Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (29 page)

Munmun felt neither angry nor betrayed. She did not even feel shy that
Ravi had read her steamy letters. She wondered idly whether he had read
the explicit sex scene featuring the two of them that she had written for
Pradip to titillate him, in a rare moment of creativity. She did not know
what she was feeling. She was unsure of herself. She started to sob, feel-
ing a little frustrated with her loneliness. She thought to herself, it was
now or never. She had to confess, else she would never get a chance
to do it. She had been very lonely, she said. And she had begun to en-
joy his company, she said to Ravi after a few minutes of vehement and
uncontrollable weeping. Her love for Pradip was receding. And she no
longer enjoyed writing to him. She was confused. She did not want to
betray his trust. But it was too bad for him and she could not help it be-
cause, “I have fallen in love with you Ravi and it will be wrong to pretend
otherwise,” she added, looking at him through her tears trying to judge
whether Ravi would reciprocate.

And so the saga of the new love began. They went to movies, lunch dates
and long walks and completely ignored their studies. Pradip wondered
what happened to the letters and Ravi feigned ignorance. He also reduced
his visits to the boys’ hostel and spent quality time at the gates of the
girls’ hostel instead, on the days when they were not going out together.

After Pradip recovered and his plaster was removed, he came to the girls’
hostel directly from the hospital to surprise Munmun. Instead he got the
surprise of his life when the matron pointed at the two figures close to
each other in the dark, seated strategically behind the huge tree, holding
hands and engaged in some heavy petting by the looks of it.

Aathira Jim
is a twenty five year old self-proclaimed bibliophile who
has been in love with books ever since she could remember. She recently
discovered her passion for storytelling with a relish and has been trying
to do justice to all the voices inside her head. She fervently believes that
chocolate is the greatest invention of mankind after books. When she is
not day dreaming, she can be found on her blog, where she does the same
through words. Aathira can be contacted on her blog: http://awander-
ingmindofabookaholic.blogspot.ae/

At twenty-two,
Abhilasha Kumar
is a dreamer, a narcissist, a conflicted
absurdist and an aspiring novelist. She has previously been published in
Hindustan Times and has co-authored an anthology titled Seven Deadly
Sins. The ordinary fascinates and annoys her, people intrigue her and
routine bores her. She has graduated with an Integrated Masters in Math-
ematics and Computing from IIT Delhi, and is currently a Young India
Fellow.

Abhishek Asthana
is a 28 year old nomad, has lived in 9 states, barely
speaks two languages, started as an R&D Engineer coding mobile phones
in a cold country, realized soon he is good at telling lies, so went for an
MBA in Marketing and is selling lies since. Can perform the David Blain
levitation trick on request & is usually found trying hard on Twitter as @
gabbbarsingh

Alka Gurha
was a closet writer until she began writing on her blog,
Freebird. Her blog won the Indian Blogger Award, in the ‘News and
Media’ category in 2013. Blogging for her is a passion – a means to think
aloud. Alka Gurha is a contributing writer for a weekly newspaper, called
Friday Gurgaon. As a freelance writer and a web columnist for media
watch websites like The Hoot, Alka also writes as a guest commentator
for The Gurgaon Times. After living in Delhi and Bangalore, she has
finally dropped anchor at Gurgaon, where she lives with her husband
Prashant and son Goutam. For more on Alka Gurha, please visit www.
alkagurha.com

***
Self-introduction!
Exhausted by this affliction
All I have made is this deduction
It’s a path of peace disruption
Only thing I want to tell you
Is that I see, hear, sense, and smell you
That is how I love to write
Sometimes quirky, sometimes trite

Arjun Bhatia
graduated from IIT (BHU) in 2013. Ever since, he has
been travelling across the country. He represented India at InterSeliger
2014 in Russia. When he succeeds in overcoming shyness and laziness, he
writes at [email protected].

Ashwini Ashokkumar
is a twenty-three year old computer science
engineer who cannot stop obsessing about what she should do in life.
When she found many little pieces of dreams lying all over the place,
each having an unrelenting heart of its own, Ashwini developed a desire
to pick them up each and build an elaborate story out of them. When
she could no more tie down this desire, she stuffed her things into her
sling-bag and walked out of Microsoft despite it having been the most
fun workplace there could be. She is now a part of Ashoka University’s
Young India Fellowship programme where she’s looking to learn to build
this eccentric life and make it fun through the way. She writes at www.
ashwiniashokkumar.com

Deepti Menon
has always believed in the power of the pen. Having
done her Masters in English Literature and her B.Ed. in English, she had
the option of teaching and writing. She also had the advantage of being
an Army kid, and later an Army wife, and loved the idea of travelling
around India, meeting new people and acquiring new skills. In 2002, her
light-hearted book, ‘Arms and the Woman’, depicting life as seen through
the eyes of an Army wife, was published by Rupa Publishers, Delhi, writ-
ten to reveal the warmth and camaraderie within the great institution. She
is now working on her second book that is a work of fiction, and not-tobe divulged yet! Do check out her blog: deepties.blogspot.in

Giribala Joshi
studied inorganic chemistry at Banasthali Vidyapeeth.
She taught in a school for a few years, before moving out of India. Now
she has given up chemistry for the love of literature. She has been writing
a humour and satire blog
The Grist Mill: Bring Your Own Grain
at http://
giribalajoshi.blogspot.com/ for the past four years. She hopes to write
more fiction in future. You can find her easily on Facebook or Twitter.

A fourteen year old poet who never reads poetry (her first poetry book
was received as a prize in an international poetry contest and she hasn’t
read it yet) and a writer who likes to project her ideas like a movie on the
screen of her inner eye rather than write it down laboriously,
Harsha
Pattnaik
lives in a world that is too unprepared for her kind. Eccentric
and unpredictable, people often tell her how she’s a mature, dependable
and a calm forty year old trapped in a teenager’s body or sometimes a
juvenile, hyperventilating and dumbstruck alien who’s still understand-
ing Earth. A lover of speaking, she likes to debate be it parliamentary or
free style or simply preaching. The industrious looking class topper that
rarely studies (even in class 10), she spends her time by weaving alternate
realities, fabricating stories, stitching lives and giving birth to people who
haven’t learnt breathing yet. She is an avid reader who consumes science
and literature with equal ferocity.

Krishnaroop Dey
is a full-blown conspiracy theorist who has believed
in every ‘End of the world’ theories since time immortal, and wants to
complete his novel before it does. He believes in Media Propaganda and
feels all his favorites like Liverpool Football Club and anonymous trolls
on twitter have been shortchanged by it. He hates over-enthusiasm and
his favorite slackers are Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. He has tried at times
to stray from the edges by working as a journalist while doing his engi-
neering but has always brought been back into the norms by the thought
‘What would my neighbors think’. Rest of his time he wastes by suc-
cumbing to peer pressure and following the crowd by doing an MBA.
Krshna Prashant
is a full time undergraduate business student with a
passion for debate, dance and writing. She loves the smell of rain, coffee,
old books and new notebooks. Most of her favorite stories are centered
around uniquely Indian concepts, customs and quirks. She hopes to be a
writer, and is working on publishing her first book in the near future. You
can stop by her blog at www.epiphanyinthecacophony.wordpress.com

Pavithra Srinivasan
enjoys writing, reading, reading about writing, and
writing about reading. She is particularly enchanted by trying to write
about sensory experiences that are hard to articulate: a journey down the
rabbit-hole of memory, jogged by a scent, and an emotion evoked by
a note of music are both fair game for her. Thus, she also loves travel-
ling and welcoming a range of sensory jolts. She dances Bharatanatyam,
studies Social Anthropology at Oxford, and counts family amongst the
highest blessings this world has to offer. She can be reached at pavithra.
[email protected].

Purba Ray
is an accidental blogger. She felt out of place as a Bengali
growing up in Delhi. Then pursued a degree in Economics though she
loved literature. Then taught IT in school while keeping up with rapid
changes in that domain that made her view herself as student. One fine
day she chucked it all and decided to swim away from the vortex of a
frenetic life. The break gave her time to pause and think and look for
engaging ways in which she could justify her existence. With a few gentle
nudges from her well-wishers, she was soon trying out her hand at writ-
ing, something she always thought she would love to do but never had the
courage to challenge herself to it. One thing led to the other and pretty
soon she was sharing her thoughts, her peeves, her anger and her laughter
with a growing band of followers and friends. You can get a taste of her
acerbic tongue at www.purba-ray.com. All with good intentions.

is a 22-year-old pharmacy graduate who, thoroughly
Ramya Maddali
disillusioned with the Applied Sciences, is now smitten by the Liberal
Arts after one year at the Young India Fellowship, Delhi. Philosophically
inconsistent, she is also fickle in the extreme: if her ‘passion’ in January
is journalism, it might as well be writing obituaries in October. All she
knows for sure is that writing is an effortful activity that doesn’t come
naturally to her, editing does. She is currently employed at Ashoka Uni-
versity, where she is being paid to read.
Riti Kaunteya
owes her love for reading to her parents. She started
dreaming of becoming an author the day her tough English teacher
awarded her a ‘good’ remark for her short story. Apart from reading a
lot of books and dabbling at various pastimes like playing the keyboard,
gardening and dreaming steadily about having a book in her name and
owning an impractical and large home, she holds a regular job with an
MNC in the fragrance and flavour industry where she is the fragrance
development head. This essentially means she pays through the nose for
everything she buys! She blogs at Reading Corner: itchingtoread.blog-
spot.com where she reviews books. Riti is a true Bihari settled in Chennai
with her entrepreneur husband Kaunteya, and her eight-year-old twin
boys Aryamman and Eshan.

grew up in a number of towns in India. At various times in
Rohit Gore
his childhood, he wanted to be a theatre actor, an architect and a book-
shop owner. After his engineering degree, he was based in Mumbai. An
MBA from S P Jain Institute followed and since then he is in the consult-
ing industry. He loves sports, specifically the discussing and watching part
of it. He has travelled a lot – a consequence of living in Mumbai, Tokyo
and London. His greatest passion is reading and it inspired him to write.
His fourth novel, following the earlier ones
Focus, Sam
,
A Darker Dawn
,
Circle of Three,
entitled
The Guardian Angels
has received widespread criti-
cal acclaim and is a bestseller. He currently lives in Pune, a wonderfully
vibrant city with his wife Pranita and son Sahil.

Ruchika Goel
is seventeen with fluid dreams. She always clicks a picture
too many, is obsessed with dancing in the rain and perceives her singular
achievement in life to be able to prove four equal to five. She loves talk-
ing, which is evident in her endless ramble at www.addressisnotavailable.
wordpress.com. To keep her silent, you can hand her a good book or
provide stable Internet. She is a Francophile and is currently looking for a
free hike to Europe. For a person who loves to travel, she loathes packing
way too much. She secretly wishes she could be like Mr. Fogg and only
pack money. We did mention fluid dreams. Ruchika writes because she
must. If she didn’t write, she’d probably kill people to pass the time. Oth-
er than that, she’s quite pleasant really. Trust us, she wrote this herself.

is a media professional in Mumbai, who likes to apply an
Sayan Haldar
unusual lens to usual situations.
Sakshi Nanda
studied Literature, served the print media and two pub-
lishing houses and sweetly surrendered it all when her honeymoon began.
She works from home now, writing to find that pot of gold at the begin-
ning of the rainbow, with her husband and her son as the greatest source
of ideas and inspiration. She likes to stay somewhere ‘Between Write and
Wrong’ at www.sakshinanda.com

holds a master’s degree in being friend-zoned and
Shruti Vajpayee
another degree in Chemistry from the University of Delhi. Her career,
however, took a U-turn and now she writes offbeat stories for a news
website. Popularly known as @Oinkoo on Twitter, she often blogs at
returnofthecrab.blogspot.com.