The inaugural edition of ‘LITERATI 2013’ organised by the Chandigarh Literary Society (CLS), which will witness the participation of some of the most talked about writers, will get under way at the Lake Club here on Saturday.
It was in March last year that a few local writers and bureaucrat-poet Sumita Misra joined hands to set up the CLS with Misra as its chairperson. And the intention was to provide a platform to the city literati to interact with the established writers.
The CLS’ grand designs got off to a rollicking start with the launch of Anupam Kher’s book “The best thing about you is you”.
It was followed by series of talks by celebrated writers like diplomat-authors Navtej Sarna and Pavan Varma as well as Chetan Bhagat and Yousuf Saeed, who discussed their works on the CLS platform.
Bhaskar Ghose would release the widely discussed Jaideep Bhoosreddy thriller ‘Dead Underground’. The 20-year old author, who hails from from Delhi, is touted as a name to watch out for in the future. His profound interest in military intelligence, world politics and scientific knowledge coupled with the bureaucratic exposure from his family provide well-rounded, deeply researched novels for readers.
“Set in 2026, ‘Dead Underground’ is a spy fiction thriller centred around the energy crisis and international relations in the near future. It follows a US spy and a French scientist as they are branded as terrorists > and hunted around the globe.” “Dead Underground is India’s version of a novel as thrilling as the Jason Bourne and James Bond series,” says Jaideep.Bhaskar Ghose would open the fest with a keynote address on ‘In Search of the Authentic’.
The who is who of Indian literary circles would be engaged in conversation on diverse topics including ‘Religion and Politics-Oxygen or Poison?’, ‘Brewing Thoughts Beautifully’, ‘The four letter words: All between Love and Hate’, ‘Exotica is the New Erotica’, ‘The Challenge of Humour’, ‘Women and Paradox of Modernity’, ‘Narrative, Mind and Memory’.
The featured authors include Ashok Vajpeyi, Ashwin Sanghi, Kishwar Desai, Madhu Kishwar, Pushpesh Pant, Meghna Pant, Nandita C Puri, Rahul Pandita, Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Govind Misra, Jerry Pinto, Jai Arjun Singh, Krishna Shastri, Devulapalli, Mohyna Srinivasan, V. Sudarshan, Meghna Pant, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Tishaa Khosla, Gyan Prakash, Manjula Rana and Manisha Gangahat. Sarna would be reading from his book “Savage Harvest”, a translation of Punjabi short stories on the partition of India written originally by his father, the celebrated author Mohinder Singh Sarna. “My father had written a lot in Punjabi-- short stories, novels, epic poetry. All this is very well known to Punjabi readers, but I felt that his writing, in particular the very powerful stories on partition needed a wider audience. “Hence, the translation of this selection of stories. In fact there is so much else not only in Punjabi but in all other Indian languages that needs to come out to the wider world through translation in English,” says Sarna.
“ Partition was the greatest tragedy that fell upon the subcontinent, a tragedy that soured the sweet taste of independence for an entire generation. People lost their homes, their lives, in a way their heritage too. In a young India, such an important aspect of recent history cannot be forgotten,” he adds.
Rahul Pandita would release another academic work being published by the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies– ‘Kashmir’s Narratives of Conflict’ by Manisha Gangahar.