Yes, it happened and happened pretty well too.
No, I did not give any impressive talk, in fact I goofed up (majorly). I still find addressing a gathering tougher than contemplating a 650kms in a day ride. All the last minute worries regarding how successful the launch would be did not help either!
Anyway, its done now and the book is launched and I am happy that the book has come out exactly as I had visualized it.
A bit about the launch.
Dr. T Giridhar Rao was the Master of the Ceremonies and he was spot on in the excellent way he managed the evening.
Dr. T Vijay Kumar introduced my book and spoke at length about what he felt was good in my poems and also briefly touched on various pitfalls that come in the way of "first book authors" that I have managed to avoid. He then released the book.
Thereafter the poetry reading started with Mythili Nayar reading my poems first.
Then Little Theatre took over and just blew the audience away. In fact I was getting SMSes while the poems were being read - "This reader is just awesome man!" "That was mindblowing" and so on....
Thereafter, both Dr. Girdhar Rao and Dr. Vijay Kumar read some more poems.
And then I did some signings too :-)
A big thanks to all who made it to the event braving the Hyderabadi traffic and distances. I had expected a larger turnout but then as they say, "the best laid plans of men and mice"....
A big thanks to Vijay Marur, Sarala Mahidhara, BS Prakash and Shankar Melkote of Little Theatre and Mythili Nayar for reading the poems of an obscure poet to an obscure audience.
I look forward to more such events and I hope that Coucal flies into and off the shelves of bookstores too :-)
P.S. - Have put up one pic of the launch here (thanks GR), to my left is Dr. Giridhar Rao and to my right is Dr. T Vijay Kumar. Yes, that's me in the middle :-)
Really wonderful!
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