At the Book Fair today the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi was busy indeed, first with book launches, then with an author-interaction, and finally with a kavi sammelan.
Among the local authors whose books were launched was a fifteen year old girl from Bhavan Vidyalaya. Ishita Aggarwal has penned a novel entitled Lieability in which the main protagonist is a high school girl from the eighth class who has the uncanny ability to detect lies! Ishita spoke about her book and her love for writing and her talk was much appreciated particularly by the youngsters in the audience.
A Banker who Writes:
Tomorrow the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi will hold book launches and author interactions in the morning. In the evening there ill be a discussion with writers Nitika Singh and Sachin Garg.
Ravi Subramaniam hails from the south but he considers himself a punjabi. "I am a Punjoo at heart," he says, "having lived in Ludhiana for 17 of his formative years.
An IIM Bangalore graduate who became a best-selling author with his If God Was a Banker, Ravi is serious about his creative writing although he says he will never give up his regular job for the sake of novels. His inside information of the banking system, gathered over almost two decades of his career, gave him the raw material for his books. Although he is steeped in non-literary subjects like banking and economy, he uses his background as a framework against which he builds his stories.
Ravi writes thrillers which sell like hot cakes because they portray men and women who are not super-human beings but ordinary creatures that his readers can identify with.
His latest book is Bankerupt, again on similar lines and Ravi is happy with its sales.
Not only did Ravi talk about his novels, he also spoke of the art of writing, the techniques he follows, and the need for pushing the sales of a book. Writing, he feels, is the easiest part of being a novelist. The major challenge lies in pushing the sales and many a good book suffers because it is not marketed properly.
The audience appreciated the author's candid talk and his account of the discipline and regularity he had to practice in order to produce his novels. Of particular interest to all was the fact that Ravi Subramaniam's father was also a writer and his daughter had published her first novel last year at the age of thirteen. So much for the literary leanings in the family!
The grand finale of the evening was a Kavi Sammelan in which several poets participated, reciting their poems in Hindi and in Punjabi. Among those who recited their poems were Laaj Pushp, Kumar Vinod, Gyan P Vivek, Virendra Madhur, Dr Mukta, Sharanjit Kaur, and Janak Raj.
Tomorrow the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi will hold book launches and author interactions in the morning. In the evening there ill be a discussion with writers Nitika Singh and Sachin Garg.
