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Satellite broadcasting and availability of multiple television
channels has altered habits of getting entertained and informed.
Print media and books are getting things of the past. Interest
is weaning not only amongst the younger generation, the older
generation too finds it difficult to obtain books easily in
fast cities like Mumbai. In this ensuing mele and concrete
jungle we have people like 'Sudha Arora' who are making a
dent to the world of books by reviving and resurrecting the
art of publishing. Sudha along with her husband Dr Jitendra
Bhatia is engaged in the task of bringing to the literary
world, works of lesser known writers to us by translating
them from any language to Hindi and English. She runs 'Vasundhara
Publications' from her bookstore-cum-publishing house at Hiranandani
Gardens, Powai for last three years.
Sudha is a post graduate in Hindi literature and a gold medallist
from Calcutta University. She is a passionate linguist and
writer herself. Her forte is the short story genre and she
has some 100 acclaimed short stories to her credit. Her stories
have been translated in various foreign languages. She gave
her first story in 1965. She has won acclaim as a journalist
too with her contribution in women issue based 'Vama', hindi
daily 'Jansatta' to name a few. One of her collection 'Yuddhaviram'
won a special award of excellence from the Uttar Pradesh Hindi
Sansthan. She has found a similar echo in her husband who
is ex-IIT (b), a chemical engineer by profession, has been
with MNC's and now is completely dedicated to their publishing
venture. Sudha is passionately committed to bring works of
literary genius of most Indian regional languages like Gujarati,
Marathi, Kannada, Urdu, Bangla and also foreign languages
- Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese to the readers of India. In a
book titled "Socho saath kya jayega" they have translated
well known stories from these foreign languages into Hindi.
They attempt to take this to a wider populace in India by
distributing thru the normal channels. She cites one of the
Chinese author, Wang Meng, whose story they have included
in their anthology went to be nominated for Nobel Prize in
Literature.
She is equally a social worker, active in the local area
of Powai, helping women requiring counselling in their domestic,
psychological and relationship fronts. In an interesting incident
she narrates an elderly lady approached her for help, where
her only son after marriage started harassing this elderly
lady for property, being instigated by his scheming wife.
She managed to alleviate the situation in favor of the elderly
lady who now is happy and the matter amicably sorted out.
Sudha has a team of lawyers, doctors and liaison with Police
to rectify the situation in her social work efforts. Prior
to her publishing career she has long been associated with
feminist NGO called HELP in Mumbai and worked alongwith the
well known feminist Rinki Bhattacharya. It was when she decided
to do counseling on her own that the common interest of writing
and concern for Indian Literature that gave them the idea
to set up a place where the duo could pursue their work and
literary interest that the idea of 'Vasundhara' took shape.
Sudha , belongs to a different genre of Indians, a rare breed
of intellectuals operating in the urban context who are rightfully
applying their emotional ethos and their education to areas
requiring impact. She has taken her literary efforts to the
institutions nearby in IIT and NITIE by organising exhibitions
and workshops. Sometime back she organised a unique experiment
in IIT, she had invited the famous Urdu poet/shayar Nida Fazli.
They had a session of one student in turn was called to narrate
his creation with Nida Fazli. It was quite a hit and much
liked by the young techie generation.
On Sundays quite often they organise sittings of literary
personalities at 'Vasundhara'-their place of work for informal
chat. Some of the people who have been at Vasundhara are Namwar
Singh (Hindi), Sachidanand (Malyalam), Dilip Jhaveri (Gujarati),
Namdeo Dhaval and Narayan Surve (Marathi Poets). Rajesh Joshi
a noted Hindi Sahitya Akademi winner too has also been here.
A visit at their bookstore-cum-publishing house on their
sixth floor office gives an impression to be transported to
a different world resembling a Library of some eminent personality.
The air reverberates with somber ambience with book jackets
of literary geniuses sharing bookshelves with newly translated
works of emerging regional writers. Sudha Arora and Dr Jitendra
Bhatia deserve to go down the annals of History of Indian
Literature for their contribution in bringing works of many
writers of different languages to us and enriching the world
culture for posterity.
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