March 24, 2012
After coming back from the Akshardham Temple, I decided to make good on my plan to check out Penguin Book's Spring Fair that was happening at the nearby India Habitat Center. This is in line with Penguin Books India's 25-year anniversary celebration.
The night's event was a reading, something like a competition in a way. The winner of the "reading competition" gets the shot at becoming Penguin Books India's next big thing!
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| She's the host and he's supposedly one of the great writers of Penguin |
Basically, anyone who wants to read can do so. No age, gender or genre discrimination. It can be a part, an excerpt, or the entirety of their literary work--be it a poem, fiction, essay, fantasy, sci-fi, coming-of-age, political satire, or any other written word stuff. Well, provided you get to do it in two-minutes or less. :p
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| She is a student at JNU. Her piece was about saying goodbye to Delhi as she is finishing her degree and returning to home country soon |
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| I forgot what his piece was about coz I was concentrating on his looks and outfit in search of "that Indian man". Too pink for me! |
To have an idea what contemporary Indian writers write about (or plan to write about) these days, I've recorded some of the readings for you to hear them firsthand. This goes especially to my friends June Abigail and Jasmin:
Si ateh, may pagka-makulit. Sabi nang two minutes lang eh!
I like this story. Too bad I didn't get to record from the beginning and we
were not able to hear the rest of the story!
Yay, June Abigail talaga ha. And what's with the "in search of that Indian man?" I know, I know, I know I'm supposed to comment on the readings. :P But hey, they seem to publish more books than we do, am I right?
ReplyDeleteHahaha. :) Don't be misled by the "search of that Indian man". It's just that since I got here, I have been looking for the tall, dark and handsome guy that I have pictured a super minority of them to be. Nothing else. :p So far, 80% was the closest. The guy I saw smiles too much so the 20% for mystery's gone. Hehe. :p
ReplyDeleteThey probably do. They have a lot of local publishers for mainstream books din. Tsaka, their population is 10 times ours. I'd expect them to publish more talaga!