Sharing: LITOMANIA 2014 DAY 1

Pic Courtesy: Litomania FB page

I was pretty excited when I saw the listing for Litomania in Mumbai Mirror. Having never attended a lit fest ever, I decided to go for this one as it was held quite close to home. I registered immediately online for it and chalked out the programmes I wanted to attend. Preeti Arora – we used to work together at Buzz18 – called to tell me about Litomania and we both decided to meet there.

The first day – October 11, 2014 – inauguration, etc., began late and all the shows were subsequently late.

Without meaning to, I attended the inauguration and after that came the programme – What is India reading? It was a discussion by Amish Tripathi, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravi Subramanian and Ravinder Singh. I have read Amish’s Shiva Trilogy; The Rozabal Line, Chanakya Chants & The Krishna Key by Ashwin Sanghi; If God is a Banker & Devil in Pinstripes by Ravi Subramanian. I got to know that day that Ravinder Singh is a romance author and has written a few books that are very popular with the younger generation. Click Here to know more about this author.

Author Ravinder Singh Pic Courtesy: http://www.thenational.ae/

It was an interesting discussion on how Modern India is keener to read Indian authors who write about Indian characters unlike the older generation who grew up on Western authors. I must say it was a very interesting and absorbing group discussion with all the four authors participating in equal measures.

The next programme I attended was a group discussion on the Romance Genre and I was sure I would find a lot of useful inputs here. The participants were Author Madhuri Banerjee; Author Bhaavna Arora and Author-Publisher Amrita Chowdhury with moderator Rachel Lopez. Topic was Is India exploring the 50 shades?

Author Madhuri Banerjee Pic Courtesy: http://www.fuccha.in/

Only after sitting for some time I realised that this was only about writing explicit scenes in romances. I haven’t read the Fifty Shades series and that obviously was the reason for my gaffe. When the discussion got to the stage of writing about same sex relationship and relationship with animals (yep, you read right), Preeti and I had had enough and left the hall.

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor Pic Courtesy: http://zoinkmediablog.files.wordpress.com/

Preeti had an invite to Ravi Subramanian’s Masterclass on How to write a book and get it published. I checked at the reception if I could attend and as they had no objection, we both went to the hall allotted for the lecture immediately after lunch. Without meaning to we landed at Chef Sanjeev Kapoor’s India’s obsession with gastronomy along with Pooja Dhingra and Shipra Khanna. I must say that Sanjeev Kapoor held the audience’s attention as he spoke about his career growth from learning to be a chef, his culinary show on Doordarshan to penning his first recipe book. Today, he has sold more than two and a half million copies of his books. Amazing!

Author Ravi Subramanian Pic Courtesy: http://iyatingupta.com/ 

Next was Ravi Subramanian’s class. He held the audience spell bound as he took us through the session first talking about how to write and then how to get your work published. I liked it when he said that a writer must write every day and should make time for it maybe by giving up on TV time or even sleep. It was sound advice and I have decided to follow it – to write every day. So far so good!

I went to meet the author and introduced myself, congratulating him on his awesome books. I was pretty thrilled when he recognised my name when I told him that I had sent him his book reviews on my blog. Ravi S did promise to help me with the print publishing of my books. Let’s see.

The last class I attended that day was on When writing mythology, does the writing change the writer? Participants were Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi while the moderator was Rachel Lopez. I had missed half the discussion as the earlier programme had got delayed. But I still found the discussion very interesting.

What a day!

More info on Day 2 in the next blog

Book Review: THE KRISHNA KEY

THE STORY from www.ashwinsanghi.com

Five thousand years ago, there came to earth a magical being called Krishna, who brought about innumerable miracles for the good of mankind. Humanity despaired of its fate if the Blue God were to die but was reassured that he would return in a fresh avatar when needed in the eventual Dark Age, the Kaliyug.

In modern times, a poor little rich boy grows up believing that he is that final avatar. Only, he is a serial killer. In this heart-stopping tale, the arrival of a murderer who executes his gruesome and brilliantly thought-out schemes in the name of God is the first clue to a sinister conspiracy to expose an ancient secret, Krishna’s priceless legacy to mankind.

Historian Ravi Mohan Saini must breathlessly dash from the submerged remains of Dwarka and the mysterious lingam of Somnath to the icy heights of Mount Kailash, in a quest to discover the cryptic location of Krishna's most prized possession. From the sand-washed ruins of Kalibangan to a Vrindavan temple destroyed by Aurangzeb, Saini must also delve into antiquity to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice.

MY PERCEPTION

A humongous amount of research has gone into this book. So much so, that the way it’s been presented makes the reader wonder whether the book is a work of fiction at all. It so reminded me of the novel ‘Prizes’ by Erich Segal. Prizes was like reading a physics text book. The author had obviously done a lot of research and was using his knowledge. That’s fair to him. But what about the one who is looking forward to reading a work of fiction? And then finding so much knowledge crammed down one’s throat. I am sure there is a subtle way of doing this. In fact, I have garnered a lot of my knowledge through reading fiction. The presentation counts, doesn’t it?

There is a point at which Professor Ravi Mohan Saini’s student Priya tells him to stop his boring lectures. She could not be more right. He does go on and on about history and mythology. I love both the subjects, but definitely not the way they have been packaged in this book.

How could the professor come up with his answer in a jiffy, every time? He guesses most of them. While they are based on his knowledge, it’s still strange the way he keeps going by hunches and the reader is given the impression that he comes up trumps each time. Everything is happening in Ravi Mohan Saini’s head. Difficult to swallow!

I have read Ashwin Sanghi’s (as Shawn Haigins) The Rozabal Line. Well researched, fast paced, logical, fascinating and beautifully written. It’s difficult to accept that the same author has come up with The Krishna Key.

I was so looking forward to reading the book and was terribly disappointed. Well, the book has its moments when I came across different religious symbols and stuff that are common globally. I was glad to read about those and could also relate to them.

The brief snippets surrounding Lord Krishna’s life in the first person were not too bad. But I could not make the connection between those and the present day scenario.

The end was worse. Everything is based on conjecture and the reader is left hanging in the air wondering about the purpose of the gruesome murders. It did make me question the reason for the book at all.