Capturing the Navarasas in Flash Fiction

It’s a celebration of fiction at Spark this month. For, isn’t fiction a wonderful way, apart from poetry of course, to explore human emotions? When the editorial team decided that the theme for the September 2012 issue would be ‘Navarasas’ or the nine human emotions, one of the first ideas that we had in mind was to invite some well-known flash fiction writers to interpret the different rasas through their stories. Very much a dream-of-many-months idea, indeed! And what do we say? We have been lucky indeed, with providence being on our side. We feel privileged that five wonderful, award-winning writers agreed to write flash fiction themed on the nine rasas for Spark this month.

Spark is proud to feature Abha Iyengar, Anuradha Kumar, Dr. Dipika Mukherjee, Fehmida Zakeer and Hema Raman – writers whose works have been published in literary journals all over the world, writers whose works have won great recognition in the form of awards and writers who have achieved many other milestones in their writing career. Do check out the profiles that accompany their stories – they are a pleasure to read!

Of course, this introduction cannot be complete without mentioning how wonderful each of them is as a person – their humility, trust us, just cannot be missed. It indeed was such a pleasant surprise. In spite of having very successful writing careers to their credit, Abha, Anu, Dipika, Fehmida and Hema were so understanding, cooperative and accommodative and worked together with us, demonstrating great interest and patience. Despite working on tight schedules, they have sent us some really amazing stories.

Last but not the least, we would like to thank Shikhandin (Writer of the Month, June 2012 issue) for helping us get in touch with each of these writers and making our long-time dream come true.