Literati21 Concludes

Literati21 concluded with the online digital version in the evening. In the 15 sessions over 35 authors participated, including Jim Davidson from Colorado, and Parinda Joshi from the USA, Shubendra from UAE and Kishwar Desai joined from London, UK.

The evening online virtual session of Literati21 brought the curtain down to the two-days event .

The US based management professional and University teacher Dr. Raza Mir's latest book "Murder at the Mushaira" was the focus of discussion with Resident Editor of Indian Express Manraj Grewal Sharma.

Manraj brought out the exquisite dimensions of Raza Mir's own personality and his deep knowledge of Urdu poetry that is so beautifully intertwined with a murder mystery, the intriguing characters in the backdrop of Indian mutiny.

Talking about the tradition of mushaira, Urdu language, and rich contribution of Ghalib, whom he called the Indian Shakespeare, Raza Mir said that his inspiration for this historic fiction had been his love for history, Urdu language and the intriguing plots of Agatha Christie.

Raza Mir said that Ghalib as an exponent of Urdu language was ahead of his time and experimented with the medium including the newly introduced postal system by the British which he used extensively by writing letters.

CLS Chairperson Dr Sumita Misra decoded the enigma called Devika Rani with the author of recent book on her by Kishwar Desai, who joined from London.

A multifaceted personality, author, founder of Partition Museum and a Global Ambassador, Kishwar has recently published, "The Longest Kiss; The Life and Times of Devika Rani" after much research and travels across the globe to collect nuggets of information till she stumbled upon bag fulls of original documents and her letters to her husband that resulted in the book that revealed her fame as the first lady of Indian cinema being the co-founder of major film studio called Bombay Talkies.

Devika suffered much violence at home and yet she had a firm belief in herself and was able to setup a thriving studio, and she disclosed that book would hit the big screen too soon.

In another session Swati Bhadoria talking to Delhi based author and filmmaker shared hard facts of emotional wellbeing by finding peace with our inner self. In her recent book, "Hinge" Vandana Kohli said that many incidents and behavior of others leaves us with anger and angst, and the unanswered perennial question "why me?" that leaves one mentally disturbed and fractured, need to be understood and managed. She talked about how one can balance one's life through tools that can bring peace and avoid extremes.

Shubendru joined from Dubai and shared insight into his historic-fiction, " Sultan : The Legend of Hyder Ali ", which emerged through painstaking research, travelling, and going through 200 years old military records and archives.

The concluding session, Anshuman Arora interviewed Jim Dadvidson, an adventurist, mountaineer and an environmental geologist who survived a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in the Himalayas while he was on Camp One in 2015 to Mount Everest, shared his real life adventure which he has published in his memoir, "The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain's Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again".

Sunday, December 12, 2021