The second day of Bhopal literature and art Festival brings fervour of literature and art in campus of Bharat Bhavan. The first session was focused on books of tree expert and conservator Pradeep Krishen. Former forester Nishikant Yadav was present as a panelist in the session.
Veteran journalist and forest lover Abhilash Khandekar was the moderator of the session. Khandekar said about books of Pradeep Krishen that there are not many books on trees, but book written by Pradeep is well illustrated with a lot of knowledge. Answering questions of Abhilash Khandekar, Pradeep said, “When I was writing the book, my intention was to write a book for those who do not know about botany. I wanted to make it fun for common people. Trees are very amazing and they can even predict the weather.”
A tree cannot afford miscalculation as they have to ripe food before rain so that they can spread seeds for forestation. Krishen also stressed on the need of planting native trees. He said that the aim of forestry as practised by the Britishers was to make forest productive. The key principle was to remove those trees which are not productive and grow other trees with financial benefits. This affects ecology badly.
If you plant trees which are adaptable to local ecology you save a lot of energy and nutrition. No one try to understand this fact. India is home to something like 3,400 native trees. If you compare that, England has 17 native trees. We use only 50 native trees in our parks out of more than 3000 native trees available.
Meera Dass introduced audience from the topic. Erwin Neumayer said that Indian rock arts are very special and Bhopal is a centre of most evolved rock art. There are so many sites which are 5000 years old. It is really special place, but at the same time, it is very difficult to manage. Cities are expanding and the rocks are used in building construction material and I fear that someday, someone may use one of the art pieces in constructing building. During his presentation, he explained important about rock art shelters of India.
In this interesting discussion, Christopher spoke about how he got fascinated towards writing on Indian mythology. He also spoke about sound energy. Christopher said that only India doesn’t have mythological stories, but there are a lot of many such stories from around the world which are based on people and things, with which we can identify with. He said that we have rakshasas mentioned in our stories, who are very identical with dinosaurs, because they are mentioned as huge and dangerous creatures.
The next session was a candid discussion by the young author, AnujTiwari, on his fourth book, I Tagged Her In My Heart. The moderator of the session was Richa Sinha. On being asked about his book and the inspiration, Anuj quoted, “I have taken excerpts from my own life, be it the scene with mother in the kitchen or the scenes set in the Mumbai.”