Cafe Dissensus, an online journal on contemporary politics and culture, has come out with a special issue of short stories on the theme “night”, and my short story, “The Blue Room” has been included in it. The issue is guest-edited by Sumana Roy.
The story is based on my experience of attending a concert in a Berlin bar, a few days before leaving the city after a 6-month stay there. The feelings evoked in me by the concert seemed to be the essence of what it meant to live in Berlin, and I was simultaneously exhilarated, and disappointed that I was discovering it just when I was leaving the city. It was those feelings, rather than any specific experiences, that I wanted to express in this story. Who knows if the feeling would’ve lasted if I’d stayed longer. The Blue Room is thus the Berlin inside my head, and Berlin will always be the Blue Room inside my head.
Aparna Nandakumar 