Tag: #blf2019

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.

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.

Children | Literature | Fun (C | L | F) – Day 1

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The youngest reporter and blogger on the team, Devaarsh Mehta attended a few of the CLF sessions for children in his age category (12+) at the Bangalore Literature Festival, Day 1. Find his take on these sessions that are specially designed for children to have fun and also take home a lesson or two.

 

Tickle Me, Don’t Tickle Me | Jerry Pinto

First we had Jerry Pinto the great
He interacted a lot like my best mate
His book was tickle me don’t tickle me
Which was written during his poetic spree
Be ready to grab an idea he said
You’ll get many just before bed
Language is full of magic
Happiness excitement and tragic
Reading is language’s fun
Even after being finished you won’t want to be done
Language when used well
(What he said is something to dwell)
Is the secret of being a human

 

How Now, Brown Cloud? | Bijal Vachharajani

Bijal Vaccharajani has written ‘A Cloud Called Bhura’. Bijal is an environmentalist and has written many other books including ‘So You Want to Know About The Environment‘.

She was funny and kind.

She asked us many questions and gave a quiz. We made paper planes, wrote letters, and had fun.

 

 

How to Write a Book in a Year | Balaji Venkatraman

Balaji Venkataraman spoke all about how to write a book in a year.

He has written books like Pops! and Flat-Track Bullies. Balaji read a few excerpts from his books and gave us six points –

Get a notebook

Read for half an hour

Pay attention to detail

Look at the fun side

Write four pages on weekends

Give it a title

 

He also did a few small experiments and gave rewards to those who answered the questions that he asked about the experiments.

 

 

Embody & Imagine | Akhshay Gandhi

Akhshay Gandhi did things a little differently. He did activities with us and told us that most stories start by letting yourself free. The ideas mustn’t be pushed out. They will come in their own. We played a few games and a sort of questionnaire with no wrong answers.

 

The Lizard of Oz | Khyrunnisa A

She is an animal lover and her book The Lizard of Oz has more than ten animals in different stories. She was really funny. The reason for the book is to show that insects aren’t that bad. She also uses many funny similes and metaphors.

 

 

Who Changed the Game? | Devika Cariapa

Devika Cariapa has written 25 Game Changers. She has written about the people who faced discrimination and yet went on to become some of the most famous people. The people who changed the tragic, underdeveloped India to the happy, developing one that we live in today. She gave us a trivia test. It was awesome.

 

Tinkle – Make Your Own SuperHero | Savio Mascarenhas

Savio Mascarenhas’ session was a lot of fun. He taught us how to turn Tinkle comic characters into heroes and villains. He took our suggestions to make  Suppandi supervillain. We also learnt many things about comics.

 

Ramayana Vs. Mahabharata | Devdutt Pattanaik

He has written many good mythical stories. He was quite funny. He wrote a double book which is like a book which has two stories in it, one from front to back and the other from back to front. It was a lot of fun.

 

So Who Wants to be a Space Scientist? | Minnie Vaid

Minnie Vaid is a brilliant author who has written about women space scientists. She spoke about the Mangal Mission and Chandrayan. I loved it.

 

 

 

About the Author: Devaarsh Mehta is a certified bookworm, guitarist (almost), riddle maker, puzzle solver, and earth warrior with a huge collection of books in his personal library. He currently writes for TheSeer.

A Death in The Himalayas

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As intriguing the title of this topic of BLF was, so was the discussion of the book ‘A Death in the Himalayas‘ by Udayan Mukherjee. Udayan Mukherjee, who has spent two decades working in CNBC was in conversation with Aruna Nambiar, who is also a well-known author of ‘Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth’. Section 144 in the Bangalore city did not spoil the mood of the fest and the audience were glued to their chairs in this very interesting unfolding conversation about the book.

The dark cover of the book with the title in the red font stating ‘A Neville Wadia mystery‘ creates an enticing curiosity in itself. Aruna, who has read the book claimed that the book has all the elements of a good murder mystery. It has lots of suspects with motives but no alibies. 

Another salient feature of the book is the classic throwback, almost literary feel, that the book associates with. 

Udayan believes that one has to be a voracious reader to be a writer eventually. Unlike other children who had superheroes like Spiderman and Batman, his heroes were always writers since childhoods. He confessed that the world of television never gave the same pleasure as writing did.

Udayan lives for the most part of a year in a little village in the Himalayas and spends months together in his solitude working on the book writing. He told the audience that seeing a big crowd overwhelms him as there are times where for more than a month the only people he meets in the Himalayas are his wife and the caretaker. Aruna and Udayan discussed how it is not important to compare writing one book in four years in a city to writing four books in one year in a quiet place like the Himalayas. A lot of factors including discipline and the busy city life affects the writing process.

Before speaking about the book and its plot, Udayan spoke about how locales and milieu of a place are equally important for his books as the ending of solving the mystery itself. ‘A Death in the Himalayas’ is a book about a Scottish British author Claire Watson who wrote a contemptuous book on the plight of minorities in India. How it made her unpopular with government and politicians and made her take refuge in a Himalayan village. The book unfolds further when Claire is found dead in a stream in a jungle one fine morning. Clair’s neighbours were a Parsi couple from Mumbai, Neville Wadia and Shahnaz Wadia. Neville is a retired police officer who gets involved in resolving the mystery of Claire’s death. 

Udayan explained that, according to him, the key to a murder mystery is not just the plot. One might not remember the story but the characters stay. Two most interesting characters in the book are the protagonist Neville Wadia and the actual inspector in the investigation. Neville Wadia is portrayed as a handsome sixty-year-old retired top cop. He is slender, refined and charming. Aruna teased Udayan asking if he sees the character as his alter ego.  

Udayan explained that he wanted to depict Neville as a gentle soul and does not want him to come across as the stereotyped boorish police inspector. Neville is a reclusive, quiet-looking good soul who wants to help people in distress. Shahnaz Wadia, playing Neville’s wife, is also shown as a very intriguing and nice woman. To offset Neville’s personality, Satish, the actual inspector, is portrayed as a rugged character. 

While the book is a crime thriller, it also is a literary delight. The entire setting is a very integral part of the book. The Himalayas should not be considered as just a pretty locale to set up the plot. On the contrary, how Himalayan villages bring with them the aspects of insecurities, conflicts and politics of the village. It touches on topics about social problems of a village, including illegal land acquisition and outsiders coming to the village.

The conversation unfolded a very different aspect of the Himalayas and how they lend themselves to murder mysteries. Himalayan people are shy and reclusive. The physical appearance of mountains has an eerie aspect to it. Sometimes afternoons can be quieter than nights. 

It was interesting to hear the social problems that the mountain people face, how they need city people but also resent them and the intrusion. In the book, Claire is a quintessential outsider and so is not accepted by the villagers. 

Udayan talked about his views about north Indian villages. Two key things that struck him were misogamy and xenophobia. These also play an important role in unveiling the story. The title of the book could have very well been ‘A Death of the Himalayas’ instead as Udayan feels that we are ruining the Himalayas. This book seemed to be very layered and uncovering it will be a mysterious delight.

Udayan then took the audience’s questions and explained how beauty and evil coexist in a quiet place. Mumbai has a noise that interferes with the writing and hence he finds writing in the Himalayas more productive. His favourite author is P.D. James and the detective character Adam Dalgliesh. He loves some of the well-known French mystery writers as well. Udayan has kept it at a lower price because he wants this book to be read as a literary crime novel. 

About the Author: Neha Agrawal is an expressive-impulsive woman with the halo of positivism and energy, a smile that emanates from the heart and wants to reach out to the world. She loves books, children, rawness, originality, and nature – not in any particular order. A budding poet and a writer under the handle #fursatkealfaaz on Instagram. She currently writes for TheSeer.

The Story of an Acid-Attack Survivor

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Two women, two horrifying life-changing incidents. They don’t give up; instead, they determine to emerge like a phoenix to inform the world about what it takes to rise out of an acid attack and bring back normalcy in life.

Reshma Qureshi, an acid attack survivor and Tania Singh, CEO of the NGO Make Love Not Scars (MLNS) join hands to present the story of Reshma and many other girls like her who faced acid attack, in their book ‘Being Reshma’.

As the moderator, Preeti Gill an independent literary agent welcomes the two brave ladies. Reshma and Tania confidently retell their stories of the fight against this ugly war.

Reshma was just 17 when she was attacked by her brother in law on her way to school. Nobody turned up for her help. On top of that when she went to the hospital, she was first asked to lodge an FIR. She had no option. Filing complaints and interrogation took almost 7 hours and she was still unattended. Later on, she was provided medication but because of this delay, she lost an eye.

In another world, Tania was studying business in Singapore where during a fire accident she burnt her hair and was going through the treatment in best of the hospitals there. As she wanted to return to India, she looked for medical facilities for burn victims here. But to her dismay, she found it to be pathetic. Most of the preventable burn victims lost their lives because of poor medical services. In her research for the betterment, she came in contact with the NGO MLNS. Here, they started a campaign to provide dignity to the acid attack survivors for which Reshma volunteered to become the face of the campaign and the journey of togetherness started.

Tania tells about the campaign which was a beauty vlog by the acid attack victims presenting online makeup tutorials with hard-hitting taglines like “Most important tip: You will get an eyeliner for Rs 100 but a bottle of acid for only for Rs 30 and that is why girls are so easily attacked with it.” The campaign went viral and led the government to ban over the counter sale of Acid.

Reshma who has been to New York Fashion Week is happy with the awareness being spread but she believes still a lot has to be done. According to her, even as we discuss it, someone might be still under attack. The offenders should be punished strictly. As Tania puts it, India has one of the stringent laws for women protection but implementation is where we are lacking. A great sigh of relief is that the incidents have been increasingly reported contrary to earlier times when a stigma was attached to such kind of incidents.

As we come to the end of the session, Reshma appealed to everyone to not run from an acid victim but instead help them to get first aid relief which can be a life saviour. Preeti Gill concluded this life-affirming story while it touched all of us somewhere deep down in our heart.

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.

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