A couple of days back, Armeen shared with me the exciting news that her short story, Farewell, Heidelberg, had made it to the top 10 among 2,208 entries from around the world in a competition conducted by Writers and Artists (Bloomsbury). The results will be announced by the end of March. As you can imagine, Armeen and I are barely moving as we have our fingers and toes crossed!

All this talk of short stories made me think of the writers behind them. To my mind, short story writing is a fine art. How does one build a plot that is compelling, develop characters that readers care about, and bring the story to a conclusion that may or may not be what the reader expects? And, the writer must do this in the space of 1-3 pages. Being brief that too while writing a story is no mean feat. For the record, I’ve written websites, blogs, essays, user guides, training manuals, and e-learning courses – but I’ve never written a short story. It is a difficult art – and underappreciated too, I’m afraid.

Right from school, we read short stories by writers such as Saki, Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, Ruskin Bond and Anton Chekov to name a few. From the Indian subcontinent one name comes immediately to mind – Saadat Hasan Manto. Some of his short stories are just a paragraph long – and what paragraphs those are! Poignant, heart breaking, wistful, reflective – all in one. How easily the stories flow, how effortless the construction is. I remember how struck I was as a reader as the last line of the story held a twist that changed the entire meaning of the story!

I’m going to revisit some stories and will read a few new ones – and I hope you do too. And as we read, dear reader, let us pause a moment to appreciate the art of the short story.

Have you played the game 20 Questions? There is an organizer/scorer who prepares slips (chits) of paper with names of famous personalities on it. There can be any number of teams – two people (A and B) in each team. The rules are simple – Person A picks up a chit and notes the name. Person B asks questions to try and guess the name on the chit; he or she can ask up to 20 questions. There can be only two possible answers – Yes or No. For example, A has picked up a chit. Now try guessing this person as B rattles questions.

Q 1: Is the person alive?
A: No
Q 2: Male?
A: Yes
Q 3: European?
A: No.
Q 4: American?
A: No
Q 5: Indian?
A: Yes
Q 6: Fine arts?
A: No
Q 7: Sports?
A: No
Q 8: Politics?
A: Yes
Q 9: Rajiv Gandhi
A: No
Q 10: Recent politics?
A: No
Q 11: Last decade?
A: No
Q 12: A king or something?
A: No
Q 13: Freedom struggle?
A: Yes
Q 14: Gandhiji?
A: Yes!!!

The game can be a good test of your general knowledge and with the clock ticking, can test your ability to ask sensible questions in the first place!

A friend and I decided to take part in such a competition during an inter-college/university event. There must have been about 50-60 teams, so there was an elimination round to get the number of teams down to 7 in the finals. We were intimidated – at best, we had played these games with friends at parties or within our college – this was a virtual mela! We decided to go ahead anyway.  To decide the order of play, each team had to pick a chit with a number on it. We picked ours – it was number 1. Did I hear anyone say, Murphy’s Law? We next learnt that the organizers were some chaps from IIT Bombay. What luck! The rules of the game were slightly different. The chits could be names of famous personalities or of famous places. Okay, no big deal there. And, while asking questions, the two teammates had to sit back to back – no eye contact permitted. Phew!

I picked a chit that read, “Gondwanaland”. My mind was in a tizzy – all those geography lessons from school about Pangaea breaking up to form Laurasia and Gondwanaland how-many-ever-million years ago came back to me in a flash. The maps of these landmasses danced before my eyes. I managed to give a totally helpless look to my teammate before I took my seat. And in front of a few hundred people, it was game over for us in less than 5 seconds!

But merely participating in this event and other such events was a learning experience. Just being part of these energized, enthusiastic bunches of people was rewarding in its own way. We got a pulse of things, got interested in new things, and started reading up on topics we never paid attention to earlier. Slowly, very slowly, we started winning some consolation prizes and then, ever so slowly, we started breaking into the top three slots. But perhaps, the most important thing was that we started to have opinions on issues. We were more in touch with current affairs and quite simply, it helped us become well-rounded individuals (pun intended).  

Cut to the present day. We sent an entry to the D&AD Professional Awards. These awards are open to creative work done for commercial purposes to companies and freelancers worldwide. Last year, D&AD Awards received entries from 67 countries across 24 disciplines of creative work. Ours may be one among thousands of entries and we may not win anything at all. But the learning has already started. Just seeing the creative work that was sent in the past years, the categories that awards are given in, deciding which category we should enter, reading about the judges who will serve in this year’s juries – every single thing has been enriching. Truly, being part of the excitement and merely participating can be such a winning experience.