My short story Refuge is coming out in Aesthetica Magazine this month. It is my first short dystopian story, and I admire Aesthetica so much, so I’m very excited. This seems like a good time to recap where some of my other stories can be found. I love writing shorts. They are dense, crystallizing human experience into a few chosen words. They need a different focus than novels, a deeper focus on each word. They allow me to experiment with voices and characters that I don’t normally do in long fiction. In novels, my main character is always a woman, and the path of the novel tends to be more ‘genre’, but in shorts my narrators are young, old, men, women, and everything in between, and they tend to follow less of a genre path.
The story Electric Solutions and Miscellaneous appeared in print in Wasafiri, and is about a clerk in Mumbai who dreams of becoming a film star.
The Rangoli Pattern appeared in print in J-Journal, New Writings on Justice, and is about a school caretaker in Manali, a hill town in the Himalayas, who is torn between his desire for a school cleaner and his love for his own company.
Marmite and Mango Chutney appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review and The Writing Disorder and is about an auntie in London who knows what she likes and even more what she hates!
Mina in the Spring is about a young woman wondering what to say at her father’s funeral, and it appeared in The Front View online.
The Road to Simla appeared in Inkspill and is about a couple who can’t live with or without each other. It can be read on the pdf online.
Anywhere Town appeared in print in Brand and is about three grown up children visiting their father on his deathbed in Manali.
Durga and the Holy Cow appeared online in New Asian Writing and is about a farmer sitting in the shade of a tree, wondering what has gone wrong with his life. A cow tells him exactly where he is going wrong!
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