An Atlas of Love (The Rupa Romance Anthology)

An Atlas of Love, edited by celebrated bestselling author Anuja Chauhan, is an anthology of romantic shorts that daringly explores the many guises of romance, from its purest form to its darkest depths.

‘Phoenix Mills’ takes you through a young man’s anguished quest for love; ‘Post-Coital Cigarette’ makes you flinch at a married man’s interpretation of love; and ‘Jilted’ shows you that love can also be courageous. You will find yourself in the middle of a torrid liaison in ‘The Affair’, revel in the euphoria of budding romance in ‘just One Glance’ and discover what it means to let go of your loved one in ‘The Impasse’.

Love can also be brutal and unconventional as ‘The Unseen Boundaries of Love’ and ‘something about Karen’ will show you. But most of all, as ‘Death of a Widower’ and ‘Siddharth’ show, you will see that love is all about hope and taking the leap of faith.

Selected from a nationwide Romance Contest conducted by Rupa Publications, this heart-warming collection of stories urges you to believe that love is eternal...and forever.

Anuja Chauhan is the bestselling author of The Zoya Factor, Battle for Bittora and Those Pricey Thakur Girls. Popularly known as the rom-com specialist, she is the undisputed expert in writing contemporary Indian romance novels that pack in oodles of wit, punch and husmour-our very own Jane Austen who understands the pulse of desi love stories.

Writing is a lonely business. The writer gets semi-horizontal someplace quiet, places the laptop on her stomach (with a pillow below it to keep things from getting too hot) and then hammers away till her mind goes blank. It's essentially an outpouring, which begs the question, well then, what about the inpouring? Where does all that stuff come from? The people, the plot, the little nuances?

The inpouring, of course, comes from life. From the people the writer meets, the books she reads, the experiences she has, the multiple perspectives and viewpoints on the same issue that she is privy to. From the thoughts that cross her mind because of something she saw or heard or read or felt. And it was the laalach for just such a mother lode of inpouring that got me to edit this romance anthology.

My interest was piqued when Kausalya Saptharishi from Rupa Publications told me that through the Rupa Romance Contest, I'd get to read lots of love stories, written by first-time writers from all across India-and I was on board.

Inpouring aside, there is also the fact that I'm a sucker for love stories. Anybody's. Everybody's. Not just the ones with handsome heroes, feisty heroines, lashings of humour and happy endings-though I must confess that those are my favourite. I also like the not-sa-happy ones, the full-on tragic ones, and the ones with the twist I never saw coming. I like them all.

Atlas of Love contains sixteen stories out of the several thousands of entries that Rupa received since we announced this contest in April 2013. There's no special significance to this number. It just happens to be the number of stories we liked (after a lot of agonizing and dithering and revising of lists) well enough to put into this collection.

It's called (rather grandiosely!) an Atlas' because it seeks to explore the many facets of love-the giggly, giddy excitement of the first crush; the mature resurgence that marks the second go at love; gay love, which demands the heavy price of crippling soul-searching and social ostracization; sadism masquerading as love; unrequited love; and the psychological aspect of obsessive self-love.

Three stories stand out for special mention. 'Phoenix Mills', which so beautifully captures the rootless randomness of our busy materialistic lives; 'Siddharth', which nails the nebulousness and confusion of long-distance relationships, and 'The Unseen Boundaries of Love', which compellingly lays bare the hypocrisies of our 'middle-class Indian values'. 'Mixed Exotica Goes to the Party' (selected as her favourite from the anthology by RJ Sayema of PuraniJeans, Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM) also finds mention here.

I also love 'Blossoms', which is light and innocent and casts so much sunshiny happiness on what could have otherwise been a pretty sombre collection.

To end, I do hope Rupa Publications continues with this initiative-to seek and find beautiful love stories-with the same single-minded, optimistic, never-say-die focus with which we should go through life, seeking love itself.

And everybody who entered the contest, thank you so much for giving me that exclusive peep into your hearts and minds.