Category: Partnered Events

Book Bunk – Restoring Public Libraries

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Around four years ago, Wanjiru Koinange and Angela Wachuka walked into the Macmillan Library, located at the heart of the city of Nairobi. Expecting to do some research there, they were shocked at the state at which the library was maintained. The library was old, dark and dingy. The records were not logged, neither were they organised. That day, Macmillan’s state spoke to these women and asked for help. Wanjiru and Angela aimed to do just that. They decided to save public libraries and transform them. They call this organisation ‘Book Bunk’.

The session was conducted by Vani Mahesh, who owns a library herself. The session began with a video display that described what Book Bunk does. It displayed to the audience the journey that Book Bunk has been through, and it concluded by displaying to the audience the iconic partnership that Book Bunk and the government of Nairobi have undertaken. Reviving public libraries is the need of the hour, but how do we restore them? Wanjiru answered this question by telling the audience how they approached the entire concept of the library.

Wanjiru approached the people of Nairobi and attempted to understand what the library meant to them. Through research, and by asking people what they associated with the library, it was understood that the library was not just the physical infrastructure. It was more than that. People wanted to sit and read. Many of them wanted art spaces. Wanjiru spoke about how it was very important to understand what their work was, only then could they begin to restore the libraries. Their approach to restoration was through research and programming. Building the library was the final task.

Libraries and art go hand in hand, is what Wanjiru and Angela realised. Being a writer herself, Wanjiru spoke about how she understood the objectives of writers after their books get published. Most authors want to get their books to the proper audience. Wanjiru wanted to do the same when she came across the state of Macmillan. Libraries help reach out to the right audience, the right kind of people an author requires for a book. “We should be bold and bodacious with our spaces” explained Wanjiru.

People who read are also patrons of art and culture. “So, what is the need of the traditional library?” asked Vani. Libraries need to be made into community centres, and that is the aim of Book Bunk. Libraries are a public service. Book Bunk’s objective is to teach skills that can be monetized, through the function of the library. Wanjiru laughed as she said that she wanted to “revive the soul of the library”. She coined this statement on the spot and later commented on how it’d probably be a great idea to add it to their website.

To revive libraries, it is essential to get the help of the government. The government helped Wanjiru and Angela in their venture, by signing an agreement. Through this agreement, BookBunk partnered with the government to go into a public-private deal, in order to save the libraries of Nairobi. This agreement was iconic, as it was the first time ever that a government deal was signed towards an art initiative. This was one of Wanjiru’s most proud moments, as she recalled the day the agreement was signed during the session. In the day of the internet, it is very interesting how people still want to sit in libraries and read. The session ended on a very heartening note, as everyone was in agreement with the fact that libraries are not ancient places that had once existed. Wanjiru and other such like-minded people will help save our libraries, the entire concept of it.

About the Author: Passionate about saving the environment, and driven by politics and philosophy, Anusha Basu writes about the musings she perceives every day. She is currently pursuing her English Hons degree at Christ University, Bangalore. She currently writes for TheSeer.

Surviving a Terror Attack

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More than three years have passed since this Mumbai air hostess became the face of the 2016 Brussels terror attack after the picture of her blood-streaked shell shocked picture went viral. The picture was soul-stirring, to say the least, many over social media pitied her. Nidhi Chaphekar went through all the ordeal and came out bravely out of her dark phase.

Now, here she was booming with confidence, a living and breathing testament of human grit, optimism and extreme will power, sharing her story at BLF.

Nidhi shared how traumatizing the experience was. She was burnt twenty percent, metal pieces were stuck in her body, and she has been through the medically-induced coma. Doctors said she won’t be able to walk ever again. Amidst all this, she started having suicidal thoughts however due to her parent’s support and her never give up attitude she fought through all these.

She also shared how she was aghast and shattered when she looked for the first time in the mirror after the incident, but held herself together and vowed to accept and love herself. Nidhi mentioned that there is no one other than your very own self who can truly help you. She also mentioned how sharing of stories among survivors encouraged and provided her with energy to fight.

On being asked was she able to forgive the people who caused her so much harm and pain, she replied without any bitterness, “since several people were involved I have no right to either comment on that nor forgive them”. When asked about how she was able to bounce back, She said, she accepted the way she was and started looking for ways to become better and began with loving herself more than ever.

About the Author: An avid reader and traveller, Prashant likes to write and often expresses his opinions ranging from entrepreneurship to travel on his blog www.stonedsaint.com. He writes scripts for Edtech companies and also happens to be a  marketing geek while struggling to clear his engineering backlogs. He currently writes for TheSeer.

Upcountry Tales: Once Upon a Time In The Heart of India

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A conversation between Mark Tully, journalist and broadcaster who was the BBC’s Delhi correspondent for twenty years and Tony Joseph, author of the best-selling book, ‘Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From’.

 

Tony started the session by telling us that the nature of Mark’s writings is fictional and not reportage even though he has a deep sense of Indian culture. This set the tone for what was in store for us.
He went on to ask Mark about why he found India worthy of his stories and how he relates to all our current issues. Mark revealed to us that his Grandfather was actually born in Aurangabad and was an opium agent! This he says was his first introduction to India. It made him want to write about India, but not urban India. He chose as his subject the lives of those who live in rural India and the appalling nature of the governance and politics that affect their lives. He made no bones in expressing his opinion, being a foreigner speaking about Indian culture in an audience predominantly Indian.

 

Tony then quizzed him about some excerpts from his book where he spoke about life, balance, and compromise. Mark declared that he did in fact believe that life is all about balance. He remarked that we need balance between secularism and religion, if we wanted to grow as a nation. He asked what sort of a nation do we want. A Hindu one, then what kind of a Hindu one? A secular one he said, was not possible as secularism has not found a space for religion and India is a deeply religious country. He also argued that secularism is what has kept religious pluralism alive, a concept very much part of Indian culture. His opinions were balanced, presenting both cases with equal enthusiasm.

 

The discussion then moved towards Indian traditions as Tony asked him about his thoughts on how Indians were ignoring their own tradition to become more western. Mark answered it with a personal story of how when he once visited a communion at a Church in India, he was shocked to see a Sardarji also taking communion. He thought about how the reverse was something he had not seen in the western world, and this is what he said we needed to hold onto, what he terms as experiential religion. He said that he felt from his understanding that in India we experience God and religion and not just learn about it, and that’s what our true tradition is.

 

Tony then opened the floor for questions and the first one was- “Sir, your opinion on the Ayodhya Verdict?”. Mark was quick to answer, “No triumphalism please”. He said we needed to find a balance in this historic decision today and enjoy our points of commonality with everyone. That thought tied the whole session beautifully together.

 

 

 

About the Author: Pashmi Dutta is a reader, writer, political enthusiast. Trying to talk with ease about things that make us uneasy, she has her blog at PashmiBlog and currently writes for TheSeer.

India Automated

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The session commenced on time at The Red Couch venue with Pranjal Sharma taking the lead who is an economic analyst, advisor and writer, focusing on technology, globalisation, and media. He guides projects on economic forecasting, business intelligence, and public diplomacy with Indian and global organisations. Pranjal creates and develops research projects that interpret policy impact on industry and society. He is a frequent speaker at events run by leading chambers of industry on policy advocacy and leads public discourse at several platforms in India and abroad. These include AIMA, the St Gallen Symposium, Horasis Global Summit and the web submit. 

 

His book ‘Kranti Nation’ published in 2017 was an instant hit amongst the youth. He briefed  about his vision behind his latest release which is “Automated India”. He began his argument by explaining the need for an automation injection to the country. He backed his support towards an automated nation by bringing in the facts regarding the current employment state of the country and drawing parallels from the past and present. He made his perspective clear by elaborating on the loopholes of current education and empowerment state of the country. Making the listeners aware about the rising automation he claimed that a 3-4 year college course degree can not calculate the potential of any aspiring millennial. He defended his stance in favour of establishing automation in the country irrespective of the huge population and its ability to absorb automation by talking about the aids that the automated world has to offer. He enlightened the listeners by telling them about the loopholes in current structure of private sector which has led to a lot of fraudulent events like Punjab National Bank scam monitored by Nirav Modi. Pranjal talked about eliminating discretion through automation as well as making it relatively easier for the government sector to conduct safe online auctions. According to him, his book covers the 4th industrial revolution which is absolutely egalitarian. With rapid development in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technology, automation is at a tipping point. Today, robots can perform a slew of functions without considerable human intervention. Automated technologies are not only executing iterative tasks, but also augmenting workforce capabilities significantly. In fact, automated machines are expected to replace almost half of the global workforce. Multiple industries, from manufacturing to banking, are adopting automation to drive productivity, safety, probability, and quality. 

 

The session concluded with an open question and answer round where a lot of questions were put forward to Pranjal regarding the aspect of robots and automated technology taking over human beings and eventually ending up controlling us. In the interactive round, he explained to the audience about his perspective of human retaining their powerplay position, because he claimed that the element that makes us human would still remain irrespective of the technological advancements. One of his central arguments which caught a lot of attention was the need to adopt the automated section in the country replacing many everyday affairs as well as activities like manual scavenging which needs to be abolished as soon as possible, thus the listeners had a major impact on their perceptions towards the injection of automation in the country.

 

 

About the Author: Abhinav Kumar is an MA in English with Communication Studies student from CHRIST ( Deemed To Be University), Bengaluru who believes in “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world”. He is interested in sports journalism and travelogue writing. He currently writes for TheSeer.

The Inheritance Of Loss – Jallianwala and After

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The session, “The Inheritance Of Loss – Jallianwala and After”, saw a sensitive and poignant discussion on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, among writers Amandeep Sandhu, Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, and Navdeep Suri, moderated by Preeti Gill.

The attendees of the session were grave and solemn throughout, reflecting the sensitive nature of the topic that was being discussed – the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the period thereafter on its centenary year. 

The session started with Navdeep Suri relaying the story of what led to his grandfather, Nanak Singh’s poem “Khooni Vaisakhi”, which was written after he survived the Jallianwala massacre while two of his best friends died. He then went on to tell how this poem survived the British ban, loss of manuscript and the test of time to come to us today in its English translated form. 

Describing his grandfather’s poem on the massacre, he said,  “It is a piece of contemporary history, defining a genre of protest poetry”.

Navdeep Suri also reminded the audience about the incidents that led to this dark day in Indian history. He said how four days before the massacre, Ram Navami was celebrated by all Indians irrespective of religion and caste and how this unity irked the British as they saw it as a failure of Divide-and-Rule policy and this, he said, is what led to Jallianwala massacre. 

Preeti Gill then asked him about the current state of the Jallianwala Bagh memorial at Amritsar and Navdeep expressed his disappointment about the lack of pathos and emotions in the way that it was constructed. This drew agreement from everyone on the panel as they lamented how the government had failed to properly honor the memory of this catastrophic event.

The discussion then brought in Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, who gave a female perspective on the violence that was unleashed. She put forth an important fact that can be seen in most cases of violence against women in times of conflict; there is a lack of data, and if there is data, it is only numbers, not stories or experiences. She remarked that most literature on violence against women spoke of it only through euphemisms- like they write that women were badly used instead of saying they were sexually abused , violated or raped. 

At this point Amandeep pitched in to share his own experience in this regard. He narrated how he had travelled to various places to write about women and their stories and no one came forward to speak to him because he was a man. He was only able to get male perspectives but the women invariably refrained from speaking to a man about what had happened to them. 

He then gave an example of  Operation Blue Star to show the villainization of Sardars. He remarks how the ‘ji’ (in Sardarji), a mark of respect used in the earlier years for addressing, was dropped to demonize Sikhs and show them as terrorists and traitors by the then government.

In conclusion, the panel agreed that both State and Central Governments had not done enough to commemorate the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. We are a nation of great conflict and even greater history and all three speakers made it a point to educate the audience about the stories of Punjab, its sacrifices and greatness. It was an inspiring discussion and an appropriate way to mark the centenary year.

About The Author

Pashmi Dutta is a reader, writer, political enthusiast. Trying to talk with ease about things that make us uneasy, she has her blog at PashmiBlog and currently writes for TheSeer.

बार बार देखो – Unraveling a Hit

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The noon clouds passed over as illustrious figures took the center stage. With an elaborate topic of discussion – ‘Unraveling a Hit’; the conversations took place around what makes a movie well acclaimed. The 45-minute discussion also touched base on what are the categories a critic looks into whilst reviewing a movie, how the medium of watching films have changed over generations.

MD & Chief Learner @LXL IDEAS, Sultan Ahmed mediated the discussion. He is a 1st generation social entrepreneur and a winner of 6 President of India’s National Film Awards. Along with Bhawana Somaaya, Manish Mundra and Supriya Pathak – the dais discussed on how movies have evolved over the decades. Bhawana Somaaya has been writing about Hindi cinema for more than 40 years. She is a film critic, columnist, and author of several books which includes biographies of Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini. Manish Mundra is an Indian film producer, philanthropist and businessman. He is the founder and head of Drishyam Films, and Managing Director of Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Limited, a group company of Indorama, a multi-billion dollar petro-chemical firm headquartered in Nigeria. Supriya Pathak is an award-winning theatre, TV and film actor. Her films include Ram-Leela, Sarkar, Sarkar Raj, Wake Up Sid.

The conversation opened with the importance of critiquing a movie. They discussed on what are the aspects of movies that critics look into for a 5-star performance. Bhawana took an example to illustrate how the star system works. She mentioned about the 2010 drama-romance hit Band Baaja Baaraat. Of the total rating she gave for the movie, Bhawana highlights how she dedicated an entire star for Anushka Sharma’s performance as Shruti. Discussions also moved in the direction of what makes a good movie. Manish on a personal note mentioned that any movie that makes efforts to highlight the tradition of the country is taken well by the audience. His acclaimed movie, Masaan – when mentioned during the discussion received a huge round of appreciation from the audience. The conversation was looped around the idea of change of screens over time. As technology imbibed within our households, people have become reluctant to leave the premises of their home. In the comfort of their walls – technology has given them new forms of screens to watch and enjoy movies. Supriya also stressed on the fact that the age of television was golden. And with the new age screens, the flavor of watching films has changed too. 

As Sultan opened the floor to questions, the seated audience was keen to voice their questions. Manish expressed that it is painful to know that people head to pirated sites to watch movies and how it is a big blow for small producers.

 

About the Author: Liyana Shirin is a modest graphic designer and an amateur blogger. She believes in weaving stories that come as a ‘solace on a late winter night’. She loves climbing mountains and can be seen spending hours looking at the night sky. She currently writes for TheSeer. She also writes on her personal blog: liyanashirin.wordpress.com. 

Build YOUR Brand Before You Write That Book!

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Brand maven Karthik Srinivasan took an hour-long mid-day session. He is a communication professional with two decades of experience in creating, building, and managing perceptions of brands across agency and client environments. His session was primarily based on how branding is as important as writing a book. He covered topics from varied niches, including how ‘you’ as a person should grow to how social media can be a portfolio of your work. 

He initiated the session with what personality and brand means in today’s era.  He gave insights on how one can understand what personalities can be projected to form the brand called ‘YOU’. As the session progressed, he covered the aspects an audience would generally look at when looking at the book. He also mentioned that it takes strong content and consistency to ensure visibility in a noisy generation of knowledge.  Karthik detailed how algorithms for social media is getting complex over time. Able to take away, ‘consistency is key’ – he indulged the audience with varied examples of how some of the top notch professionals making use of these mediums. He highlighted tweets from Anand Mahindra, Elon Musk and many more. He also mentioned that detailed analysis was available in his book ‘Be Social: Building Brand YOU Online’. 

As questions poured in from audience – he addressed them all. He mentioned how one must ensure if the right medium is utilized to broadcast your work. He gave examples of how Linkedin is profession based and how in multiple instances people deviate.  To wrap the session, he recalled the pointers regarding consistency and how one must focus on branding that provides good to the audience as well. 

References: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karts/

About the Author: Liyana Shirin is a modest graphic designer and an amateur blogger. She believes in weaving stories that come as a ‘solace on a late winter night’. She loves climbing mountains and can be seen spending hours looking at the night sky. She currently writes for TheSeer. She also writes on her personal blog: liyanashirin.wordpress.com. 

 

Majoritarianism and the Indian Democracy

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The evening session started with the introduction of famous Indian Historian, Novelist, and political and social Essayist Mr. Mukul Kesavan. He studied History at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi and later at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge where he received his MLitt having been awarded the Inlaks scholarship. His first book, a novel titled –  ‘Looking through glass’ (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994) received international critical acclaim. In 2001, he wrote a political tract titled ‘Secular Common Sense’ published by Penguin India. He was joined by the likes of another literary genius Mr. Srinath Raghavan who is Senior Fellow at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi, specialising in contemporary and historical aspects of  India’s foreign and security policies. He is also a visiting Senior Research Fellow at the India Institute of the King’s College London and a Professor of History and International Relations at the Ashoka University. 

 

The debate on majoritarianism kicked off wonderfully with the panel questioning each other on various aspects of politics involved in communalism and the play of power structure in majority and minority. They discussed about the idea of separate elections which safeguard the interests of minorities. Mukul gave an overarching analysis about the colonial India which is inclined towards the Hindus and cultural euphemism. He drew parallels from the current scenario in Myanmar and NRC (National Registration of Citizens)  in India alongside enlightening the listeners about South Asian approach towards democracy as a whole. Srinath on the other hand brought forth the different ideologies which are actually credited for the current state of politics in India. He discusses Savarkar’s idea of a Hindu nation and his intolerant approach towards one section of the country which was Muslims. He then went on to describe Savarkar’s ideology as he was a pragmatic practitioner of Hindu philosophy. He advocated for validating religious myths and blind faith against the test of modern science. In that sense, he was also a rationalist and reformer and thus his spectacle of society can not be discarded. The panelists then shared a discourse over the majoritarian supreme of the current authority which abrogated article 370, triple talaq and brought the NRC. These policies have a clear edge towards one strata of Indian society which is the Muslim minority. They also referred to today’s verdict which also fell in the court of Hindus. The debt that RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) had to pay to Golwalkar is being slowly rectified. 

 

Both the panelists drew home their viewpoints on the aspect of majoritarianism and the Indian politics in a homogeneous manner which had more to do with acceptance of the fact that every country is rooted in a religious belief which paves way for majority and minority. They also give away the idea that a Savarkar followed 19th century nationalism whereby no country was ever born without war. The widely fruitful session for the listeners ended with an audience interaction with some counter theories as well as queries about the subaltern society of the nation to which both panelists dealt and answered in the most precise and subtle manner as possible, taking nothing away from their perspective.

 

 

 

About the Author: Abhinav Kumar is an MA in English with Communication Studies student from CHRIST ( Deemed To Be University), Bengaluru who believes in “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world”. He is interested in sports journalism and travelogue writing. He currently writes for TheSeer.

Namdu K Kannad Gothilla Ki Ki

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Namdu K is a YouTube entertainment Channel that features Kannada comedy online and offline. Namdu K channel has 73 YouTube videos and 26K subscribers with 11K followers on Instagram. Namdu K was started in 2014 by Shravan Narayan who was working with Infosys. The team also does stand-up comedy in Kannada. The team also does a professional comedy show called ‘One and Half’. Along with the Namdu K team, we also had a team of filmmakers of the upcoming Kannada movie ‘Kannad Gottilla’.

Namdu K team intends to teach Kannada language for non-Kannadiga’s who stays in Bangalore. They wanted to teach at least the Bangalore Kannada for them. The speciality of Bangalore Kannadiga’s is that they will know at least 5-6 languages. That’s because a Kannadiga should speak in different languages to different people in his daily routine. Suppose if you wake up in the morning and go to a salon, you should talk to your hairdresser in Hindi. When you go to the office you will talk in Telugu or Tamil since most of the co-workers speak those languages. In the evening when you go to chat centre for snacks, you should speak in whatever language the seller speaks. Hence it’s mandatory to know 5-6 Languages. Non-Kannadiga’s don’t have this problem. Their life is simple because they manage everything by saying just 2 words which is ‘Kannad Gottilla’.

But the word Kannad Gottilla is wrong. It is Kannada Gottilla. Non-Kannadiga’s remove the last ‘a’ from Kannada and add it in ‘Dosa’ where it is actually Dose not Dosa. The team understands that Bangalore is a Cosmo Politian city but they don’t want the disappearance of Kannada. Also if you stay in Bangalore for 5 to 10 years you are treated as Kannadiga’s. So, non-Kannadiga’s has to take little steps to learn Kannada. Learning Kannada is very easy. Learning Kannada will help you to save your money as well. Suppose if you go and ask an auto driver, “Sir, I want to go to Kormangala”, he will quote Rs. 300. If you ask “Sir, Kormangala bartira? “, he will quote Rs. 200. If you say, “Anna Kormangala bartira?”, he will say Rs.150. That’s how learning the native language helps. In Bangalore, the distance is measured in terms of time. In Bangalore, the culture change from door to door.

The team explains how to learn Kannada and asked the audience to acknowledge that we all are Bangalore Kannadiga’s and we will learn the native language. The team believes that the survival of a language is based on the experiment that it does on the art form. The team played a short video of 4 Minutes about Bangalore Kannadiga’s. The team also did a stand-up comedy to bring a little extra laughter in the audience.

‘Kannad Gottilla’ is an upcoming Indian Kannada language thriller movie written and directed by Mayuraa Raghavendra making his debut. The director Mayuraa Raghavendra showed the trailer of the movie and explained the movie is based on the theme of Kannad Gottilla and wishes to encourage all non-Kannadiga’s to learn the native language Kannada. The movie will be screening in theatres on Nov 22nd and requested all the audience to watch and support the movie.

About the Author: Swapna Patil is an author of adventure travel and romance. “Why stay at one place and talk about it, when you can make your whole life more interesting by travelling and narrating those stories in words” is the motto she lives by. She is also a trek leader and flirts with words on the top of mountains and chooses poetry over prose. She currently writes for TheSeer.

ಪತ್ತೇದಾರಿ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ – Why Crime Attracts Readers

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Crime reporting is especially liable to be influenced by sensationalism. Reporting means here dwelling between the suspects of the committed crime. The greatest challenge to a writer is to keep the reader guessing the unexpected twists and turns in the story to hold the reader till the end. Former IPS officer DV Guruprasad is one among them who have succeeded in that aspect.

 

Discussion started with a question, ‘why crime attracts readers?’. The senior police officer elaborates the secret in his novels. Back in his early days, he was sensed with the taste of literature. As an IPS officer, he saw many conflicts, crimes being committed during his duty period. With the touch of literature, he compiled his experiences of the crime department and came up with the book.

 

DV Guruprasad shared his life experiences as a police cop. The study of crime requires a lot of attention to understand the purpose and cause to the crime. The retired officer shared few hypothetical cases that have been recorded in the police history. He explained the psychological mindset behind the crime. The session also witnessed the secret of his next book which is based on the true story of the contribution of Karnataka Police department in Veerappan’s assassination. 

 

About the Author: Bharath Srivatsav is a student of mechanical engineering from Bangalore. He dreams of building a career in cinema and literature. Some of his hobbies are reading books, travelling places and blogging about films. He currently writes for TheSeer.

Big Little Stories

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Novels containing stories larger than life or stories so real that they are hard to believe attract us immediately. But short stories encapsulate a world of their own leaving the reader with memorable charm. The session ‘Big Little Stories’ was all about it – the stories of people around us and their eccentricity. The panel had Deepak Unnikrishnan, Shubha Mudgal, Julia Prendergast moderated by Premanka Goswami. 

 

Deepak a writer from Abu Dhabi is the inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for his book Temporary People. When asked about why does he have so much violence in his stories, he was quick to pitch in his very humorous way his perspective about violence. He quotes an example of a man flying out of the country. He says the man standing in the line of immigration is anxious, vulnerable, and scared. He finds this act of scrutiny as violent. He shares his own experience of how his father behaves so differently in such times. Further he adds that violence offers an opportunity to introspect, so it’s not as bad as we think.

 

Shubha, an acclaimed Hindustani classical singer talks about her debut novel Looking for Miss Sargam , a collection of stories of music and misadventure. Though the stories come from the music world, Shubha claims that they are a pure work of fiction and at the same time, contain some of the amusing anecdotes she came across, one of them being that musicians gift each other some of the finest compositions on marriage which they might not even give to the best of their disciples. Knowing such facts, she has built up her stories adding her own imagination from the contemporary world.

 

Julia, a lecturer in Writing and Literature in Australia is a prolific writer and was the 2019 Director of the Australian Short Story Festival, held for the first time in Melbourne. She takes us through the stories of love and loss. Her characters are sometimes drawn from her own experiences which make the stories more relatable and touching.

 

At the end, all of them read an excerpt from their stories. Deepak and Shubha impersonated the accent of the native of their characters belonging to various regions of India which brought a lot of laughter and cheers from the audience. Premanka did not forget to quickly request a song from Shubha to which she politely agrees. Shubha sings her personal favourite penned by great lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi – “Ao koi khwaab bune kal ke vaaste”, yet again mesmerising the audience with her unique voice and style.

 

 

About the Author: Bhumika Soni is a literature enthusiast working in the field of data analytics, I have always found words more charming and powerful than numbers. Still searching for The Enchanted Tree created by Enid Blyton to travel to various magical worlds. She currently writes for TheSeer.

Small Town, Big Dreams

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Small town, is not just a matter of small town but big dreamers who come out of that with flying colours. Andaleeb Wajid, a Bengaluru based writer who has authored several books on different topics like food, relationship etc. has herself made a confession that she never lived in a town. She couldn’t imagine on being a part of town as she grew up in the city of bengaluru.

 

The discussion began with Abdullah Khan who has written ‘Patna Blues’. A man has grown up in a small village from northern part of Bihar where there was no electricity and other basic facilities. On his first visit to the capital city ‘Patna’, after seeing the river Ganges, has a question in his mind which he asks his father, as to whether ‘this is an ocean?’. Table fan was a luxury during his times. His feelings towards his own town and usual aspirations of middle class town people led him to pen this book.

 

Tanuj Solanki, who has lived in Muzaffarnagar, felt that the soul of a country actually lived in various social media like whatsapp and facebook. He agreed that small towns do play a big role as he had lived in Muzaffarnagar for 17 years. He mentioned the communal riots and tensions that big districts or cities have which are unusual in towns even today.

 

Parimal Bhattacharya, another speaker told the gathering that he hadn’t actually grown up in a town but moved to Darjeeling in his twenties as a teacher. But only after 15 years of returning from that place he wrote the book ‘No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight: Memories of a Hill Town’. He also said that Darjeeling is very different from other towns or villages where different communities live peacefully together.

 

Gillian Wright, a translator and writer said that there was something that broke us apart from towns to cities, but there was some continuity also in terms of culture, poetry etc. She feels and says big voices come from small places. 

 

Small towns may be a nostalgia for people who are obsessed with cities and its pollution. 

 

 

About the Author: Rohini Mahadevan is political science graduate and works as a content writer. She likes reading books, drawing, painting, and writing short creative pieces. She currently writes for TheSeer.

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