Wordweavers : Short Fiction 2021 Winners & Featured Writers

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Poetry	Short Fiction	Prose 500	Short Story

First Prize	Second Prize	Third Prize
Anahita Bharucha	Preetha Vasan	Vigneshwar J

Featured Writer
Harshita Nanda

First Prize

Infusion by Anahita Bharucha

1979

While growing up Sanjana knew this. Theirs was the poshest house, on one of the poshest street of the most happening city in the country. They would travel to New York for holidays every year and stock their house with the newest gadgets from the stores there. Their mahogony tables were topped with Tiffany lamps, their kitchen was stocked with Tupperware products and they cooked their food in the non-stick cookware. Room fresheners, floor wax, and oh so many things, fragrant and shiny! Their taller-than-pappa fridge and air conditioner had arrived in a wooden box and bubble wraps that they popped the whole day. None of this would be seen in the country for at least two decades. Some of the richest businessmen would drop their jaws at how much customs had been paid for all these gadgets.

2019

And then twenty years into her marriage with Ranveersinh she discovered this. All fragrant scents had showered her with estrogen, entering her bloodline and stealthily killing the other hormone, progesterone. Their refrigerator and air conditioner had released chlorofluorocarbons not only infusing pollutants in their lungs but in their environment. Except that it was not just them anymore. Others had joined in on them as taxes on these "conveniences" dropped and they became affordable. What they didn't know was their city no longer had a morning mist. It was a chemical fog, a slow killer, willingly bought into their life, paid for, to slowly rot away their insides.

Second Prize
Blood by Preetha Vasan

The wind whips his raincoat. The storm will not let him see beyond his hands. He has to secure the ropes and the tape. His phone buzzes. He covers it with his gloved hand. He had been right all along. The parents will not pay. The twins stare at him despite the rain stabbing their eyes. He wonders what it should be: knife or gun. Neither. The first will be a bloodbath; the second too noisy. But he can cut without letting a drop of blood. He is not a paediatric surgeon for nothing: Professional healer by day; passionate killer by night. Only this time he had become somewhat greedy, hadn’t he? Greed is not good. Greed has led to demanding ransoms, and getting new sim cards. So much mess; unlike bloodless incisions. He looks at his erstwhile patients. Their eyes have the same incredulity when they had first stepped into his clinic. Which one first? They are so identical even death can’t tell them apart. His surgeon’s knife flashes white in the lightning. Tomorrow they will cordon off this place with a red tape which will say, “Crime scene”. He loves that: the drama after the deaths. He has been watching it for years. Tomorrow’s twin murders will be better. He must prepare his dialogue when the police come for the interview, get his best suit to be on TV. After all these are the commissioner’s daughters.

She pauses, debates between commissioner and prime minister, chooses the former, and mails her agent but not before making sure he leaves that one clue her detective, famously called the “Indian-Poirot”, will detect in the last but one chapter.

After all aren’t murder mysteries, as she tells her students, all about narrative.

Third Prize

How Sin Came To Earth by Vigneshwar J

Many centuries ago, there were no idols of god. God appears as a bright light, and not seen with naked eyes. His shadow projects on the ground and seen. People could worship his shadow and ask him anything. He appears at morning of every day.

One day a woodcutter chops down a tree and sits down for a break. He wonders what to do with the tree. An idea strikes him. ‘God appears only at morning everyday, if I carve his shadow off the tree trunk, we could worship him throughout the day’. He carves the shadow of god, and takes it to the village. The villagers start worshipping it.

As usual, the god appears in the morning and sees the villagers worshipping the shape of shadow made of tree trunk. He becomes angry and leaves, never to return. Years pass by.

One day, one villager wants to lend some money to another. He takes him to the place where the shadow is, and gives the money to another being the shadow as witness. Then they leave the place. On their way back, the lender thinks ‘before the god was everywhere so if I do anything wrong he would see me but now he is in one place, how could he see me if I do anything out of the place he is present’. Therefore, he beats up the borrower and takes the money. Lender rushes to the village and says to the villagers that the borrower betrayed him. Villagers believed the lender.

That is how people started doing sin. Believing that the god is in one place and not everywhere.

The Dancing Queen by Harshita Nanda

The party was already in full swing when he reached. The dance floor was full of youngsters gyrating to the latest party anthem. His eyes searched and found her sitting in one corner. Even though she was talking to the lady seated next to her, he knew she wanted to dance by the way her foot tapped with music. He went to the D.J. and whispered something in his ear. At the DJ's nod, he went to the lady and handing her a bouquet of roses, asked her to dance. She blushed but accepted his outstretched hand. As he drew her to the dance floor, the music change. It was their song. they looked into each other's eyes, smiled as they started moving in symphony. They dipped and swayed, oblivious to the other people on the dance floor. Mesmerized by their dance, the dance floor emptied. As the notes of the music ended, he dipped her for one last time. There was silence for a couple of minutes before the whole room erupted in applause.

Looking at her flushed face, he grinned and said, "Dadi, you are still my dancing queen"!