Rohan Mapuskar lends support to ‘Cutting Kahaani’

Ramchandra Gaonkar, creator of ‘ Cutting Kahaani’ an online short story writing competition has been lucky enough to get support from bigwigs from the Marathi film industry, including Rohan Mapuskar. Overwhelmed with the success and support it is gathering he penned his thoughts.

He wrote with sincerity “Life took a whole different turn with the onset of the lockdown. Amidst all the complaints and chaos about it, 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 I thought of bringing something to add to this ‘newness’. An online short story writing competition!

I 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 my/our 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 we knew it, we 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 I got a call from Rohan Mapuskar, appreciating this initiative. And before we 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, we got associated with some of the greatest artists of this industry who supported this competition and gave us all the love that we needed. As the competition went ahead, more and more entries flooded in each day. on the final day, we 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 we were blessed with, with Rohan Mapuskar. So many stories waiting to be read and heard! It was a completely overwhelming feeling. After the entries, started the judging process. And that’s when we 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. We 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), Vijay Maurya (Dialogue writer for Gully Boy), Satish Alekar (A veteran in Amrathi theatre and film industry) and Paresh Mokashi (A national award-winning Director for Harishchandrachi Factory, Directed other critically acclaimed films like Elizabeth Ekadashi). We then reached the TOP 10 writers stage. At this point, we 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. 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. 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”.