Dr Satinder Sartaj debuts his LitFest journey at Inkreadable: The Writers Festival 2025

Chandigarh, February 3, 2025: The great maestro of sufi music Dr. Satinder Sartaj forayed into his journey with lit fests by reciting his latest poetry at the Novel Bunch’s third Writers Festival 2025, Inkreadable, held at Infosys campus.
 
Interacting with who’s who of the city literary circle, Dr Sartaj shared his poetic forays that he had penned early this year.
 
At his modest best, Dr Sartaj conversed with Mubarak Sandhu, and shared his love for the city, its wide roads, and Panjab University campus, where he had spent his early life and affirmed that he has no intention to migrate abroad unlike many others. He later commended the sixth river (chhevaan darya) of Punjab M.S. Randhawa’s contribution to Punjab and establishment of the centre of excellence to protect our culture.
 
He read out his latest poems that he had not read out so far anywhere, beginning with “Tapsara: Jo Vi Hai”, “Uljhan”, “Mein nu Mannsi karna kehra saukha hai”, and others received immense appreciation from the audience, with icing on the cake with his memorable iconic prayer “Sai ve Sai”.
 
He was accompanied by the team of producrs, writers and directors of his upcoming movie next week, Hoshiar Singh (Apna Arastu) namely film producer Munish Sahni, writer Jagdeep Singh Warring, co-producers Suvidha Sahni and Ashutosh Sahni.
 
The Inkreadable opened with keynote address by former DGP of Himachal Pradesh, Sanjay Kundu IPS (retd), who touched upon his perfunctory yet impressionable encounters with literature, ending up with Novel Bunch invite.  Looking at the enthusiasm of the city’s literati, he remarked that Chandigarh has all the possibilities of becoming the literary hub of the country because of its natural surroundings, and enabling ambiance.
 
Taking the cue, noted journalist, author, columnist Jug Suraiya, and bollywood actor, tv artist, broadcaster Yuri Suri,  labeled the city as the “pearl of the north” underlying the fact that good literature augurs well for the future generation.
 
Touching Jug’s proficiency with words, coming out with not only 17 books, but satirical columns, week after week, Jug said that he writes for readers and not for himself to leave them with food for thought.
 
“I write in long hand and despite the usual fear of missing the deadlines, the story evolves in my head much before I put it on a paper, “ Jug said.  Answering as to how many hours a day he has, Jug replied that it depends whether you are enjoying the task at hand or getting bored.  “Time flies when you are passionately engaged in living life”, he remarked.
 
Supreet Singh, and Taran Singla in conversation with Kavya Atray in ‘Love, Pray, East, Repeat” session talked about living a healthy life through well balanced eating, while Sandhya Prakash and Rajen Garabadu shared their respective “lived” experiences of their respective lives, Rajen as a TV producer, and Sandhya’s stories of living in Saudi Arabia, that portrayed the challenges and opportunities for women.
 
Col. Avinash Sharma brought about the glory of being an army officer's wife that Jyoti Barmola portrayed in her book as wife of an army officer.
 
Lt Gen KJS “Tiny” Dhillon along with Sanjay Kundu IPS and Vivek Atray explored the diverse aspect of Redefine Governance which touched upon diverse aspects of corruption, nepotism, inefficiency, policing and traffic woes, etc., brought to the fore the positive aspect of administration by different levels though everyone agreed that our country needs more governance and less of government in order to be a facilitator than a bottleneck, besides need for better education, better health, hygiene and sanitation to tackle governance issues.
 
The Novel Bunch team of founders including Saguna Jain, Hardeep Chandpuri and ex-IAS Vivek Atray, honoured four writers with awards of excellence, including noted poet Jatin Salwan, Alka Kansra, Col. D.S. Cheema and Neelesh Kulkarni.