learn how to respect your teachers from this Jammu police officer turned writer

Book release function with a difference
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service

Jammu, October 22
It was a book release function with a difference. Shailender Singh, an engineer-turned-MBA turned-police officer-turned-writer, invited his teachers right from his primary school to the university at the release of his novel, “Hashiye Par”, in Dogri at Amar Palace today.

Indian Council for Cultural Relations President and MP Dr Karan Singh released the novel.

“I am what I am because of my teachers. The novel is my endeavour to tell a success story of a fisherman and based on what I learnt from my teachers,” said Shailender.

Born in Chamb, now in PoK, and later studied in Jorian and other places before coming to Jammu for Higher education, Shailender said he wrote in Dogri to preserve the language.

“I hopped from one stream of education to another and one career to another before I realised my real self in writing. I am going to pursue this field now,” he told The Tribune.

The preface of the novel has been written by Dogri litterateur Padma Sachdev, while a special message commenting on the theme of the book has been penned by Dr Kiran Bedi, the first woman IPS officer of the country.

Congratulating Shailender for taking time out of his busy schedule and writing his first book, Dr Karan Singh observed that, authoring a book by a police officer in Dogri seemed to be a good omen for the promotion of the language.

Dr Veena Gupta of the Postgraduate Department of Dogri, Jammu University, in her remarks about the book, said this young writer had drawn inspiration from the ground reality and the hardships people faced in the rural settings in their lives.

In her introductory speech, Prof Shashi Pathania, HoD, Dogri Department, Jammu University, expressed happiness that one more book had been added to the Dogri literature and hoped that Shailender would continue to enrich the language by writing more books in the coming years.

(Published in The Tribune, dated, October 23, 2010)