HYDERABAD: ‘Time flies!’ Giving an example of the same, Shailendra Singh, unveiled his book ‘The True Story of Sunburn’ on Friday, in which he has jotted down all the good, bad and best moments of his journey in the last seven years of the Sunburn fest. Just a day ahead of hosting the fest in city, he said that inspiring the younger generations is what he aimed to do through the book. “We as humans achieve a lot in life. But at the same time, we should also aim at telling our stories to youngsters to inspire them,” he says. In the book, Shailendra, with intricate details of how the idea for fest came up, has managed to grab the attention of the reader.
While penning the book, the lively soul thought that people should also be able to experience the incident and just not read about it. “I did not want to make it a boring story. I thought the book should also have something more than just text. I decided to make it a ‘Live Book’,” where he has added QR codes which the reader can scan and watch the video related to the incident on YouTube.
Recalling why he started the fest while pointing at one of the chapters in the book, ‘The Magnificent 7’ where he has jotted down the entire incident, he says, “A few event organisers turned up in my office one day with idea of starting a metal music fest and the other one being Sunburn. Though we hosted both the fests in 2007, I decided to carry forward with Sunburn as I saw people enjoying it more.” The reason being that the fest plays electric music and one doesn’t have to know the lyrics to enjoy it.
The author, who is patriotic at heart, mentioning about his best moments at the fest in the last seven years says, “I usually stay behind the stage during all the events. But, during the Mumbai fest, I had to go on stage and speak to the crowd. First sentence that I unintentionally uttered was related to India and I could see the crowd shouting and everyone raising the Indian flags they were holding in hand. That was a nostalgic moment for me.” What makes the fest close to his heart is that at the fest, people get to know each other over music.
This is a second book by the author, the first one being ‘F?@k Knows’ which was released last year. He is also releasing a sequel to it in January 2015. “The book is on physical intimacy, he informs.
“When my son grew up, I one day decided to educate him about sex. Though I managed to get him to speak to me about it, I felt a bit uncomfortable. I then walked away and decided to educate him and the other youngsters through a book. Which is why I ended up writing the book” He thinks sex education is important as it can prevent youth from going the wrong way.