TAKE PART IN AN ONLINE SHORT STORY WRITING COMPETITION ORGANIZED BY AGHAAZ PRODUCTIONS

Jyothi Venkatesh

Life took a whole different turn with the onset of the lockdown. Amidst all the complaints and chaos about it, few kinds of people like us, that is, the writers, thinkers, and dreamers found our little moments of peace with things that we most love to do. As writers and content creators, there were many sources of inspiration to gobble up on a daily basis, like web-series, films, and the likes. This was when  Ramchandra Gaonkar thought of bringing something to add to this ‘newness’. An online short story writing competition! Ram thought that this was a golden time for writers to get inspired, pick up their pens, diaries, laptops, and start writing something… anything and create stories! And so started the journey of ‘Cutting Kahaani’. The only important rule being that the stories had to be short and interesting, just like our ‘cutting chai’.

An ever enthusiastic team of his company, Aghaaz Productions (Ramchandra Gaonkar, Pranav Gandhe, Akash Shinde, Yugant Patil, Sanika Sule, Shantanu, Shubham) got ready and designed the whole competition with all its schedules, visual promotions, and norms and there it was! Before they knew it, they had put out a word about ‘Cutting Kahaani- An online short story writing competition’! Lockdown had its advantages and the word spread quicker than ever on social media since everyone was and is glued to their phone screens. An  impactful promotional schedule was specially designed considering the star of the competition, THE WRITER. Everything was designed taking into consideration the specific art of writing. Right from the ideologies to the beautiful visual art done by Sudeep Gandhi with his impeccable calligraphy and the magic created by Anurag Godbole with his music.

A few days into the competition and Ram got a call from Rohan Mapuskar, appreciating this initiative. And before he knew it, this appreciation call had turned into a new association and Rohan Mapuskar was on board! He loved the thought behind this competition so much that he got tagged along. And once that happened, they got associated with some of the greatest artists of this industry who supported this competition and gave them all the love that we needed. As the competition went ahead, more and more entries flooded in each day. On the final day, they were boggled to find a total of 511 entries from all over the country, in all different languages and genres. This was definitely a very positive reflection of the association that they were blessed with, with Rohan Mapuskar.

With so many stories waiting to be read and heard, it was a completely overwhelming feeling. After the entries, they started the judging process. And that’s when they came up with another idea to keep the audience hooked on as well as inspired while the judging was on. ‘Kahaani ki kahaani’, a masterclass of the sort, especially for the writers and by the writers. They were extremely thrilled to present this session from some of the very big names in the writing industry like Rajesh Mapuskar (Director of Ferrari Ki Sawari, Ventilator etc), Vijay Maurya (Directro, Photo Copy (Marathi) and also Dialogue writer and actor for Gully Boy), Satish Alekar (A veteran in Marathi theatre and film industry) and Paresh Mokashi (A National award-winning director of Harishchandrachi Factory and Elizabeth Ekadashi). When they reached the TOP 10 writers stage, they were excited to have had the association and support of none other than Sharman Joshi who was kind enough to announce the list of the TOP 10 writers.

Says Ram, “After that, we decided that instead of just announcing the winners in the last leg of the competition, why not keep a narrative reading of the same. Till now everyone must have seen short films, films, etc based on short stories. But very rarely has one seen a narrative reading of a story. And because of the association like Rohan Mapuskar, we could reach out to some very special 10 names and ask them to read one story each. And they were absolutely sweet enough to oblige only and only for the love of storytelling! And here we are! We have our TOP 10 stories, their writers, and their presenters!

Ram continues, “The supremely talented writers, Adwait Dadarkar, Sanket Tandel, Aditya Wadekar, Shripad Deshpande, Virajas Kulkarni, Pritish Nayak, Sanika Joag, Jyotsna Sonalkar, Nitin Savale, and Meena Kaushal. And a crazy list of presenters which include Umesh Kulkarni, Prasad Oak, Makrand Deshpande, Rajesh Mapuskar, Sukanya Kulkarni Mone, Satish Alekar, Amruta Subhash, Jitendra Joshi, Hruta Durgule, and Adwait Dadarkar.

We are very excited to see what and how these experts bring their own kind of life and light to the genius writing! All these stories are going be available online on the website www.aghaazproductions.com from 25th June to 1st July 2020. Also, you can enjoy these stories and vote for your favorite one and make them the Audience Choice Award winner! We are eagerly waiting for the most interesting part of the competition now, which happens in the next few days! You can get all the updates regarding the contest on the Facebook and Instagram handles of Aghaaz Productions and Rohan Mapuskar Casting and also on the website mentioned above”.