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Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

Lahiri, Jhumpa.  Unaccustomed Earth . Penguin Random House, 2017. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is a commentary on the Indian diaspora. The characters in these stories are Indian immigrants who belong to the upper middle-class. They are very much American in every way but are burdened by their cultural past.   The title story “Unaccustomed Earth” explores the complex relationship between a daughter and her father. “Only Goodness” tells the story of Rahul, a flawed son of successful parents, and his descent into alcoholism. “Hell-Heaven” is a story of troubled relationship between mother and daughter; it is also a story about a married woman (the narrator’s mother) who is troubled by cultural differences and the inability to acclimatize to a new lifestyle in a new country. “Nobody’s Business” is a complex love story of Paul and Sang.   All these stories explore the identity crisis of Indian immigrants and their struggles to navigate through different cultures while trying to hold
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Muffin - Flash Fiction

  Read my latest flash fiction, Muffin, on  Cul-de-sac of Blood!  
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The Bridge

Short story alert: The Bridge Honorable Mention, Fall 2020 The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
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Write. Create. Live.

Write. Create. Listen to music. Eat good food. Drink coffee—lots of it. Enjoy good whiskey. Love. Live. Write. Create. Go out. Let the sun shine down upon you. Get back inside. Write more. Create more. Do better. Ink in your pen may dry up sooner than you think. You'll never know what your last story is going to be, your last written word on the page, the last whisper in your head. So—coffee again. Write until your brain dries up your thoughts and ideas. A sip of water, a sip of whiskey … maybe a splash of water in whiskey. Drink, write, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die. Write. Create. Live.  
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The Fisherman by John Langan

          An insidious story about bargaining with grief, The Fisherman by John Langan is one of the best horror novels I've ever read. It’s a beautifully written tale of loss and grief, and the pain associated with them. Abe is the narrator of the story. He has lost his wife to cancer, people’s compassion has faded away, and he’s living alone with his pain. He takes up fishing to keep himself distracted from his sadness.            A few years down the line, Abe makes friends with one of his colleagues, Dan. Like Abe, Dan has lost his family, too, and is going through tough times. Together they go fishing and try to find solace in their shared new hobby.           “It would be a lie to say the time passes quickly. It never does, when you want it to.”           Grief is complicated. Contrary to popular opinion, time does not really heal grief. One can only learn to cope with it and move on. One day, Abe and Dan decide to follow up on some legendary tale about a place ca
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Relevance of Horror in Literature

                  My first tryst with horror was The Zee Horror Show. One would argue that Duck Tales and TaleSpin were more suitable for an eight-year-old. But the intriguing charm of the new horror show, the first of its kind on Indian television, was hard to ignore. Most episodes were rooted in superstition and dark magic. The actors who played the roles of ghosts were almost always in low-budget prosthetic makeup – a desperate attempt by the makers to scare the audience. That didn’t scare me at all. What really scared me, however, was the reaction of the characters to the situations they were often thrown in.           Stand behind a door and say ‘Boo!’ and you may startle a few. But if you were to tell them a backstory about a young man who never left his room and went mad before strangling himself to death. If you were to then guide them into the room, slowly, they will imagine the rest and scare themselves silly. Horror, as I’ve come to believe, is all about the pow
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Kaivalya

Stories have always ruled my world. Right from my childhood. Whether it's fiction or a real incident, as long as someone narrates it in an interesting way, I am game. Nothing fascinates me more than a good story. When I grew up and started reading novels, I entered into a whole new world – a world where I made a lot of new friends, a world in which I want to spend the rest of my life. Talking of reading novels, thriller/mystery has always been my favourite genre. Although I enjoy other genres too, a good thriller on any given day works better. Nothing beats that. Romance is the only genre I don't prefer. And horror/paranormal is the only genre I wished to have read, but never could (for reasons unknown). After watching the movie, The Shining , I cursed myself for not having read the novel first. However, that got me thinking. When it comes to Indian authors, there are of course superb storytellers like R. K. Narayan, Amitav Ghosh, Vikas Swarup, but there has never been
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