someone she’d talked to on Bumble—an awkward stilted evening that never transformed into a second meeting. She had tried a couple of queer events before giving up; she’d never be someone who was comfortable walking up to a group of people and chatting away. This driving around town and getting her ears assaulted wasn’t an experience she was unequivocally enjoying, but it was out of her routine, and she was getting to spend time with Shwetha outside the office.
When Yusuf bin Hassim disappeared from Singapore in 1939, it baffled everyone. The slim, bright-eyed lad of nineteen had just started what looked to be a promising life. He had procured a job as an ice cream vendor with Magnolia, Singapore’s very first ice cream company. His parents were in the process of finding him a suitable wife from the daughters of families they knew. He had great hair—full, lustrous, glossy, as if his head were crowned with a dollop of jet-black whipped cream. Everything seemed to be falling into place. And then he had vanished.
Petrichor. The loveliest fragrance in the world, save one. It almost compensated for the mayhem it heralded—almost. The power cuts came first, often lasting longer than relationships. Then the waterlogged roads, waist-level in some parts, teeming with unidentifiable dross. Children splashed about and held paper boat races on filthy rivulets as I watched from the safety of my car. I was grateful for years of sharpened reflexes from the courts, which helped me dodge the invasion of slimy, spongy objects from the natural world. Temperatures fell but the humidity was almost as unforgiving as the heat. I hadn’t realized I could sweat so much.
As Uncle John would never tire of pointing out, they lived in a township named after the man who had built the Krishnaraja Sagar Dam, yet they received no water from that famous dam. When the township was set up it had, like other townships of that era, a pioneer feel. It was far from the municipal limits, and residents had to band together and provide for themselves: get wells dug and take care of their own garbage. But even now, thirty years later, when the city was spilling out in every direction and Sir M.V. Nagar no longer an outpost, the problems remained. They still got no water from the river that fed Bangalore and which their hero had dammed – the Kaveri. They had to rely on borewells pumping up often contaminated water. Sir M.V. Nagar had no sewerage or drainage system either; irony, again, for Sir MV had been, among many other things, a drainage expert and an adviser on urban drinking water issues.
Have more questions?
Please contact programmes@bengaluru.sciencegallery.com if you have any trouble uploading your submission.