ChinmayC Blog

It’s only natural that in today’s digital world readers as well as writers know about many writers/authors, particularly those having international bestsellers, without even reading their books. Same here! One such author is James Patterson who has been a prolific writer of numerous novels quite a few of which are bestselling ones, although I’m yet to read any of his books. Now, why am I talking about this author? So suddenly and without any reference to the context? Nope! There’s indeed a reference and a very interesting one at that! I’ve received an email from him! James Patterson! I discovered that while checking the spam before deleting forever the mails inside! The name is there in full with a some added letters/numbers to it and, of course, sent from a Gmail account, as is the norm. From my experience for the last few years I immediately knew it was a scammer or a con book promoter. That it was directed to the Spam could well be due to my action over the years to mark so many o...

  The contrast and the irony of a writer! Several years back I celebrated the achievement of a million views of the previous version of this blog. I just did the formality for formality’s sake as I was well aware of the real scenario. I started my blog in all sincerity and the zeal of a writer enthralled by the coming of a desktop to my writing table and the exciting opportunities of writing online. Back in 2006 when I had my personal computer I started contributing articles/stories/snippets to many of the online magazines and article directories. Then I started my blog the next year and for two years or so found little time to do justice to it. I really opened up from around 2010 and by that time views were increasing. I consider the year of 2012 to be the most productive when I think I wrote blogposts almost every day. At that time Google was having a very prestigious page-rank algorithm. The page-rank number for my blog was zero at first, then 2 and then it climbed to a respecta...

Freelance writer-author Chinmay Chakravarty has released his new Ebook titled 'Convoluted: Tales of Mystery and Terror-1' on Amazon Kindle. In a longer short story format the Ebook is a crime thriller based on the present surge of crimes against women in India.  Although the Ebook is not marked as a part of a Series, it tells us this is the first Tale which means the author must be having several plots up his sleeve!  The Ebook is also available on KindleUnlimited that can be read for free! Here is the link to the Ebook! 

Well, I have decided to be socially active again! Like in the case of political parties this can also be called a 'necessary evil', even though most of the younger people would never agree! Okay! It's necessary, one likes it or not! Virtual presence in this post-modern age is absolutely essential, more than the physical presence that can be beheld only by a few. However, this doesn't mean that I will be hyperactive with my old wine in a new bottle , meaning my new blog where I backed up almost all of my pieces!  And, to continue with my die-hard habit I have to inform you of my new book, ' The Weirdos ' which is a collection of short stories. I wanted to publish it before Christmas and I have succeeded in doing that! Like it or not, the links are put up below to celebrate the upcoming festive occasions: In India: In USA:

We’ve been very much used to lament ‘all the taxpayers’ money’ whenever we come across some embezzlement of public funds or plain acts of bribery and corruption. In this piece we’ve decided to confront a new but emerging phenomenon as should be clear from the title given. That day during a writer-authors’ conference one author made a disturbing observation on or perhaps lamented that ‘nowadays the number of authors has exceeded the number of readers’! That observation instantly found a sympathetic supporter in none other than this writer; because I’d dwelt on this post-modern phenomenon quite often and I’d even extended this realization to ‘there are more singers than listeners nowadays’ and of that kind. However, I don’t intend to analyze the nitty-gritty of such phenomena here apart from just saying that such brazenly emerging facts of life have been owed entirely to the social media and all digital formats that convinced a huge chunk of the users that they could indeed write and ca...

I am happy to inform you all that in my journey as a writer I’ve made a new beginning just now! It’s about a new book I’ve got published through the traditional publisher, Ukiyoto Publishing , a first in my writing career. And then, it’s for the first time that I have adopted the form of a Novella to tell my story—a new beginning too in my future journey to writing full-length novels. Not only this, I have experimented with a new genre— Supernatural Thriller ! I hope I’ll get new interested readers too for this new venture.   I am giving the links below where you can buy the book or take a look or read a sample. If the book gets you interested and immersed I’d be the happiest writer of the world! On Amazon : On Ukiyoto: Thank you all!

The India division of the Canada-based Ukiyoto Publishing, a traditional publisher always committed to quality content and finding talented new authors across the globe, has given away the Literary Awards-Q2 of 2022 in various categories of fiction and non-fiction in Kolkata on 24 th July. As per Ukiyoto India announcement at the event around 1500 applications were received from various parts and various regional languages of India out of which around 100 were selected for the different awards, based on the parameters of selection adopted by their panel of judges.   This writer is very proud of finding himself among the awardees. His book of humorous short stories titled ‘The Cheerless Chauffeur and Other Tales’ has earned him the prestigious ‘Emerging Author of the Year—Fiction’ in the Literary Awards-2022 event which was organized as a part of Ukiyoto’s Kolkata Chapter at Vivanta by Taj. Solstice, the marketing wing of Ukiyoto India, has displayed all the books of the awardee ...

In his book “THE CHEERLESS CHAUFFEUR…”, Chinmay Chakravarty captures the different facets of the lives of middle-class Indians through 34 short stories. The humorous title of each story is indicative of the subtle and wry humor characteristic of the writer. Each story is a throwback on issues dominant in the India of the 1980s and 1990s . During that period technology was transforming lives in metropolitan cities. However, the social norms continued to remain mired in the India of 1970s.   The stories “ THE RAIN DRENCH ”, “YOU ARE INVITED (1 & 2)” are reflective of the hesitancy that came in the way of free interaction between men and women in the public. The 1970s was also the period when you had “leaders discussing poverty with glasses of expensive wine in air-conditioned rooms”. Many of the avowed radicals during their student days “left the left” in the 1980s (“A CIVILIZATION”).   It was also the era of shortages with “dirty-rich people in dirty-costly apparels w...

My recent posts reflected a dilemma building up in my innards as to should I go on writing and posting those on apparently a dead wall. I’ve never been a pursuer of ‘success’ in the modern context where it’s a relative term, meaning (in my point of view, similar to Swagata Dey) that ‘success’ does not necessarily match the most integral term ‘merit’, except for some glorious examples in world history. In modern times ‘success’ just happens, maybe due to elements of luck, coincidence, rabid self-promotion, vital links in the network and accidentally appealing stories or videos or whatever, and that success can come overnight or may not come in one’s full lifetime. As far as my work during my service career and my writings since my childhood days are concerned, I do consider myself a success, in my way.   Neutrality has been the defining feature all my life, both in my service career and writings, which gives me the freedom to air my views freely. Therefore, I tend to expect neutra...

  Why should I go on writing? This question has been haunting me for quite some time, and this led to an unintentional break in the first week of this month when, in a very unprofessional way, I left the phrase ‘Budget Tomorrow!’ in my last post in January unexplored and unwritten! Well, I am a humble being and never daydreamed about becoming a great writer what they call ‘bestselling’ and all that. Indeed, I had written quite a few ‘solicited’ articles/papers in both English and Assamese newspapers/periodicals over the decades. However, I discovered that in such ‘ventures’ the merit part gets thrown out of the window and only influences/contacts/references matter. Therefore, I had not been a great success in that line. As a writer you send something to a publication in high spirit and hope, thinking that your item had some merit thanks to opinions of a few of your learned friends, for at least a response, but eventually when it sinks in a bottomless well with not even a rejection ...

While reading the latest book by the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen , Home in the World—A Memoir , I found one incident or rather an experience of this great economist-researcher-scholar-writer-Nobel Prize winner in 1998- Bharat Ratna winner in 1999, concerning a book-stall owner that he frequented in the fifties in the famed college street area of Kolkata , then Calcutta . I was enthralled to find that experience having a strong similarity with my experience of a book-stall owner in the seventies. Well, two mandatory clarifications here: first, I’ve titled my piece not after Sen’s great book which means that this is not going to be a review, but just a story, and I’m still going through the book which, in my view, is of epic proportions, particularly in relation to the history, culture, economics and heritage of Bengal from the pre-partition days; and second, there can absolutely be no imaginable comparison between the living legend and this nonentity, as I said this is just a story of a...