I believe every story is prewritten on the blank canvas of time with the help of an invisible ink; we, storytellers, only bring them to light and tell them to the world through our words.

Thus, as a storyteller, I feel our only responsibility is to give birth to a story conceived by someone else and raised in silence in someone’s womb for long and long, only to be born as someone else’s story.

The year 2024 has been extremely tough for me. But the only good thing that happened to me in 2024 is stories. I was back to creative writing after a long time. In the last few years, I only wrote one or two stories as part of a storytelling blog hop.

But thanks to Blogchatter, their association with Readomania, and their wonderful initiative to launch the yearly anthology, I got my inspiration to write stories back. This time, I started writing my stories with more zeal.

Like the freshly bloomed bud of a flower, the fragrance and the sweet nectar of the art of storytelling made me addicted to crafting more and more stories. And, the more I wrote stories, the more I realized, every story I write, is a part of me.

When Blogchatter announced ‘Love’ as their Anthology of 2024 theme, I immediately started brainstorming my story. At that time, I just started recovering from a month-long sickness and then in the next few weeks, I fell sick with another health complication. But amidst the excitement of telling my story, somehow, I forgot my pain and delved into drafting the stories I wanted to tell.

From 15^th February to 29^th February, I drafted seven stories of love. I wrote the storyline for some, wherein, I wrote the entire story for the others.

But when it came to submitting my story as an entry to the anthology, I was confused about which one to send to team Blogchatter as I couldn’t decide which one to send as my entry. Most importantly, two of them resonated with my thoughts so deeply that I couldn’t choose any one among them.

However, I believe that every story has its own medium to be told.

The same happened to my story, ‘Janmabhumishcha’, which found a home in the prestigious Blogchatter Anthology 2024 titled ‘The Blogchatter Book of Love’.

Storyline of Janmabhumishcha:

The story encompasses different shades of love through the reminiscences of the main protagonist. So, this is a story of love where you will witness various shades of love through the portraits of longing, affection, divinity, and martyrdom.

Inspiration Behind My Story:

The first inspiration behind my story ‘Janmabhumishcha’ is my family origin. Both my paternal and maternal families have their origin in Bangladesh, and thus, I have grown by hearing countless stories of their homeland in Bangladesh (then East Bengal), their migration journey, their struggle to build a new home in India, and many other things.

So, I wanted to write a story of love where the narrative describes the protagonist’s love for her lost land. However, I ended up writing a story with some more themes of love along with the primary theme of love for one’s homeland.

The Shades of Love in My Story Janmabhumishcha:

Since the theme of the anthology was love, I tried to portray different shades of love through my story. The primary theme of the story is love for one’s land. I portrayed the protagonist’s love for her birthplace and homeland through her longing to go back there but her wish remained unfulfilled.

However, when reading the story, themes like familial love, the affectionate bonding between a grandmother and a granddaughter, martyrdom, love being an eternal thing, and some more more shades of love will be revealed to the reader.

Inspiration Behind the Story Title:

The title of the story is taken from the phrase ‘Janani Janmabhumishcha Swargadapi Gariyasi’.

When I was thinking about the title of the story, many titles came to my mind. But one day while listening to a song that had the same phrase as its opening line, the idea clicked in my mind to keep the title of the story ‘Janmabhumishcha’. Because the main theme of the story is one’s love for their janmabhumi, their birthplace, and thus, the word ‘Janmabhumishcha’ suited my story the best for it’s an ode to all the people who left their homeland in the other side of the border when Partition happened.

So, this is all for now, I will be revealing more such secrets about my story and the anthology in my coming blog posts. The Blogchatter Book of Love is released on 28^th September and now it’s available to buy. It’s an anthology themed on love where 18 writers have narrated stories with their interpretation of the word ‘Love’.

Handpicked from a collection of more than ninety stories, these stories are going to offer you a distinguished take on love and make you ponder upon ‘Love’ with a deeper sense. If you want to read a bunch of wonderful tales of love and drench yourself with the colors of love, grab your copy soon.

You can buy the eBook on Amazon here. If you want to order the paperback, you can grab it here on Amazon and also from Readomania website here.

The book will be available on Amazon soon. Once it’s available there, I will add the purchase link to this post. Till then, you can order your copy from the Readomania website and enjoy reading this bunch of love stories.

Happy reading!