NAIR JUST CAN'T STOP WRITING  LETA: Prize-Winning Short Story 

New Nation

July, 1973

   A Story developed from a chapter in an uncompleted novel.
      This is the formula of newly-married Chandran Nair's entry
in the open section of the New Nation short story competition.
   "I didn't expect to win.  I submitted  my story more for the fun of it than anything else," he said yesterday at his office in the British Council where he works as a Senior Assistant.
   The greatest joy in winning , he confessed was that the $1650 worth of book prizes would help augment his library at home.
   To many people, the 28-year-old marine biology graduate needs no introduction.  He is the author of Once the Horsemen and other Poems. . . . In May, he was married to the former Miss Ivy Goh Pek Kien, an Assistant Director of the People's Association.
   Talking about the story, entitled Leta, he said: "This was taken from a chapter in a novel on which I was working for the past two years.  I would say that is is a statement  of the values of life as seen by a cynical person.  The hero is someone who is not really heroic.  We are capable of doing so many things.  Yet there seems to be a disjunct between what we are as public figures and as privated individuals.  The character in my story, Johnny Chai who met this girl Leta, understood this and became cynical."
   Chandran, who writes an occasional book review for New Nation and edits Commentary, a University of Singapore Society's publication, intends to continue writing.
   It's something you cannot will yourself to stop.