The Measure of Happiness

My story, ‘The Measure of Happiness,’ in the current issue of Earthen Lamp Journal… I am so relieved that the story is finally out. Thank you, Divya Dubey, for turning my random prose into a breezy read… The story is long, I am afraid, but do take a look…

The story had a long gestation period. I wrote the first part some four years ago. It was a different story, set in the US, about cultural clash. There were some important white characters in the mix. But I couldn’t carry on. I was not qualified enough to write about white characters.

Then, two years later, I wrote the last portions, when the two Manohars meet at the hostel room. It was supposed to be a story of a man trying to seduce his former lover’s son. Even there, I hit a roadblock. It was sounding too incest-y.

I abandoned the project again. Then in January 2015, I took on a challenge to combine the two separate halves and merge them together.

Making them stick together wasn’t easy… And, to think, it all started with an ice cream vendor at India Gate…

The story here/ http://earthenlampjournal.com/content.php?content_id=140