on a cold latenovember evening there was the promise of romance to keep one warm in this case the thought of listening to a few folks talk about loveas winter proper finally made its entrance the 32nd avenue played host to the gurgaon preview of the times litfest delhi presented by rajnigandha and there was little danger of the expressway traffic drowning out the voices of the panelists as the audience lapped up conversations on tales of love bollywood as seen through the eyes of urdu and the challenges women still face writing in a mans worldbollywood historians yasir abbasi and yasser usman got things under way with beyond the stars writings on bollywood abassi it was who penned the lively and anecdotal yeh un dinon ki baat hai urdu memoirs of cinema legends in which he goes all the way back to the urdu magazines that faithfully and very often irreverently covered the film industry in mumbai i started looking for these pieces because even though film journalism has grown in the last 1015 years none of it is in urdu explained abbasithe book involved heaps of research and much translation one of these translations was of a piece written by nargis on meena kumari after the tragedienne passed away they were very close and nargis wrote maut mubarak ho an undiplomatic but very evocative piece straight from the heart in which she told meena kumari that the world didnt deserve herusman has skillfully navigated the lives of sanjay dutt and rajesh khanna and of rekha too the downside of making the actress the subject of a biography is the number of questions he would invariably get on the rekhaam itabh bachchan affair her story was much bigger than that he insistedfollowing neatly on from bollywood legends was a session on love in which ravinder singh and milan vohra described what it takes to write a love story but first they were asked how they would define love if you dont know the definition just google it said singh half in jestvohra believed love is in the line of the foreigner song i want to know what love is were all seeking love and when we find it thats when we know what love is but for singh the answer to the question is that it means different things to different people somewhat like a ubiquitous riceandlentil dish pyaar khichdi hai he summed upin the concluding session women writing in a mans world sutapa basu spoke about how women writers continue to be disadvantaged whether it is in the advances they receive the royalties theyre guaranteed or the space they get in the mediaits the stereotypes in our own heads that hold us back offered kanchana banerjee publisher dipankar mukherjee incidentally the only man on this panel acknowledged that biases exist but believed gender is becoming a nonissue in the world of literature its all about where you come from and the experiences you haveasked whether men can