A Difficult Choice

Rummaging through some old papers I discovered a scrap book containing a few short stories I had written in Tamil during my school and college days. I could not believe that I had written those stories. I was surprised because I find that today I cannot even compose a simple letter in Tamil due to lack of practice for over 45 years. Though I have been writing essays on a variety of topics in English post the success of my autobiography published in 2009 and have also become a columnist in a local weekly, I had not written any short stories in English. I decided to give it a try. I wrote my first piece titled ‘Marriages are made in heaven’ in 2014 and circulated the same among a very select list of family and friends. Encouraged by the response I wrote a couple of stories more. I was surprised that one of my stories titled ‘Changing society’ which I had sent to my good friend Kizhambur, the editor of Kalaimagal Magazine for his comments, got published in the June, 2014 Issue of Kalaimagal. Impressed by the contemporary theme of the story, Kizhambur had got the story translated in Tamil by one of his panel of writers and published it without even informing me in advance. Getting recognized by a prestigious literary Tamil magazine was a shot in the arm. Another story titled ‘Indomitable Spirit’ was published by Dignity Dialogue, a monthly published by Dignity Foundation.

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Rafbók: 5 januari 2022