Voracious readers who are used to devouring books, used to taking up reading challenges, or keep working their way up the book mountain on their bedside table, would admit that the pandemic of the last two years has played havoc with their reading habits.
In the initial phase of lockdown when many people thought this was a temporary phase, they looked at it as a great opportunity to put their feet up and catch up on their reading. But as the months went by and the stress of work, finances, chores, health issues, uncertainty, started building up, concentration started dwindling. That’s when, for many people like me, the short story came to the rescue.
I always doted on the short story but in the pandemic, I renewed my love for them, rediscovered them, and caught up with a lot of new authors that I wouldn’t possibly have done, had I not found reading the long-form challenging.
I know for a fact, many people who loved to pick up fat books - be it fiction or non-fiction - found their bearing in short stories because they demanded short spans of attention in these difficult times.
I started picking up short stories from everywhere. It could be a story published in a literary journal or website, shared by an author on Facebook – one such recent memorable read was Shalini Mullick’s story on tradition published on Women’s Web – it could be a story from New Yorker (my go-to place for incredible short stories) or a collection or anthology picked up on my Kindle.
I believe a short story is like an instant gratification of the written word. It’s like healthy fast food as opposed to a five-course meal that takes time to prepare and eat as well. However, writing a short story might be harder than writing a novel. Because you have to give your all within a few thousand words, keep your reader hooked, create well-rounded characters, keep the intrigue alive, create layers and finish off well to ensure the reader feels satiated.
Many a time I have read a short story that had impeccable language, form, styling, but in the end, it failed to reach my heart and live in my memory. For me a good short story - no matter how simply it’s written, or in how few words – is one that keeps me thinking long after I have closed the book.
One such story is Saadat Hasan Manto’s The Return (Khol Do in Urdu). Set in the time of Partition when women went missing in hordes, the story is just two and a half pages long but its impact is such that it will give you sleepless nights. In my opinion, it’s one of the most hard-hitting short stories ever written in the simplest of language.
Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephant, written in his formidable style as a dialogue between a couple, also evokes a similar churning in the heart – a feeling of restlessness and loss that you feel after reading Manto’s masterpiece.
In fact, Hemingway can be credited with writing the shortest short story in six words with the greatest impact. For sale: baby shoes, never worn
For me, a short story is all about impact. It could be funny, sad, thrilling, diabolic, mysterious, emotional, supernatural, or adventurous – but in the end, it should make you think and the better ones stay with you – sometimes, forever.
My reading list in the last two years has been eclectic. I have re-read my favourites like O.Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, Anton Chekov’s Lady with the Lapdog, Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace, Somerset Maugham’s The Bum, Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose, Haruki Murakami’s Scheherazade, Ruskin Bond’s The Blue Umbrella and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.
Jeffrey Archer’s collections like To Cut a Long Story Short, A Quiver Full Of Arrows, and A Twist In The Tale are my constant companions on my messy bedside table. After reading Archer for the first time, maybe at the age of 15 or 16, I understood that writing a short story is nothing less than a craft.
Arunava Sinha’s translation of Ashapurna Devi’s short stories in Shake The Bottle And Other Stories proved to be a fascinating read, especially the story Chhinamasta that showcases the author’s deep understanding of how hatred can actually overshadow love, even for your own son. I read Gulzar’s Footprints on Zero Line Writings on the Partition. Written in his inimitable style the stories give an insight into a time that history books have ignored.
I have also picked up the works of some of my contemporaries, seniors, and juniors as well, and have enjoyed the way they have crafted their stories. I mention some of their stories in their collections that have stayed with me. Written in a hold-your-breath-till-the-end style, Udayaditya Mukherjee’s Shim (By The River Dibang) is indeed a brilliant piece of writing. It’s deftly woven and has a stunning end. Bhaswar Mukherjee’s Rising Again (It Happens) is a story that’s contemporary yet quirky and has an interesting twist. Beetashok Chatterjee’s The Little Oxford Dictionary (The People Tree) is very different, crisp, and unusual. The diabolic twist, in the end, is profound in Deepti Menon’s Man of Habit (Where Shadows Follow) and Shreya Sen-Handley’s Lean on Me (Strange Stories). I went into peals after reading Mona Verma’s well-researched laugh riot The Life Changer (Laughter Lines).
Nishi Pulugurtha’s The Window Sill, Tina Sequeira’s Bhumi, and Puja Roy’s Temple Classroom are collections with predominantly women-centric stories. Nishi’s stories subtly touch upon the silent treatment and humiliation that women have to go through while men do not even realize the kind of pain they inflict on their partners. Both Tina and Puja write from the heart and are wonderful storytellers.
An anthology that kept me glued to it for days was the Readomania Book Of Historical Fiction. I revisited another anthology, a book that I really admire, Twilight’s Children.
Let me share an anecdote about one of my own short stories. In 2018 www.readomania.com used to run my column Kolkata Diary where I used to write a short story on Kolkata every week. In the same year, I was a speaker at the Times Lit Fest organized in Kolkata where I bumped into a college friend, a professor now, who introduced me to her colleague.
Her colleague asked me, “Are you the same person who wrote the story about the lady who gave up her job to become a blogger and was totally ignored by her own mother because she believed it was her fall from grace? That story stayed with me.”
“Bekaar Blogger is the name of the story,” I said.
I could have hugged her in happiness. It’s hard to explain the sense of satisfaction I felt as a writer that day.
A short story is a journey – as much for the reader as it is for the writer. I am fortunate that I can savour the journey as both. When a story idea comes to my mind I usually try to think of the end first before I start to write the beginning. Because after so many years of writing and reading I have realised if you have to get the reader on your side it’s the end that matters.
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