CHENNAI: Short stories are like 100 metre dashes, but writing a novel is a more challenging process. It is like running a marathon,” summarised popular novelist Ahmed Faiyaz who was in the city recently to release Urban Shots’s three books – Crossroads, Bright Lights and Love Collection. Urban Shots is a collection of city-based short stories from fresh writers and the latest three books are the second instalment of the Urban Shots collection. Releasing the book at Landmark, Citi Centre, were proud contributors, Vibha Batra, R Chandra Shekar (Love Collections), Saritha Rao (Crossroads) and Mydhili R Verma (Bright Lights). The authors were in conversation with Ahmed, who has edited Crossroads. Chandra Shekar, who has contributed two stories to the compendium, admitted that his two tales were completely different from each other. “I wanted to write both the stories in two different voices, it was quite a deliberate choice,” he explained, also divulging that one story is about an American basketball player who goes to get a haircut in Mumbai and another revolves around a bus stop in Chennai. Chandra Shekar might have taken the quirky route with his stories, but Vibha chose to go on attack mode. “I believe love is blind and that our society tags people too easily,” she said, providing a little insight into her story about the relationship between an older woman and a younger man. “If an older woman falls in love with someone younger, people automatically call her a cougar. They don’t even take the relationship seriously,” she said with obvious frustration. Saritha’s contribution to Crossroads is definitely food for thought. She explains her story, Gap: “It stands for two things – the generation gap between a mother and her daughter and also the gap in their lives.” She adds, “The story is about one event that changes their entire relationship.” Mydhili’s contribution could probably be as urban as a story can get. Written in the form of email replies, the story is about a boy who replies to a spam email, hoping to become rich. Since the urban setting is the key in their stories, Mydhili explains, “Urban India doesn’t just represent the youth for me, it is representative of everyone who is living here now.” Saritha added her two pennies worth, “The flavour of the urban setting makes it much more intense, the stress at every level is so much more.”Chandra Shekar helped the ladies out. “I have always lived in a city and it is only natural that I write urban stories. Places where they live or lived in definitely provide the writer with the background setting,” he reasoned.
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