After being assured that it was safe to go to South Mumbai, I went to KGAF at 4pm, just in time to attend the second session of photography workshop by David D’Souza at BNHS. I had not attended the first session, because it was clashing with my other workshop. But on a recap, I was able to catch up with what I had missed. It was quite an interesting workshop with David’s animated postures that kept us in splits. He spoke about the creativity that was important in the photography and our lack of it, was mainly due to our fear. A creative person reflects the environment. We don’t ‘take’ photographs, we ‘make’ them and we can develop the spontaneity by training our eye-muscle to coordinate with our finger and instinct and produce a good photograph.
Initially, during the first session, he had given the assignment to the participants, of going around the city and taking some shots. At this second session, we saw the pictures that some of them had clicked and we discussed the flaws and plus points of each photograph. All the pictures were discussed in great details and it was quite informative.
I edited this picture that I had clicked the previous day.
and
Later, during the evening, I headed towards the David Sassoon Library Garden, where the discussion on ‘Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender writing in India’ was in its last segment. I missed this discussion, but I was able to attend the next two sessions, ‘The War of the Words: Science Fiction and Fantasy’ which was moderated by Devanshu Datta and ‘Getting Published: All sides of the Story’ which the moderated by Sriram, who was sitting for Urvashi.
Urvasi Butalia, who was to moderate this discussion, was not able to reach Mumbai because of bad weather, but she took part in this discussion on a phone call (that’s the technology for us) We had Kavita Banot, a literary agent, discussing about her role in the writer’s world and how it will help writers in the publishing world, but Urvasi, in her phone conversation said, that she did not like to deal with literary agents because of their pushy nature. There were more discussions on payments, pricing of the book and the rights of the author.
Since the literary program was running late, the last two programs ‘Open Mike’ and ‘Open Screen’ had to be chopped off.
Unfortunately! Sigh!
Muse Boutique was the venue for the workshop on ‘Getting Published’. Tucked away in the narrow by-lane behind Rhythm House, I reached there after inquiring about its location from several paanwallahs.
In the interior, surrounded by books, artifacts and a pleasant ambience, I learnt the secrets of ‘The Ten Commandments of Publishing World, the role of a literary agents and the fine prints of a book contract’.
While Anita Roy spoke about publishing in a real world, we had Vikram Chauhan enlightening us on publishing a book in a virtual world.
Vikram Chauhan hosts a site called ‘If I Were A Book.com’ where everybody has the right to express themselves by publishing their book. Currently, book publishing is a long and difficult process. So 'If I Were A Book.com' has made book publishing instant, easy and free!
It is a site where you can post content of your blog which you feel is book worthy or your manuscript on 'If I Were A Book.com' and watch it instantly take the shape of a book!
It is a good medium to get noticed by different publishers and knock off those long walks to different publishers for release of your work. This is the place where the only thing that matters is that you can express yourself by publishing your own book!
Late evening at David Sassoon Garden, surrounded by cool breeze of winter winds, I enjoyed an evening of multi-lingual poetry about Mumbai, that were recited by some well-known and published poets.
