By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 22 Aug: The Literary Table (TLT) hosted another event here with two Doon based authors, Dr Jaskiran Chopra and Shiv Kunal Verma, on Monday. Shiv Kunal now lives in Kulu. TLT is slowly spreading its wings. This was its sixth endeavour. With excellent audience participation, this session had a gripping edge to it. With the diverse backgrounds of the two authors and their storytelling styles they enthralled the audience. Dr Aloka Dasgupta Niyogi was the host and moderator on the occasion.
TLT is a Booklovers’ Club. It is an initiative which runs under a Public Charitable Trust, Arogya Wellbeing. It features authors and promote books through this platform. It’s the brain child of Dr A Niyogi. Along with her, there is a core group of members that is her support team. They already have 40 odd members in the Book Club. It is a platform for authors, writers, journalists, social entrepreneurs and, above all, booklovers of Doon. The authors share their various life experiences which triggered them to pen down their books.
The emcees of the event were Shalini Kataria and Sanjeev Srivastava. The front desk was handled by Priyakshi Rajguru and Jasleen Kaur.
The session began with the welcome address by Aloka, who introduced the stars of the evening, Dr Jaskiran Chopra and Shiv Kunal Verma. Relevant questions were posed to the authors. Aloka read out snippets from Jaskiran’s book, ‘The Autumn Raga’ and from Shiv Kunal’s ‘The Industani – six degrees of separation’.
Jaskiran narrated what led her to pen down the book, ‘Autumn Raga’. She said, ‘Autumn Raga is a song of my soul.’ Her love for classical music, love for Dehradun, the mountains, her school, all this she collected and put them in her first novel, which was released by Ruskin Bond in Dehradun in 2011. She said it was not a true story but people and incidents that inspired her life are incorporated in ‘Autumn Raga’. She also spoke about the book she had written on Ruskin Bond, “Film & Fiction – Ruskin Bond’s Romantic imaginations”, as also her memoir – ‘Memories of Another Day, Yesterday Once More’, and ‘Uttarakhand…Inspiring Initiatives.
Military historian Shiv Kunal Verma spoke about his autobiography, “Industani – six degrees of separation”. He began with his childhood days in Dehradun, and went on to say that his years with Tiger Tops gave him a fantastic overview of the Himalayas. He was privileged to open up routes for trekkers in the Himalayas. On his various life experiences, he said he felt privileged to experience the tumultuous period of 1980s which he had penned down in his autobiography. He recalled that, when he wanted to make a film, he had asked JRD Tata to fund it. He was given a sum of Rs 21 lakhs. Tata had said, ‘Make a film which will make India proud’. When asked whether he had truly witnessed the Kargil war, he replied that, out on the ground, they were just human beings irrespective of caste, creed or state. They were all fighting under one banner, “they were Indians”. Kunal also took the audience through his books, “1962: The War That Wasn’t” and “1965: A Western Sunrise’. In the former he has covered the Kargil war and in the later the Indo-Pakistan war.
The Q&A session followed.
The session ended with a book signing session by the two authors.
