Jukebox

Editor’s Note

Sometimes, it’s the journey which becomes more important than the destination. You begin at a point, pause for breath, lose your directions and embark on a different path altogether. Modified directions and better co-travellers make the new roadmap more interesting than your original itinerary. I hadn’t imagined that a phone call in leisure with Priyanka Purkayastha, founder of Writersmelon, would result in me hopping onto the bandwagon and push more steam into the already running engine.
With a Master’s in Soil Science, I had sailed across the Atlantic to pursue a doctorate degree, but the blizzard of recession wrecked the ship. Armed with the experience of blogging, writing poems and co-founding/editing a bilingual archive of India-Bangladesh partition (Bangalnama)—I hopped onto the world of words. Lost in my own dilemma of switching careers and losing ground on the professional front, I was looking at doing something I really like—writing and editing. Thus began a beautiful journey of collecting, curating, writing, and editing everything bookish. Our mutual love for books and writing inched towards making Writersmelon the book lovers’
community that it is today. A decade later, I have edited four books, curated content for innumerable websites/magazines, and have patiently reviewed over 100 books.
Working as a pre-jury for our annual writing marathon Melonade in the past few years has been one of the best experiences I’ve gathered so far. There’s seldom a greater pleasure for me than to be lauded by young, creative minds for editing and polishing their already stellar stories. With hundreds of entries, Melonade has often drowned me with so much work that I’d forget I exist! And yet, it is an incomparable experience to read such endearing and unique short stories each year and shaping them into a book that will find a place in our bookshelves forever.
If you wonder what it is like to work at Writersmelon, what happens behind the scenes—let me assure you that it is orderin chaos. We manage to find the perfect order in our daily communication and ultra-fun annual meets. I couldn’t ask for better and crazier colleagues than Priyanka, Manjulika and Gauri. Much love and thanks to the authors in this book, judges of Melonade and the thousands of readers whom we can never thank enough for being a part of the Writersmelon family.

Priyanka Roy Banerjee
Storyteller, blogger, editor, book reviewer; Priyanka is the jack of all trades at present. She’s the editor of Writersmelon.com and blogs at http://oneandahalfminutes.com/. Twice winner of the Wordweavers contest, she’s writing her first novel.