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SHOMA CHATTERJI

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (6)
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15 Followers
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6 Stories

104 karma pts

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BETWEEN THE IMAGE AND THE REAL

Submitted to Contest #52

I saw him standing in front of me. He was more a blurred image of himself rather than the clear, sharply defined person I know him to be. He was smiling. But smiling has many connotations. Was he smiling at me, or at himself, or at the world out there? But he was standing at some distance and I could not see him clearly as if he was standing across an imaginary river on the other side, and the early morning fog had clouded his image for me standing on this side. He looked like a water colour painting with the colours fading away. But he...

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MEETING IN A WAITING ROOM

Submitted to Contest #49

The train I was supposed to get on had been cancelled because of the heavy rains and thunder in the small village she had come to. The station was quite far away from where this small station stood. The station was small and only two trains ran from this small village called Keyaphuli to Kolkata everyday. They were distanced by ten or twelve hours and if you missed a train to Kolkata, and your place of residence was far away, you had no choice but to stay on in the waiting room till the next train arrived ten hours later. The station was de...

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MISSING YOU

Submitted to Contest #45

“Will you miss me?” There she was at it again. I had to tell her, yet again that I would not miss her one bit. Unlike most Indian husbands, I am very independent and am proud of the fact. I do not believe in needless niceties either. So, why would I pretend something I did not feel? I knew how to rustle up a quick dinner. The office canteen would handle the lunch. As for breakfast, all I had to do was put in two pieces of bread in the toaster, allow them to brown as I brushed, shaved and showered, took out the browned toast and downed them, ...

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ALICE IN WONDERLAND 2019

Submitted to Contest #44

ALICE IN WONDERLAND - 2019 Alice was an incorrigible dreamer who dreamt when she was awake and dreamt in her sleep. It was a childhood ‘gift’ she could do nothing about or, rather, did not wish to wash off. Her dreams had made life away from home pleasant and cheerful. Her dreams were golden sunshine and liquid honey, because she never ever had nightmares. She had no idea about what nightmares were or what they were like. Her dreams were moonshine and pattering rain, slanted pencils of sunlight filtering in through the glass-covered Ven...

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CANDY FLOSS

Submitted to Contest #43

When our mother took us to the annual fair at Dadar Gymkhana near Parsee Colony in Bombay, my sister tugged at her sari for a ball of candy floss or cotton candy as we knew it. I loved it too. But being the eldest of three, mother had taught me not to be greedy in front of my sister and brother. I kept quiet hoping that my mother would finally surrender and give us a cotton candy each. I also knew that it might make a cut on the bus fare to take us back home to Shivaji Park. But the hope continued to flicker like a weak flame, somewhere in t...

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KUNDA

Shortlisted for Contest #2 ⭐️

One fine morning, Kunda went ahead and shaved off her eyebrows. She did not have a razor but she stole her brother’s without asking him. Looking at her face in the small hand-mirror that hung crookedly from a rusted nail on the wall of their shanty, she washed her face with the apology of the soap pickings she had lifted from somewhere and wiped it with her brother’s dirty towel. Then, with slightly shaking fingers, she applied the razor – the blade was already inside – to her eyebrows and worked her way through till her face became unrecogn...

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