Book Reading Session By Karuna Ezara Parikh

The Times of India, in collaboration with Loreto College, Kolkata, organized a book reading session with the eminent author Karuna Ezara Parikh for the Semester 1 students of the college on December 14, 2023. Ms. Parikh provided interesting insights into the writing process and read out from parts of her different works ranging from novels to poetry. Being one of the most recognizable writers of her generation in India, her body of work includes the novel The Heart Asks Pleasure First (2021) and the poetry collection Where Stories Gather (2021).

The session started with Ms. Parikh answering a few questions posed to her by Ms. Mary Mukherji of the TOI team on her journey as a writer, her process of characterization, and her preferred genre. This was followed by a discussion on the amount of intense research that she had put in for every detail in her internationally acclaimed novel, The Heart Asks Pleasure First, which she wrote over a long period of 13 years and finally published right after the pandemic. She then read out excerpts from the novel, giving the audience a short yet crisp description of the characters in her book and their background arcs. In the next segment, she read a few poems from her collection, Where Stories Gather, which received a huge applause from the audience.

The students were highly enthusiastic and interactive during the session as a few of them had already read her works while others were greatly inspired to do the same in the future. Ms. Parikh also addressed a number of audience questions dedicated to her writing style and her take on the refugee crisis, for which she quoted a poem from her collection. The event ended with a book signing session that brought much delight to all present.