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The launch of Dr. Manju Jaidka’s new novel Amaltas Avenue at the Indian Habitat Center in New Delhi on the
16th of August 2014 was a literary event that added a dash of warm aureate
hue to an otherwise plain Delhi evening. The event was attended by several renowned
Indian academicians, writers, scholars, and bibliophiles. Among the prominent personalities
who were part of the event, were writer and journalist Mr. Rahul Singh, son of the
noted Indian scripturient, Khuswant Singh; Dr.Vijay Sharma, principal of Ram
Lal Anand College, Delhi University; Dr. Manpreet Kang, Dr. Vivek Sachdeva, Dr.
Ashutosh Mohan, Dr. Rajiv Ranjan Dwivedi of the University School of Humanities
and Social Sciences, GGSIP University, New Delhi. The event was presided over
by Rahul Singh, while Dr. Vijay Sharma formally introduced the proceedings.
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| Dr. Manju Jaidka |
Amaltas Avenue is the
third novel penned by Dr. Manju Jaidka. Dr. Jaidka, a stellar academician, a
writer of more than eleven scholastic books on English literature, is a
professor of English at Panjab University, Chandigarh and a present chairperson
of the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi. She is a prolific writer, who has written,
apart from two novels, Spots of Time and Scandal Point, a play called The
Seduction and Betrayal of Cat Whiskers, and a poetry collection, For Reasons Unknown.
Unlike Scandal Point—a historical fiction—Dr.Jaidka’s latest book, Amaltas
Avenue, is an academic novel set in contemporary India and focuses on the lives
of characters who are denizens of the same milieu.
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| The book launch (from left: Mr. Rahul Singh and Dr, Vijay Sharma) |
Following the official
launch of Amaltas Avenue, Dr. Jaidka read certain excerpts from her novel at
the request of her audience. The latent wit and humor of the book, together with
the oratorical skill of the author, the inflection of her voice and her enthusiasm
made the experience of listening to her a refreshingly pleasant one. As I
listened to Dr. Jaidka reading from her book, I felt that Amaltas Avenue, if read
by its brilliant author, might do great as an audio book as well!
A question-answer
session was the penultimate part of the evening’s literary proceedings. During
this session, Dr. Jaidka made several important observations about creative
writing and her life as an academician in general. She said that in order to
write well, one much have sufficient time and space. She mentioned that one
always has stories inside one, and that ordinary life incidents could very well
marinate in mind and take fictional form in due course. She laid great stress
to the idea of a creative work gestating in mind for a long period before it is
rendered on page. When asked what inspired her to become a creative writer, she
replied that she had always wanted to become a writer and that she was glad
that she could now devote herself to her creative pursuit. In response to a
compliment on her stylistic legerdemain and her effortless narrative technique, Dr. Jaidka said that her training as an academician and her previous experience of
teaching narrative theory and narratology has helped her in perfecting the
craft of writing.
Talking about Dr.
Jaidka’s latest novel, both Rahul Singh and Dr. Vijay Sharma commented on the
author’s brilliant power of description, her elevated sensibility, her perfect
sense of artistic detachment when composing a work. Both the aforementioned dignitaries
considered Amaltas Avenue a literary masterpiece displaying the same high
level of perfection that is the recognized signature of Manju Jaidka, the
writer.
The literary event
concluded with the author of Amaltas Avenue autographing copies of her book and interacting with her friends and fans.
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| My Copy of Amaltas Avenue |
