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Narendra Modi’s ‘Letters to Mother’ to release in June

Narendra Modi's book cover

Translated by film critic Bhawana Somaaya and released by HarperCollins Publishers, the book will be available in hardback and as an e-book

BySukant Deepak

May 28, 2020 (IANSlife) Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s book ‘Letters to Mother’, translated by film critic Bhawana Somaaya, will be released by HarperCollins Publishers as e-book and hardback in June this year.

As a young man, Narendra Modi had got into the habit of writing a letter every night to the “Mother Goddess”, whom he addressed as Jagat janani.

However, after every few months, Modi would tear up the pages and consign them to a bonfire. But the  pages of one diary, dating back to 1986 survived.

Modi says about the book, “This is not an attempt at literary writing; the passages featured in this book are reflections of my observations and sometimes unprocessed thoughts, expressed without filter... I am not a writer, most of us are not; but everybody seeks expression, and when the urge to unload becomes overpowering there is no option but to take pen and paper, not necessarily to write but to introspect and unravel what is happening within the heart and the head and why.”

Recipient of the Padma Shri award in the year 2017 and author of several books on cinema, Bhawana Somaaya adds, “In my opinion, Narendra Modi’s strength as a writer is his emotional quotient. There is a raw intensity, a simmering restlessness which he does not disguise and that is his attraction.”

 

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Sukant Deepak can be contacted at sukant.d@ians.in

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