The summary of Dinesh Devarajan’s story, The Teeth on the Bus Go Round and Round , isn’t the only one that offers intrigue among the 20 shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. But it is probably the most bizarre of all. “A grieving widow and her adolescent son go in search of a pair of lost dentures while being teased by her dead husband,” it reads.
The writer reveals the story is semi-autobiographical. Before one almost exclaims, “What?!”, he explains, “The original idea came to me years ago, when I was growing up in a middle-class household in Chennai. My mother and I went in search of my grandfather’s dentures.” It is darkly funny.
Devarajan had written a few lines, then, like “a rough sketch of a story”. Like one of perhaps a million middle-class boys in Chennai, he grew up to be an IT professional. Devarajan, 37, lives in Bengaluru now. But his profession hasn’t killed his passion. He continued to write stories. His little daughter deserves some credit, too. For, she demands new bedtime stories almost every night. A kids-friendly, rudimentary version of The Teeth on the Bus Go Round and Round , too, was narrated to her.
“Since I already had a few lines written, when I narrated the story to my daughter, I kind of got the structure of it.”
Devarajan started writing the story last September. “It was challenging to write on working days. So, on weekdays, I would just write during breaks, for five or ten minutes. I would get most of my writing done on weekends.” He submitted the story a few hours before the deadline: October 31, 2019.
Devarajan is one of the five writers shortlisted for the prize from the Asia region. There are 15 other writers from four other regions. The judges will choose a winner for each of the five regions. These regional winners will be announced on June 2, before being published online by the literary magazine Granta. The overall winner will be announced on July 7. The shortlisted stories will be published online, in the online magazine of Commonwealth Writers, adda , which features writing from around the globe.
Devarajan’s short stories have been published in Write India Stories, Season 1. He has also published his short story collections, Two is Company and City of Gods (both UNISUN Publishers).
He credits Anita Nair’s writing workshop, Anita’s Attic, for his refinement in writing. “I participated in the programme in 2017. I learnt that writing isn’t just about having an idea and putting it on paper. It is about organising yourself, having a strategy, finding a platform to publish your work… It was really helpful.”
