By the time you have this special issue in your hands, most of you will have received the Secure storybook. I assume, sorry, I am sure these stories have been an inspiration for you.
Secure is 25 now, and these 25 years have a lot of untold stories, inspiring many incidents. During a discussion between Nandita ma’am, Batul and Narendra Sharma Ji, an idea emerged. If we could convince enough people to tell these stories, we could pull them together into a book. To ensure maximum participation and inspiration, we announced this as a competition. Subsequently, the first communication was released.
We knew that to dig out stories from the 25-year journey would not be a simple task. A few more e-mails were circulated. We got some replies, but the numbers were not up to our expectations. We were sure that people wanted to tell their story, but not everyone is confident in writing, which was probably holding people back. Then Saab suggested that we publicise the day when we will launch the book (Sems Day) and the number of stories (100) we wanted to print. Around the same time, we received a story from Lokesh Devpura and found that he wrote well. We approached him and asked him if he could ghostwrite the stories. And Lokesh agreed; a big thanks goes to him.
We announced that Lokesh could write stories if people talked to him, and the idea worked. People came forward; soon, Lokesh was a busy person. Subsequently, Batul took on the task of ghostwriting the English ones. Stories started pouring in. Now, since we wanted to publish all these in a book, something that was memorable, it was necessary to edit the stories. Nandita ma’am took charge of editing English stories, and I edited the Hindi ones.
By the end of the deadline, we had a stock of 98 stories, though we had wanted to hit a century. But as it happens in cricket, sometimes the nineties make the team a winner. It was almost the end of March, and our aim was to release this book on Sems Day. The date for Sems Day was announced, it was 20th April 2012. Creating a book without pictures or illustrations would have made this book a bit boring. I created illustrations for the stories. Apart from my school days, I had never sketched previously. As this work was of interest to me, I took it as a challenge and did a few.
By the time we finished with all of this, it was 18th April. The biggest job had to be done now. Vinay came into the picture. He started laying out and arranging the book. We had already informed our printer, Payorite Print Media, about the urgency of the project. When Vinay finished laying out the book, it was 9:30 pm on the 18th (2 days from D-Day). Now, to convert this book into a print-ready format. When we tried to save the file after completing all the technical formalities, it started giving problems. Errors started popping up. But finally, we managed to save it. It was 10:30 pm on 18th April. We wrote the file onto a CD and handed it over to the printer. We asked the printer to let us have a dummy of the book, so that we would be able to spot any errors. It was now 19th April. The printer cooperated above and beyond what was expected of him and delivered the dummy on the 19th afternoon. While going through the dummy, we found some errors.
On the other hand, the printer had started printing. We told him about the errors, and he said that if we could make the corrections and send the corrected pages to him within an hour, he would be able to incorporate the changes. Vinay was busy practising his role for a play he was a part of on Sems Day. He took some time to correct the errors and sent the corrected pages to the printer. So that we could release this book on Sems Day, we asked the printer to provide us with at least three copies. They did that, and instead of three, they gave us six copies.
As you must have seen, the book is a remarkable piece.
The entire editorial team of this book conveys their sincere thanks to all the authors who were able to spare time to bring out such inspiring stories. Our heartiest thanks to our printer Payorite, without whose cooperation, this task would have been impossible. And our special thanks to Lokesh Devpura and Batul for helping to capture people’s feelings on paper.
While these stories are so inspiring, they have Secure in them and they remind me of a few lines from a famous poet, Nida Fazli Sb:
चांद से फूल से या मेरी जु़बान से सुनिये
हर जगह आपका किस्सा है जहान से सुनिये
– Avanindra Dugar