A subtle blend of emotions: Mango Chutney
Have you ever tasted a Mango Chutney? It is a subtle blend of sweet, sour and hot flavours. So is the case with the book ‘Mango chutney’, which subtlety blends various stories by different writers together, giving taste of every genre, from thriller to romance or from leisure to literary reading. Published by Rumour Books India and edited by Harsh Snehanshu, this book is an anthology of short fiction.
One World News’s reporter A.Kameshwari had an opportunity to taste the Chutney at its launch at Oxford Book Store, Connaught Place, New Delhi, where she had a little conversation with Harsh Snehanshu and few contributors of the book.
“There have been anthologies after anthologies launched by newly founded publishers in India and if you notice their quality, especially from the newer breed of publishers, they are mostly centred on college life, love etc. We wanted to bring out descriptive anthology which had descriptive authors on board and we wanted to bring an assortment of talent, right from literary to thriller, every sort of genres have been touched. So, nothing else but Mango Chutney seemed to be the right title for it as the book has all sort of stories together”, says Harsh Snehanshu, columnist and editor at Rumour Books India.
Whenever we read a story, we place the writer in the character’s place automatically, but we never come to know whether the story is about the author/writer or not. The writers of Mango Chutney comfortably revealed that their stories are either based on them or based on someone close or around them.
Arjun Bhatia, the writer of ‘Sawai’, says, “Nothing is purely fictional. I have been travelling all over the country for past one year. I have travelled many places and organisations, so my story is an amalgamation of all those experiences.”
Ruchika Goel, the writer of ‘End of a weekend’ got her inspiration for writing the story from cafe’s conversation, “My story is based on a cafe which is written on the basis of snippets I have picked up from cafe’s conversation and rest is fiction. I have tried to portray reality of people, so yes we can call it reality based.”
When asked about what her weekend looks like, Ruchika giggles and says, “Horrible! Mondays are even worse because I have to get up for school. However, this weekend we have four off’s which makes it better.”
Another writer Shruti Vajpayee has quite an interesting story to tell. Her story is title, ‘Friend zoned’, about which she proudly says that 95% of the story is true. “I have been friend-zoned thrice in my life. So, one can say that I have masters in it. It is a myth that only guys get friend-zoned, I know quite few girls (including me) who have been friend-zoned. Feeling of being friend-zoned is really bad and (laughing) I would like the readers, who read my story, feel miserable like I do.”
Selecting few stories out of a bunch would definitely have been a tough task, though for Harsh it seemed to be an easy task, “Basically, we had an open online submission through which a lot of contributors were picked up and few writers were already there in my mind. Like, I knew Siddharth and have read his story before on his blog whereas I knew Arjun writes really well and asked him to contribute as well.”
Harsh has translated a story called, ‘Prem Ki Chaashni’, which is originally written by his father, Sudhanshu Shekhar, who is the oldest contributor to the book. ‘Prem Ki Chaashni’ is a story plotted in rural area and revolves around life of rural people changes because of a bank in their village and so on. “My interest in writing was a sudden event. Being a bank employee, I would always come across different people with different needs. So, there was a professor who would come to bank daily, sit for couple of minutes and leave. One day I asked him why he visits everyday and he said that he comes to find plot of stories. His words that he would have written a story everyday if he would have been working in a bank struck to me and inspired me to write.” says Sudhanshu Shekhar.
Ramya Maddali, writer of ‘Perfectly poached egg’, is inspired by food. Being a hosteller, she would love to watch cooking videos on YouTube and would be happy thinking that at least someone is lucky enough to eat those delicious dishes. “My story is about a woman who spends her evening along with her husband in poaching an egg, which she has never done before.” Would she be able to poach a perfect egg? Well, you have to read to know about it.
Siddharth, writer of ‘Valentine Lost’ says, “I am a shy person when it comes to talking. So, there was an event in my childhood that I wanted to tell to somebody, but could never do that. So, my inspiration behind the story is based on a thought that what would have happened if I would have said it back then. My story is at some places emotional and at some places comical. It is a memory of fifteen years back and would surely take the readers to their school times.”
While Siddharth believes that whatever the writer writes is based on his/her life, Ramya says, “I think you can be completely imaginative about writing a story which isn’t related to you, but at the end of the day, you are writing it. So, yes a pinch of reality would always reflect in the story, no matter how much you deny.”
Every story has something or the other to say to the readers. On one side where Ramya says she feels that if her story makes the reader feel hungry then she has achieved her goal. On the other side, Sakshi, the writer of ‘On the other side’, says that she has left it to readers for the interpretation of the mood of the story.
The publishers have taken a step to bring-in new talents in the field of writing and present to us fresh breathe of writings, now it is on the readers to give these budding writers a chance. Over all, the blend of various writers and various stories seems to be interesting and the Mango Chutney seems to be quite tasty. We are surely going for a read, what about you?
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