Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction.

by Gabbar Singh

At twenty-two, Abhilasha Kumaris 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

  Anuj Gosalialikes brevity. He is Founder / Curator of a social storytell- ing platform called Terribly Tiny Tales. *** 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 quillofawanderer@blogspot.in.

  *** 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 Grainat 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 Pattnaiklives 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 Prashantis 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. srinivasan@yifp.in.

  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 bu
ys! 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 Nandastudied 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

  Shikhandiis a fictional character from the lore who makes occasional appearances in the real world by authoring such pieces. 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.

  Shubham Kapur is 21 and is stuck with a masculine name. She recently graduated as an electronics engineer and is working in a prestigious IT firm. She is busy tasting the realities of a corporate life and pursuing her passion for writing at the same time. Somehow, codes and wires never intrigued her the way fables did. She is a short-story writer and aspires to touch her imagination through her characters. She is on the way to dis- covering herself and everything different about life. If you like her story or have an experience to share, you can mail her at: shubham.kapur@ gmail.com

  Shweta Mukesh grew up across continents and spends as much time as she can backpacking. When she is not working on a farm in Hungary or singing on the streets of Bruges, she maintains a steady corporate job. Shweta graduated from UC San Diego and is a Young India Fellow. She generally writes socio-political commentaries and has interviewed former presidents, political activists, and filmmakers.

  A first year college dropout, Sidhharthhas been a jack of trades ranging from a shoe-packer in Jammu to a Country Sales Manager in Dubai. He currently lives in Delhi. An agnostic in the word’s truest sense, Sidhharth refers to himself as a five feet seven inch tall question mark because of his skeptic attitude. Of the four women he loves the most, his mother, his sister and his daughter are three. He keeps the fourth one secret, just like his surname. His initiation into writing took place in Dubai where he had the comforts of a two-days-a-week job. He blogs frequently at www. muktimantra.com and can be reached at: isidhharth@live.com

  Sudhanshu Shekhar Pathak , 56, has been writing short-stories in Hindi for over a decade now. Currently employed as the Chief Man- ager of the State Bank of India, Sudhanshu has had several publications within the bank and some, outside too. A connoisseur of art, music and literature, Sudhanshu is an avid reader and boasts of a huge library – both of books and musical instruments, for which his son, Harsh Snehanshu, considers himself blessed. You can read his writings at: www.sudhan- shukikahaniyaan.blogspot.in or www.kavitaayen.blogspot.in

  Urvashi Sarkar is a freelance journalist and currently works in the de- velopment sector. She was also a full-time journalist with The Hindu. She blogs at: http://quillandscribe.blogspot.in/

  www.rumourbooks.com