Dateline Dehradun: The two day celebration of the 7th edition of Valley of Words| Shabdavali, 2023 ended on a high note. With three exhibitions, over three dozen conversations and dozen book launches, the festival has made its mark on the literary calendar of the country.
The last book launch of the Signature event held was Aftab Seth’s memoir, “A Diplomat’s Garden.” The session began with the official book launch of the book by the esteemed panelists on the dias which included Shyam Saran as Chair and Prof Dipankar Gupta as Moderator.
A houseful attendance by the author’s readers, friends and family began with the introduction of the Chair as one of the most distinguished foreign service officers of India. Shyam Saran whose career spans over thirty decades and counting and currently helms the India International Centre.
In conversation with the author was India’s foremost sociologist and pubic intellectual Prof Dipankar Gupta who spent his early childhood with the author in Patna.
The autobiographical vein of the story carried a note of nostalgia as the author regaled his audience with anecdotes from his personal and professional life. The conversation began with a question pertaining to the author’s happiest days spent in Patna. “What made Patna the happiest upto the age of ten was my family, a well-knit, composite family, that represented in itself the plural strains of India and beyond India, and the street we lived was a microcosm of India as we knew it, a trusting, composite India with a wide range of people belonging to every religion and race, hence I call it the happiest days,” spoke Aftab Seth.
The author spoke at length about his childhood and his travel beyond India and how the manner in which he was brought up gave him the privilege to “appreciate, understand and observe the best influences of other cultures and other people.” His exposure in home, in his street and the society in which he lived, and countries he visited as a child because of his parents and as a student gave him the ability to appreciate other cultures that he came across.
Hitting a note with the young VoW volunteers, the author reiterated how academic excellence doesn’t take you very far, “but gives you an intellectual depth to the work you are doing, it helped me write books, an ability to deal with other intellectual people.”
Prof Dipankar Gupta read excerpts from the book which brought out the poetic inclination of the author. The camaraderie between the moderator and the author came across in the fascinating conversation as the audience listened in rapt attention as Aftab rattled out names of politicians, artists, intellectuals, authors all of whom he met during his postings.
Speaking about his stints in various countries and the cultural exchange that he inculcated during this posting in Germany, Japan, Pakistan, Baluchistan, Beirut and others Aftab said, “it was always about bringing India to whichever country we were in and taking that country to India, it was a two way exchange.”
With a dozen such book launches over two days VoW|Shabdavali has once again managed to spread the magic of the written word not only in the Doon Valley but beyond as well!
