Try to keep stories close to facts, Manreet Sodhi on her book ‘Kashmir’

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 22

The Majha House in association with ‘Phulkari’ organised a special meeting with renowned author Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, where she talked about her new book ‘Kashmir’. Artist Saloni Poddar and Sheetal Sohal, president, Phulkari, were part of the conversation with Manreet. Preeti Gill, founder of Majha House, introduced Manreet by saying that she had written nine books and this time she was discussing her new book ‘Kashmir’. “This book is the third in her trilogy on cities and before this her books were ‘Hyderabad’ and ‘Lahore’,” said Preeti.

About Saloni and Sheetal, she said both were book lovers and dedicated to social reforms in their own way. Before the book talk, she discussed the cover of the book. Manreet said in today’s times when writers had to compete with Netflix and OTTs, the cover of the book should also be attractive because readers should not feel that books related to history would be boring.

Talking about the book, Sheetal asked Manreet why she kept these stories fictional even though they were related to history. On this, Manreet said although she had to do a lot of research while presenting the truth of that time, she tried to keep her story as close to the facts as possible. “For this, I have to get into the minds of famous people of history so that I can understand their thinking and write what they might have said in their conversation. So if I am writing Nehru’s dialogues, I see myself as Jawaharlal to get into his personality,” she said.

But along with this, she also keeps fictional characters who talk about the life of common man and women of those times.

Talking about the female characters of her books, she said it was sad that while women had contributed in every era and time, their stories got lost in history. To fill this gap, she had always kept strong female characters in her stories.

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