Aneeta Sundararaj is a versatile and award-winning short story writer who has won multiple awards. Aneeta also completed a doctoral thesis in 2021. To discover more, visit her websites: www.howtotellagreatstory.com & www.aneetasundararaj.com.

‘Yantra, Tantra, Mantra’ by Aneeta, featuring in THE BARE BONES BOOK OF HUMOUR, can be considered a sequel to ‘The Weathermen: A Love Letter’, which won the Trisha Ashley Award in 2022 and was published in Aneeta’s collection TAPESTRY OF THE MIND AND OTHER STORIES (Penguin Random House SEA, 2024). In the story, godmen give it their all to ensure a woman marries the love of her life.

The anthology’s editor Ankit Raj Ojha interviewed Aneeta to learn more about her literary influences.

Tell us about your perspective on humour and its place in writing and in life.

When I was a child, I watched this British political satire sitcom called ‘Yes Minister’ (and later, ‘Yes, Prime Minister’). I was (and still am) fascinated by how language was used to both make people laugh—uproariously in many episodes—and still convey a serious message. If everything is always so bleak and sad, there will be no balance, will there? Therefore, even in my saddest, most painful tales, I try to include some humour—whether it’s through dialogue or action. 

What are the things, works, and authors that have influenced your writing? 

Focusing on the element of humour, I’m always reminded of a scene in Rushdie’s JOSEPH ANTON. Rushdie and his family were in Milton, Australia, when they were involved in an accident between his rented Holden and an enormous container lorry. Once things settled down, he was told that the lorry’s container had been full of fresh fertiliser. And Rushdie wrote this: “You mean,” he said to Zafar and Elizabeth, a little hysterically, “we were almost killed by a lorryload of shit? We almost died under a mountain of manure?” Yes, that was the case. Having eluded professional assassins for almost seven years, he and his loved ones had almost met their end under a mighty avalanche of dung.

Is there any image, phrase, idea, place, person, or memory that became the seed for your story? 

Earlier this year, I had written a WhatsApp message to the real Roshan to tell him what the “weathermen” had said to me. When I saw the call for submissions, I had a thought: I can’t create fiction this good. So, in one glorious outpouring of emotion, I wrote ‘Yantra, Tantra, Mantra’ based on that WhatsApp message I’d sent him. It’s that simple.