Mona Verma grew up on Charles Dickens. Robert Frost too cast his spell. Traces of these influences lurk in the author's debut collection of short stories — “A Bridge to Nowhere.” Published by Depot, the four stories lean strongly on to the title. They tell the tale of loss, pain and unfinished dreams — of people lost and torn apart by life and its wicked turns, stranded on the path to nowhere.
The Hardwar-based author is clear about the purpose her stories. With a Roald Dahl-esque verve, Mona reserves the twists to the final lines of her tales. The challenge and power of short stories for her is in limiting to “a few pages and words” what is to be said. “You have to end it with an antithesis, which takes the reader back to page one to re-discover the story. The clues are all there, but are cleverly concealed,” says Mona.
If some have found her short stories too wordy, she is quick to add in, “I have grown up on Charles Dickens.” Her stories swing between India and United Kingdom — two places that made her childhood. It is the uncanny aspects of life that intrigues the writer in Mona. “I am a keen observer and my mind is always ticking away.”
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Point out to her the dismal mood looming over her stories, the author says, “Probably because it was a traumatic phase, my grandmother was terribly ill.” But it is not merely the melancholy of a passing phase that makes the mood of her stories. “In the last 39 years of my life I have seen that whenever you are down and out or have jeopardised opportunities, it is not too easy to recover from them. If we are not learning from our past, we are going to make the same mistakes. You can't at times just shake the dust off, instead it is better to grieve and then leave it,” says Mona.
So her stories let the protagonists brood and take their own time to come to terms with their losses.
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The writer who completed writing her tales in about four months is now working on a novel. However, she is quick to add, getting published was never a smooth journey. “I think people from small cities are judged unfavourably. It is difficult for new talents,” she concludes.