It all began with some out of the blue some
random thoughts that began to flow in the middle of the night and from that day
onwards a pen and pad always lay open on my bedside. The "filmy
keeda" in me seemed to be wriggling its way onto paper and I began writing
stories that had a touch of life and things that I had seen around me and on
celluloid. I remember how it all started. I used to handle annual reports at
the bank where I was working, collating data, coordinating shoots and actually
proof reading the data for my colleagues something I did not need to but began
to enjoy and love ensuring standardization in the data. This was probably the
best time in my career. Those random thoughts seemed to be calling out to me
and often during the lunch time I began to put down thoughts and mailed them off
to myself and began fleshing them out at night...Writing has always been something I loved and
even more surprising was the love for proof reading which somehow I became
totally fascinated with .... it was just
something that I continue to do unconsciously for everything I read, sometimes
to the dismay of my friends whose stuff I begin to correct.
Almost all my efforts pointed me
towards self publishing with exorbitant costs to print, market and promote leaving me
wondering what would I get out of the whole deal. Time flew as wrote and
ran through a million options to get my stories out there. No one seemed to want to publish short
stories anymore and besides novels were being published dime a dozen. I began to wonder how and what would make me so
different from others. Writing a novel
was not for me definitely, as I cannot put it down until I know how it ends. It
has to be short and sweet for me with a closure at the earliest. So that's why
perhaps even a Saas-bahu serial on TV does not hold my attention sadly! That did not stop me from writing as I shared
my stories with friends, In fact to put it plainly forced them to read!!!......
and then Lit-O-Fest just happened to me like a rainbow on a rainy day.
My long journey of
four years just melted into nothingness reading a mail acknowledging my
manuscript submission to the festival that said " "Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your
manuscript has been finalized for the LIT-O-FEST 2016 Awards. Please do come on
the 20th Feb to be a part of the LIT-O-FEST event and the award ceremony." That was IT for me. Someone out there had
thought my words were worthy to be read. That in itself was an achievement and to
get to this day when I can a big thank you to Smita Parekh, Festival Director and her team at Lit-O-Fest for appreciating the
writer in me. Yes, I won, I won in the "get published" section. Whatever this holds for me in the future is
just a big big dollop of icing and a culmination of a dream come true.
So let me share what Lit-O-Fest is.......Lit-O-Fest is a festival
with a difference and a one of its kind initiative where publishing contracts
are signed with deserving authors and what's more for free. It's a festival with
a philanthropic perspective as this is an only platform where one-the-spot
publishing contracts are signed with deserving authors. A friend Hariharan Iyer
introduced me to this festival and I submitted
my manuscript in the short stories section a few months ago.
The festival was held
at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai,
on February 20- 21, 2016 and when I walked into the college premises on Day 1, it was so heart-warming to be received by the students who escorted me to the multimedia
room where an talk was already in session. As I sat
there listening, I felt an immense sense of peace and happiness that comes with
just being a part of something so laudable. Sailesh Lodha of Tarak Mehta fame brought a
smile on our faces as he spoke on how we have lost our ability to laugh and
finding laughter and humor in everything. A session with Ram Jethmalaniji on money
laundering in our country and its repercussions that followed was so eloquently
put that I could not but marvel at this 93 year grand old gentleman. He
actually refused to sit down but chose to stand and talk at the dais for over
thirty minutes with such truth and passion. If this is not inspiring then for
me nothing ever will.
The awards ceremony began with the Lit-O-Fest giving away the 'Living
Legend’ award to legends Narendra Kohli, Kiran Nagarkar, Pankaj Dubey for
Creative Leadership and Radhakrishnan Pillai in the education field. I had the
privilege of being there to listen to them share their thoughts. Thereafter, I
was called on stage to receive my award at the hands of Ram Jethmalani ji and
what an euphoric feeling and honour indeed. Though knowing me, I did not let
Shatrughan Sinha leave before expressing my disappointment to him. He was to give the awards away but was getting
late and he very sweetly acknowledged me by saying he could not wait as he had
another appointment. My bad luck.
I wish that I could have gone again on Day 2, but for another
commitment. It was not surprising to
read that Day 2 saw sessions
with Manoj Bajpayee and Shilpa Shukla, child abuse and teenage tantrums with Kiran Manral, Harish
Iyer and Sonali Shroff with the event ith
concluding with live band by Leslie Lewis.
We all live in a world of stress and competition and everyone is definitely impatient for sure and wanting things to happen overnight, including me, but as the saying goes
"there is a time and place for everything" .....and the time and
place for me is definitely now....
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