Two original titles in Urdu titled Jauhar-E-Adakari, authored by Shri Latafat Hussain Kazi and Urdu aur Bollywood, authored by Suhail Akhtar Warsi were released by Shri Javed Akhtar, renowned lyricist and Shri Amol Palekar, eminent actor & film-maker in a book-release function held at the theme pavilion. The books have recently been published by the National book Trust, India.
Talking about the status of the Urdu language, Shri Akhtar said that from the film, Alam Ara that introduced sound in Indian cinema, till today the Indian Cinema is incomplete without Urdu. He said that the tragedy with Urdu is that when we understand the language we feel that it is Hindi and when it becomes difficult to understand the language we feel that it is Urdu.
He said that we have forgotten the word Hindustani. Giving examples of certain words like bawarchi, baccha, balti, pistol, rasta, toast etc. derived from the languages like Persian, English, Turkish etc he said that if we take out these words from our language Hindustani then we will have very limited words to speak and express our emotions.
Comparing Urdu with Hindustani he said that the syntax and grammar of both the languages are same. He said that the usage of Urdu script is shrinking while the usage of Urdu as a spoken language is increasing. He said that the books on Urdu poetry printed in Devanagari script have good readership. It is the language of the common people. He added that the writers of Hindi and Urdu languages should think over reviving the language.
Shri Amol Palekar said that the people of Maharashtra have an obsession for drama and reading as well. He said that a few days back, a book in Marathi was released in a literary function held at Maharashtra and one lakh copies of the book were sold, the same day. He expressed his happiness to be a part of this fair and congratulated NBT for bringing out books on Cinema.
Shri Shahbaaz Khan, noted actor mesmerized the audience while delivering the dialogues of the play Amir Khusro to bring into light the significance of the language to convey emotions of a character in a play or cinema. Shri Aneez Azmi, eminent theatre personality and the authors of the book also spoke on the occasion.
Later in the evening, an interactive session on the topic Cinematic Imagination and Sensibility was held at the theme pavilion where eminent litterateurs Shri Vishnu Khare, Shri Zubair Razvi and Shri Ajay Kumar discussed whether cinema in any way create and influence literary sensibility or taste?
A seminar on the topic E-publishing and the need for Digitalisation of Libraries was organized at Hall no. 8 by the Afro-Asian Book Council, National Book Trust, India and Indian Library Association. The seminar was inaugurated by Shri Muchkund Dubey. The other speakers on the occasion were Shri Sanjiv Goswami, Springer India; Shri Kailash Balani, Aditya Books; Shri jonathan Andress, Director, Konark International; Shri P.R. Goswami, Director, Central Secretariat Library; Shri K.K. Banerjee, Director, Raja Ram Mohan Roy Library Foundation; and Shri Robert Fletcher, CEO, Global Exhibition Marketing.
A two-day seminar Rights Table: A Forum of Indian Publishers to Exchange Copyright of Books was organized at the Rights Pavilion in which many aspects of Rights, from translation to digital, from author contracts to translation grants, Licenses etc were discussed. Shri M A Sikandar, Director, NBT, remarked that “this is a new beginning for NBT as it has tried to create a platform for exchange of rights.” While Shri Akshay Pathak, Director, German Book office and collaborators of the programme observed, “although the ’Rights table’ is a major programme within the publishing industry all over the world, the systems of the copyright exchanges in India is still undeserved in India.” Among the publishers who participated in the discussion include Westland, Routledge, Harper Collins, Penguin, Tulika, Olive, kalachuvadu, mapin, Karadi tales, Zubaan and Scholastic.
At the Children’s Pavilion at Hall No. 14 several activities for children were organized. In a session Bal Katha Se Cinema Tak, Ms Nandita Das, Chairperson, Children’s Film Society of India interacted with children. To encourage reading habit among children a play based on a book was presented by Navyug School, Laxmibai Nagar and Butterflies, an NGO. Later, in a mime show Shri Swapan Kumar Sarkar and his troupe performed at the pavilion and raised the issue to save environment. Dr B K Tyagi and his team from Vigyan Prasar in an interesting programme called Science and Magic unraveled how scientific fundamentals work behind the world of magic.
The evening was enlightened with the traditional folk singing Jugani and folk dances Bhangra, Gidha, Jindwa and Sammi of Punjab.