History unfurls

Ambika Sharma

The three-day Khushwant Singh Literature Festival concluded  this afternoon at Kasauli where various literary personalities reflected upon a host of varied subjects ranging from yoga, heritage, water conservation and a fair share of history  and the origin of Mughal emperors and queens.

Manu Pillai, who wrote his first book at the age of 25, enthralled the audience with his interesting account of the Rebel Sultans and their Begums, which is a perfect illustration of the narrative history. “With so many stories in our country like ours, the tragedy is that we often succumb to the temptation of reducing it to black or white. In reality Indian history is a mosaic of colours, which comes together and represents us better. History essentially differs in interpretation if we look at it from the north centric perspective, while the same thing can be interpreted in a different way,” avers Pillai.

 Series of revealing facts about history had the audience spellbound as history read by an average Indian was but one interpretation.  Even the famous Mughals who dominate the Indian history have varied accounts about their origin, so much so that the twitter school of history proclaims that all Mughals came from outside and are all foreigners.

Sessions on Wow! To Heritage and Water Conservation by Jutta Jain, Memory in the Age of Amnesia by Saeed Mirza, The Plurality Personae by Wendell Rodricks and Hamari Amrita by Divya Dutta, Harjit Singh and Dr Chander Trikha reflected upon various attention-grabbing themes.

“Khushwant Singh was instrumental in letting me know about the famous writer Amrita Pritam and Train to Pakistan was her beginning,” says Divya Dutta while recalling the impact Amrita’s readings on her.   

The audience were treated to a session on ‘Yoga: A symphony of Life’ by Rajvi Mehta where she touched upon the finer nuances of this spiritual experience.  She explained how yoga leads to inner awakening and makes an individual experience the various stages of an individual’s existence.  While dwelling upon the significance of posture as professed by her guru, she averred, “Posture is not a physical entity and you can’t divide the body and the mind; rather body, mind and emotions go hand in hand and have to be integrated. If the correct posture is not followed, it will not be efficacious. It is the study of human anatomy and physiology of living individuals, which has helped to treat various ailments where medical science has failed.”

The closing note of the three-day fest was extended by Khushwant Singh’s son Rahul Singh who hoped for another such illuminating experience in the year to follow. Despite no new book release taking place, the fest did manage to sell copies of various books penned by Shashi Tharoor,  Karan Thapar and Salman Khurshid.