9,256
edits
(Created page with "{{SetTitle}} {{Heading| A Different Colour in English | }} {{Poem2Open}} “Many-Splendoured Love” - The coming out of this short story collection makes for a very sa...") |
No edit summary |
||
| (3 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{SetTitle}} | {{SetTitle}} | ||
{{Heading| A Different Colour | {{Heading| A Different Colour in English | }} | ||
{{Poem2Open}} | {{Poem2Open}} | ||
If I were to say that languages have kept me happy through all these years in | |||
America, I would be totally truthful. Making a career, somehow, did not interest | |||
me here. Instead, I became intensely involved in the world as a Traveller, and my | |||
childhood writing-activity flourished here as well. I have been writing in my | |||
mother-tongue Gujarati, in Hindi and in English. Besides, I learnt new languages | |||
here, like Bengali, Spanish, Japanese. I find the sound of a language, and its visual | |||
appearance, quite fascinating. | |||
The period of settlement in another place, another country was also a period of | |||
creative hibernation. Slowly words did come to my aid. Again I started writing | |||
poems and essays based on my travels. From getting published in magazines and | |||
newspaprers, these writings morphed in many books, got awards and recognition, | |||
and sustained me with Joy and Satisfaction. | |||
Over time, I wrote in other genres, like literary essays, translations from Bengali, | |||
short stories, as well as novels. I did have five books in English, including a book | |||
of photographs of India, and one collection of poems is in four languages (Gujarati, | |||
Hindi, English, Urdu), but the bulk of my writing has been in Gujarati. | |||
Finally I started thinking of translating some short stories in English, especially on | |||
coaxing by non-Gujarati, non-Indian friends. At this time, I also got encouraged by | |||
Shree Atul Raval of Ekatra Publishing. An idea formed about doing an E-Book for | |||
my short stories in English, and this is the outcome. | |||
The title comes from one short story, and it also suggests that this E-Book is | |||
certainly a dream that has been given a shape; a colour, in a poetic sense, and | |||
perhaps even flavour, if one were to be even more imaginative. | |||
Only one story is almost entirely based on happenings that I witnessed, and that | |||
one is called “Disconnections”. There are four main characters in it, and I did meet | |||
all of them as they passed through these situations. And a part of “Assistance” is | |||
taken from my experience with the main characters in it. Surely fictional details are | |||
added to both the themes. All other stories appeared entirely from imagination. | |||
I decided not to present the stories in an alphabetical order, mainly because | |||
“Assistance” is the longest story here; it is a story within a story, and might | |||
test the readers’ patience right at the beginning. So I start with “Blessings”, for | |||
good omen. | |||
May that this book finds many readers who would enjoy the short stories in it. | |||
{{Right|------- Eagerly, Preety Shah-Sengupta}} | |||
{{Right|------- Eagerly, Preety | |||
{{Poem2Close}} | {{Poem2Close}} | ||