Deepika Padukone, Boney Kapoor release Sridevi’s Biography on Day 2 of TIMES LitFest Delhi

New Delhi: The second day of the Times Literature Festival was a huge hit with mass gathering arriving at the India Habitat Centre to witness the best of authors, poets, theatre artists, lyricists, scriptwriters, filmmakers and thinkers from across the country and the world.

The main attraction for the day was the launch of Sridevi’s biography ‘Sridevi: The eternal screen goddess’ by Deepika Padukone and Boney Kapoor.

The organizers had arranged many discussions / events on interesting topics which were going simultaneously in 5-6 different halls or open spaces. The halls / open spaces hosted talk on politics to spirituality to literature. Audience could attend which ever talk they wanted to attend.

Topics like ‘Soul-to-soul: That thing called Love’ by BK Shivani, ‘Science of mythology’ by Ashwin Shangi and Anand Neelkhantan gained great attention from audience side.

The 1st big talk for the day was with the renowned writer and lyrist, Javed Akhtar on ‘Do you know you speak Urdu?’

Before the session, Javed Akhtar, the timeless writer and jaadugar of words was Awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Javed Akhtar started the session with taking a jib on the current Socio-Political environment. Referring to the topic of the talk: ‘Do you know you speak Urdu,’ He said ‘1st the question is that can we speak?’

Further talking on the topic and explaining the language and evolution of Urdu, he said, “language has nothing to do with the religion, language is all about region. Language is the syntax, the grammar, not the script or the vocabulary.”

“Hukumatein zabaane nahi chalatin, zabaane hukumatein chalati hain”, he added the sher to his qoute. He also claimed that Urdu is the first language which is secular since its origin.

In an another session on, ‘Crafting a Bestseller’, the cover of the book ‘The Vault of Vishnu’ by Ashwin Sanghi was launched which tickled queries among the audience as the author reveled that the book contains connections of Vishnu in China. He told that the book will be out in January 2020 book.

Speaking about the bestseller, King of romance literature Ravinder Singh said, for me its the book which is getting sold on footpath is the bestseller for me. “The one which a gareeb person holds and sells on the red lights is the bestseller. He knows the one that sells the best”.

Later in the day, surprisingly, Chetan Bhagat appeared at the dice to launch the book ‘Can words heal?’ Written by the director fest Vinita Nangia.

Beginning his talk Chetan said, ‘I am not the best author. I am the bestselling author, which some times people cannot digest and they keep trolling me. Earlier I used to get worried of these trolls and reviews from critics. But now I realize that these are the things that made me turn into a motivationl speaker.’

By the evening, the crowd started gathering in large number to witness the biography launch of the legendary actress Sridevi by Deepika Padukone accompanied by Boney Kapoor, the author of the book, Satyarth Nayak and the renowned director, Gauri Shinde with whom Sridevi has started her second innings with the movie ‘English Winglish’ were present.

As Deepika unrevled the cover from the book ‘Sridevi : The eternal screen Goddess’ Boney Kapoor became little emotional.

Deepika Padukone recalling her memories with Sridevi called Sridevi and Boney Kapoor, ‘a true champions’ as they used to praise her since her first movie. She said “I remember my last conversation with Sridevi ma’am and it was regarding the problems with House staff. So this shows what kind of relation we use share.”