Like Tagore, Padmanabhan has successfully tried her hand at all types of literature.  It includes plays, comic strips, travelogues, short stories, and children’s books, and additionally she is an illustrator

				She has written plays like Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest: a Battle Between Machine and (wo)Man Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 1(2) September, 2013 21 Harvest (1997) Lights Out (1984) and Hidden Fire (1991), the Artists’ Model Sextet and the Gujrathi Monologue, a collection of short stories (1996) Suki, a travel memoir like Getting there, a collection of short stories like Death and Old Soup and Kleptomania, Escape a book for children Muse Attack (2008). Even after writing plays, Padmanabhan continued to contribute as an illustrator both independently and in collaboration. Independently she produce „I am different! Can you find me? (2011), Unprincess (2005), A Visit to City Market (1986) and with Tara Ali Baij, Indrani and the Enchanted Jungle (1979) and with Maithily Jagannath, Dropsy Dragon in 1984. She also penned a comic strip as „Double Talk’ (2007). Her comic female character Suki was serialized in Sunday Observer. She also earned her name as a cartoonist and had a daily cartoon strip in The Pioneer.

				the first attempt in India to dramatizing science fiction on stage