Travelling helps authors enrich their experiences: Hoshiarpur-based author Khushwant Singh

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Jalandhar, May 13

Reading out excerpts from his new book and sharing its perspective with book lovers of the city, Hoshiarpur-based author Khushwant Singh on Friday launched his new novel ‘The Opium Toffee’ in an event organised by The Pageturners here.

Singh introduced his book to the readers, “It is about drugs, fanaticism, politics and the prevailing patriarchy. The protagonist of my story is the India’s top supermodel Shabnam Singh who finds her first love Ajit begging on a street in London. She is shocked to know the circumstances that led to the situation. The story dates back to the time between London’s 90s and the turbulent Punjab of the 80s and touches the era of turbulent times in the state.

Avkirat Dyal of The Pageturners puts up some questions to the author, “While most authors like to travel abroad, you have been touring across India with your book launch events”. Khushwant Singh retorts, “Travelling enriches the experiences of an author and makes him flourish. I wish I had been doing that earlier. When I launched the biography of Capt Amarinder Singh ‘The people’s Maharaja’ in February 2017, just after the polling had taken place and results were yet to come out, I launched the book only in Punjab. That was the time when Capt had taken the whole country by storm and everyone was talking about him and wanted to know about him. Had I toured India with his books, the sales would have been much higher, even though we had to get five quick reprints of the book immediately after the launch owing to a high demand”.

Reading excerpts, he shared stories of the four-decade old Punjab when most households in villages used to be abuzz with the daily discussion of how much milk, butter, ghee, butter milk, paneer or curd was generated on a particular day. Replying to a query as to what he felt was the biggest take away from his book, he said, “For any author or movie director, the biggest challenge is that the reader should be able to relate to the story as his own.”