‘The Flowers in Her Room’ – a book by class IX student Nikasha unveiled
‘The Flowers in Her Room’, a book consisting of five short plays, penned by Nikasha Luthra, a Class IX student of Vivek High School, Chandigarh, was unveiled during a press conference at Hotel Mountview here. Nikasha was accompanied by her father Deepak Luthra and her mother Nisha Luthra who is also Founder of The Narrators which is a performing arts society. Nikasha informed that four of the plays are based on human emotions and their conflicts, while one play is about the French revolution.
The titles of short plays are : ‘The Emptiness Inside the Heart’, ‘Twelve Apples’, ‘When She Opened Her Eyes’, ‘The Silence of Her Lips’, and ‘Louis the Sixteenth’. The final piece is a play that depicts the mood of a young man when he suddenly becomes a king. This anecdote of history makes the book interesting for children. While ‘Louis the Sixteenth’ is in English the rest of the four plays have been written in a mix of Hindi and English writing.
Explaining the difference between story writing and playwriting, Nikasha said that in a play, many characters have to be tied up. Presenting that narrative on stage in a given time frame is a challenge in itself. The play writer goes through an internal struggle to keep the mood of the character in front of the audience. Regarding her next book, Nikasha said that she is working on a novel in the fiction genre and which is a murder mystery.
Nikasha’s age doesn’t hamper her inner writer and she gives a new flight to her emotional thinking through these plays. During the Covid 19 period, when the whole world was spending most of the time at hand on the internet and video calls , Nikasha was busy creating new characters through her pen. She has been associated with theatre since the age of seven. Being an artist herself, she understands the technical nuances of theatre very well and this understanding is clearly visible in her plays too.
When asked where she got the inspiration to write such mature plays at such a young age, Nikasha said that there was no single source of inspiration, but there are many factors that have influenced her writing. Her mother is closely associated with theatre, her father constantly encourages her, and her theater Guru has left a deep impact on her soul and mind.
Nikasha believes that many things have to be kept in mind while writing a play, such as the selection of the characters, the interactions between them, the duration of the play, the setting of the stage, and the conflict of the characters. She advises her peers that they must take out time in the day to read and write, as these are like food for the mind.
Two of her plays – ‘The Emptiness Inside the Heart’ and ‘Twelve Apples’ will be staged at the Mini Auditorium of the Tagore Theatre on September 2, 2022, beside the formal release of her book by Haryana Chief Information Commissioner, Vijay Vardhan who will be the chief guest. Vivek Atray, an ex-IAS officer and motivational speaker, eminent theatre personality Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry, Sinead Gilmartin and Michael Hanrahan from the Embassy of Ireland, New Delhi, and Atul Khosla, Founder and Vice Chancellor at Shoolini University too will be participating as guests’ of honour. This theatrical presentation by The Narrators Performing Arts Society and Chandigarh Literary Society will be directed by Nisha Luthra. In these plays, who’s set design has been done by Sarthak Narula, Karan will be on the violin, while Shivam, Divjot, and Raja will play important characters of the story.
