The Bombay Writing Project

1. The Taxi Driver – Adithya Narayanan
First published in the Helter Skelter Vol.4 anthology of short stories, The Taxi Driver is set in the old Hindu Colony in Dadar, Mumbai. It revolves around two characters: Rajkumar, a young taxi driver, and Mrs. Breganza, an old widow whom he drops to church every Sunday. When tragedy strikes Mrs. Breganza’s family, Rajkumar has a choice to make.

2. Amina – Sharanya Ramesh
Amina explores the relationship between two young women who teach in Shankarwai, a community in Jogeshwari East. Amina, the older one of the two, helps the narrator brave through a bad day in school, talking to her about life and lessons along the way.

3. Paperthin – Adithya Narayanan
A young school going boy, fresh to the ways of Bombay, has a love-hate relationship with his Marathi tuition teacher. She upgrades him to the first bench in her class and things look well for a while, but they begin to change when two friends join the same tuition, and a little more, after the tuition teacher decides to gets married.

4. Jukebox – Sharanya Ramesh
The narrator comes back to her old room in the big city, a room she had run away from a month ago. She reminisces about the failed relationship that had forced her to run away – a relationship that made for a good story, until you decided to open it and make sense of it.

5. The Brown Diary – Adithya Narayanan
Raji Subramanium receives a brown diary from her mother – a diary whose contents help her revive her dormant marriage. Today, her own daughter is getting married, but Raji can’t find the brown diary she had promised to pass on to her daughter.