I turned to creative writing rather late in life. Initially the pursuit of a career in freelance journalism and feature writing and, later, a focus on academic publication, left me little time to nurture my imagination by spinning a yarn on paper. Then, a few years ago, my friend Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, a novelist himself (Tivolem), invited me to join the Two Bridges Creative Writers Group in New York. This venture opened up for me a whole new world in the exploration of creative fiction and non-fiction. Before I knew it, I had a collection of twelve short stories all ready for the publication market. In the past couple of years, I have had a few of them published. Here are links to two of my short stories. It is my hope to see the rest of them published in a collection. Someday…
Stranger on a Bus
I read this story for the first time in public during a New York University Student-Faculty Reading at The Bowery in Soho, New York, in March 2005. My colleague Tim Tolimson who teaches Creative Writing at NYU and is the Fiction Editor of Ducts, an online creative writing journal in New York, immediately accepted it for publication. Based on my personal encounter with a Gujarati woman in London, their story delienates the sad and lonely lot of a courageous, optimistic and charitable immigrant who touched me deeply. This meeting was just one in a string of what I call “Close Encounters of the Anglo Kind” that I hope will ultimately become a book by itself. Click on the link below to read my story as it appeared in Ducts.
Unfinished Symphony
When I was a teenager in Bombay, I had an eccentric Anglo-Indian piano teacher who left an indelible mark on my mind. Though I gave up learning music after a few years, I was never able to forget my odd music teacher . Even after emigrating to the USA, I kept wondering what might have happened to her. This story, though inspired by someone I once knew, is entirely imaginary, born out of my attempts to look back on that strange time in my life and to bring some closure to my teen years. Click on the link below to read the story as it appeared in The Anglo-Indian Wallah, an online creative writing journal.