The Yayati stage arena was seen jam-packed this evening at 3.30 PM as the love story juggernaut, Ravinder Singh and Milan Vohra, better known as India’s first Mills & Boon author, took the stage. The session moderated by Milan, was kickstarted with an introduction to Ravinder’s latest bestselling novel, The Belated Bachelor Party, which has sold over 3.5 million copies!
The discussion primarily revolved around how The Belated Bachelor Party stands out from his long list of run-of-the-mill love stories, culminating in heart-breaking endings. Ravinder called it “a reunion book” which he claimed is poles apart from his kind of writing. This book is more of a comic relief to his readers who complained that there are no happy endings to his books. It also brought back his three friends who had moved to 3 different corners of the globe. It was all about bringing in a change in the flavor to cater to the changing tastes of the audience.
Ravinder assured to have incorporated his direct or indirect experiences in his book and that’s a recurrent theme in his writings. He basically familiarized the audience to his book by narrating a short blurb from it which revolves around four friends living in 4 different places and how they held onto the bond of friendship even after living apart from one another for years at a stretch. It all starts with a conference call amongst the four of them that triggered the entire idea of a bachelor party that they never had before getting married. And he chose to add the ‘belated’ part to it because he is of the belief that “belated can fix so many things”.
Further, the story behind the narrative style of the book was unraveled to the audience. Ravinder asserted that the idea of making ‘friendship’ his mouthpiece in his book occurred to him from his reading of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak where ‘death’ narrates the story. There also exists the elbow-space to be self-critical when written in third person is what Ravinder believes. His talk on his book was further seasoned by his light-hearted humor and ended with a few cliff-hangers for those who haven’t read his book as yet.
On being questioned by Milan about his concept of “wealth, women, and wine can make everything happen”, he goes back to connect it to “jar, jameen aur joru” (wealth, land and wife), about what weaken the knees.
Ravinder concluded his session by voicing out his firm will to leverage the power of books to talk about the things that matter to him. While signing off, he created fine ripples of applause and cheer amongst the audience by announcing the existence of a bunch of men who are sensitive and can talk about issues without women being involved in whatever way possible.
About the Author: Upasana Mahanta is an MA in English with Communication Studies student from CHRIST (Deemed To Be University) – Bengaluru, who firmly believes that there is nothing more exhilarating and liberating as poetry. She finds solace in writing poems and travel blogs and has amongst her laurels a 1st Prize in the English category of the All India Poetess Conference, Meghalaya Chapter’s Seventh Poetry Competition cum North East Poetry Festival. She currently writes for TheSeer.