Spinning Top and other short stories, Sameer Khan's first compilation

Born in Mumbai, writerSameer Khan grew up with a bag full of experiences that he brought with him to Pune when he moved here in his teens.Finding no particular way to express his emotions he began penning them down in short stories right from when he was in school. This habit never left him and a few months back for the first time he got a collection of his short stories published. Spinning Top and Other Stories is a compilation of 15 stories which Sameer put together from his collection.

He began his professional career by doing medical transcription and then moved onto do theatre. He is a playwright and an actor along with being a director and a producer. His attraction to the theatre, instigated him to form a theatre group, which he named Motley Monks and one of his plays Imaan was well acclaimed and was staged at the ‘Kala Ghoda Art Festival in Mumbai.’ His love for writing made him a blogger and a fiction writer. He writes columns for Tehelka, dna and Jerusalem Post among many others.

While in conversation with us, he mentioned that it was his life experiences and the people he knew that made it possible for him to publish this book. He said,

“Most of the stories in the book are real stories with changed names and locations. They all revolve around human emotions.”

The stories in his book although are simple and easy to read, they touch upon and sometimes make you ponder over extremely sensitive and pertinent issues. Casteism, Secularism and religious conflicts are the common themes of the stories. Throwing some light on the title of the book Sameer said,

“Spinning Top is the only story in the book, which is entirely fiction while the rest of them are either true stories or inspired by some life event or people.”

The language in the book is simple with the exception of a few stories that demand a heavier vocabulary to add to their aura.
Everyone has favourites and stories that they relate to better than the other ones, even the author. Sameer told us, Memories of Cricket and Iqbal Chacha are his favourites. The stories can be read in any order and you are sure to have your favorites among the 15 published. Sameer also told us that he is currently working on a novel, which revolves around a sensitive topic and should be out sometime next year.