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I’ve been writing creative fiction sporadically since high school. Anyone who has known me this long will readily testify that what I have lacked in talent, I have made up for with a stunning lack of application.

That being said, I occasionally come up with something that works, and compels me to finish it. I wrote a short story last year that surprised me. The idea came from a one-word prompt in some contest: Fear. I thought of what I was viscerally afraid of, which was (and is) drowning. So I started thinking of a story about a guy who takes swimming lessons, and one paragraph in, I knew what I was going to write about.

My first version was interesting to me but wouldn’t have worked for anyone else. However, I have been blessed with friends who can see the finished product when I can barely see the skeleton: Ratul Ghosh, Mukul Chawla, Praba Ram… They understood my protagonist better than I did. Then there’s Ali Potia who generously shared bits of his own story with me so that I had a better sense of what this man’s life would’ve been like. To all of them, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.

Anyway, long story short: I sent it out to a couple of publications, and Mulberry Literary saw fit to publish it in their Spring-Summer issue this year. Here it is:

Lying to Water

Hope you like it!