ORANGE CITY LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Nandini Sen Gupta On The Ocean's Own and the story of ancient India In Conversation With Priyanka Sharma

The Orange City Literature Festival was glad to host a session with Author Asha Nehemiah on Creative story writing and getting new ideas. Ms Nehemiah has written 20 fantasy, adventure, and humour books. She specializes in children stories and wishes that parents would indulge and support their children when they wish to read books they're interested in. Ms Nehemiah discussed her numerous stories and her journey of writing her books in the session. She gave some important tips on how to start writing a story, developing and deciding on characters, plots, themes, and other details of the stories. She quoted- When you start thinking about an idea, don't put breaks on your mind, just put it all down. She encouraged free-thinking and penning ideas down when one thinks of something as an idea thought is never an idea wasted. She discussed the action plan of writing and shared her stories with everyone at OCLF 2021!

After a warm welcome by the anchor, Ms Rucha takes the opportunity to appreciate how astonishing Mr Rejimon’s work has been over the years with his every book making sure to bring inspiring and outstanding stories to the fore, she mentions Rowing Between the Rooftops, Mr Rejimon’s outstanding work on how fishermen in Kerala came to the rescue when flood hits the shore of the South Indian state in 2018. Mr Rejimon acknowledges the appreciation and talks about why he feels the need to bring stories to the general public that haven’t been heard about and how that landed him with the concept of his new book Stories of Indian Migrants in the Arab Gulf. He goes on and talks about his experience as a migrant and how millions of people from India migrate to the Arabian Gulf for a better life but are often met with hostile circumstances and some even fail to even make it back to their homeland. Mr Rejimon’s new book shines light on an issue that the general public is aware of but doesn’t get access to individual stories. The conversation rolls on in the same direction and comes to close after a few more questions.

After a very warm welcome by the anchor, Ms Iti Khurana takes the opportunity to add a few more laurels to Ms Divya Arya’s introduction. Ms Iti goes on and requests Ms Divya to give the audience a background of her book Postbox Kashmir: Two Lives in Letters. Ms Divya gladly accepts the request and tells the audience that Kashmir is a very sensitive issue and is often dealt with with passion, in general discussions as well as in the media. Her book compares the lives of teenagers in Kashmir and the rest of the country but with a concept that not only slows the conversation down but also helps it get very personal and pure. Ms Divya’s book is about how a bunch of teens in Kashmir and Delhi become a part of an initiative where they write letters to each other. The book very beautifully narrates how stories unfold. Ms Divya’s book has put two sides of the same story on the table in the best possible way. As she talks about Postbox Kashmir, the audience is astonished by the concept and the conversation goes on in the same direction before coming to a close.

Arunava Sinha On Khwabnama - A tale of Socio-political Scene in Rural Pre partition Bangladesh In Conversation With Rishabh Kothari

Author Avinuo Kire took a session at the Orange City Literature Festival 2021 on Emerging Naga Writers as New Memory Keepers. Her topic of discussion was based on her the traditional way of Oral Narration of Stories in Nagaland. She is a dedicated writer who wishes to document the sweet essence of storytelling in her books. To preserve Nagaland's Cultural History in the form of stories and fictional characters. She talked about how it's an important lesson for her that before she could write memory, she had to learn the art of listening; just as reading and writing sustain each other, so does listening and telling. The consistent theme observed in Ms Kire's stories is the History and modern Naga history of turmoil, politics and unrest due to Indo-Asian conflict. She hosted a beautiful session and quoted- Stories choose us; they're bigger than the writer. She shared her thoughts on how writing memory of the beautiful Naga History/ Memory helps link the oral script and effectively continues the legacy of telling and listening. She conducted a marvellous session at OCLF 2021 and left everybody curious to know more about Nagaland's stories, traditions, and culture.

Author Delshad Karanjia in conversation about Telling Short Tales at OCLF 2021! Ms Karanjia shared her story with everybody and talked about how a certain individual gave her a push to start writing stories. From then on, her numerous interests were penned into 150 small stories and later got published. She has been an active Journalist and Copy Editor in the top firms in India and enjoys reading and writing short tales. In her session, she stated, everybody is looking for a quick fix; hence short stories are sure to make a comeback. But to read any story, long and short, one needs to start liking the activity. She said it's important to get things going in terms of reading and writing. She shared her career experiences, her book writing and her research journey, and when asked which character's story she found to be most interesting, she happily answered Mullah Nasiruddin.  Join Ms Delshad Karanjia for an amazing conversation on Short Tales and the growing interest of the youth in Short Stories at OCLF 2021!

Sujeet Sarkar on QUEST FOR A STABLE AFGHANISTAN In Conversation with Kartik Borikar

Minnie Vaid ‘mental health stigma in india even in 2021, ways to cope, especially in pandemic times. In Conversatiion with Harshali Singh Kaul

“Until suicide happened to my life, I was immune to it. I was limited to news. One dear friend of mine committed suicide whose family refused to talk. I refuse to play victimhood mindset. I work with the marginalized community and LGBTQ labourers. I saw their pain closely. That's why I am very aversive about this victimhood. The question "why me?" must reverse to "Why not me?".  I can’t control the situation around the suicide of my husband. I was not responsible, but I could control how I would react. The transformation didn't happen overnight. I felt very vulnerable, but for me, it was strength. My journey was to owe my venerability and explore my strength. The book's name came from an incident when I was wandering around the seashore of the southern village; a fisherman came to me and gave me oysters that have pearls. It inspires me to be on the shore. Pearls come from oysters' irritation, and that's how life works for us. Pearls of wisdom that I have gained were very transformative. I have been interested in writing since childhood, so writing was never a challenge for me. After the tragic incident, my uncle encouraged me to write, and I started a journal where I wrote whatever came to mind.”