Thursday, October 8, 2009
Turning News into Fiction
Last summer, Hindu pilgrims making their way up a mountain-side to the hill-top Naina Devi Shrine were caught in a human stampede as one of the guardrails broke, sparking panic throughout the crowd. I read about the incident in the Toronto Star and turned it into the short-story "The Stampede" for my collection The Vagrant Borders of Kashmir.In recent news, Clark-Nova Books has requested to include the story in its up-coming anthology - Writing Without Direction - for writers under 30, due out in Spring 2010.
The politics of writing about a place like India from a Post-Post Colonial standpoint are risky. Using a real-life tragedy as a creative catalyst forces one to re-evaluate the line between truth and fiction and where our responsibilities lay with either. "The Stampede" challenges our privileging of certain catastrophic events by framing them in an outsider's outsider perspective - that of a journalist reporting on the events with the help of an Indian intern.
Many thanks to Clark-Nova Books for including me in their anthology.
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