The “Harf Adhoore”, a collection of stories written by Harish Masand was launched in a selected gathering of local South Asian Writers on February 11 at Punjab Bhawan in Surrey. The famous Central Association of Punjabi Writers of North America took lead in organizing this literary event. The celebrated Punjabi poet Charan Virdi, Acharya Dwivedi and owner of the Studio7-S.Sukhi Bath officially launched the book amidst loud roar of clapping by enthusiastic audience.
Seema Vaswani spoke on some aspects of Harish’s stories.She appreciated the description of nature-rain, clouds, forest, birds century and green fields, and felt that the writer has applied poetic language that made it quite impressive. He is a good writer in narrative form and makes reading comfortable. It is so good and interesting that when started reading his stories, I continued up to the last, commented Seema.
Acharya Dwivedi spoke in great length on theme, characterization, style, dialogue and language of the stories.This book contains five stories and two poems. This is his first book which contains the story of more than two decades of literary work.The title of the book-“Harf Adhoore”, signifies the incompleteness of dreams, love and journey of life. He branded his long stories “Sparsh”,”Naayak” and “Jaan Pahchaan” as an incomplete novels. Harish, being an experienced stage artist knows how to well connect the events and still maintains the curiosity; and that’s the natural charm of stories.
Themes are mostly based on Indian traditional love and romance but he has not overlooked the issues and challenges commonly faced by the young generation in India. The organic love stories and hang-over of college life have been effectively narrated in Sparsh (Swati-Aman), Geetanjali (Geeta-Hemant ), Naayak (Sandhya-Nikhil) and Kiski Meera(Kaushalya-Nagendra). The social life of a lower or middle class people’s struggle, helplessness,misery and vulnerability is described ,with all authenticity, in story-Jaan Pahchaan.
Very commendable is Harish’s depiction of magical beauty of Geeta, Nisha, Neelima, Kaushalya and Vishakha that he has done, without any color of vulgarity, in an esthetic way; and still maintained the sensitivity of characters. His stories carry the aroma of freshness of imagery. He is careful artist with words and his language is temperate and chaste. Book is a esthetically gratifying.
Harish expressed his gratitude to the organizers of the event, speakers and guests. He said, “stories are lying all around us, we have to find and give them words; and that’s what I have done”.
The following writers- Rupinder Khaira,’Roopi’, Harjeet Bassi, Krishen Bector , P.Randhawa, S.S.Kaler, Krishen Bhanote, D.K.Johal, Pratpal Gill, I.S.Dhami, Brajinder Dhillon, Amrik Pillai, K.Bassi, H. Mangat, A.S.Lehel and Manjeet Meet recited their poems. The function was chaired by president- Charan Virdi and efficiently emceed by Pritpal Gill.The guests were well entertained with refreshment by the owner of Studio 7.
