An eventful evening at Crossword Bookstore

Being a book lover, it is always a pleasure to meet the personalities behind great works. Yesterday was one such evening which gave me the privilege of meeting a couple of authors whose books I had read recently and even reviewed them for a website I work for.

Crossword bookstore had scheduled a book reading session by Amish Tripathi of his latest bestseller of the Shiva Trilogy series titled 'The Secret of the Nagas'- a sequel to his first book 'The Immortals of Meluha'. The event was supposed to commence by 6:30 pm. Anticipating the Mumbai traffic woes, I left a little early and managed to reach there a good thirty minutes before. Seating myself in the second row, I held the book in my hand and looked around the store. Couple of people in charge were running around making some last moment arrangement. A camera man walked in and clicked a few pictures of the dais assigned to the guest in honour. All on a sudden he turned to me and notified me of the Author's arrival. Amish Tripathi had arrived early as well along with his wife. Being the only one in the audience initially, I managed a self-introductory session and had a few words with him.

Soon the crowd walked in and the session commenced with a ten minute delay. After a brief reading session, Amish entertained questions from the audience for an hour. It was interesting to hear his perspective on various religions and how he came about with the topic of Mythology. It was then Ashwin Sanghi-the Author of the Vodafone Crossword book award for his work ‘Chanakya’s Chant’ was introduced to us. Post which the book signing session commenced and gave one a good opportunity to have a one to one discussion with Amish.

After a good conversation with him, I walked over to Ashwin Sanghi and introduced myself. Strangely I had just finished reviewing his book that morning and had a copy of it in my car. He signed it obligingly and had a few words about the book.

It was indeed a pleasure to talk to such dynamic personalities who gave a different perspective to life and things in general. One thing is to read their works while meeting them in person gives a revelation into their psyche a little more. It is an awe inspiring experience where one can come out as a more learned individual. Hope more events like these take place as interactive sessions with the author prove to be an enriching moment for avid readers.