Letters to Self

About the Book

‘The exercise, though daunting, proved cathartic, and as the rolls of paper—some filled with joyous musings, some with anguished scribbles—piled into a mound, I felt strangely satiated. Not because my writing was of merit, but because I had accomplished the task I had set out for, and the final outcome—good, bad, superior, or mediocre—was secondary. The important point was that I owned my outpourings.’ – Narendra Modi Narendra Modi, through most of his life, has taken the recourse of pen and paper to express his innermost thoughts and musings. These deep ponderings and ruminations, which came to life in rhyme and metre and which he forever hesitated to share with the world, express his unpolished and unrestrained ideas, dreams, and concerns on an array of subjects, ranging from the beauties of nature to the pressures and trials of life. Written over a span of many years, this collection of poems was first published in the Gujarati as Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe and has now been translated into the English as Letters to Self by esteemed film journalist and historian Bhawana Somaaya.

About the Author
Bhawana Somaaya has been a film critic for more than forty years and has contributed columns to various publications. She is the former editor of Screen and has authored several books on cinema that include biographies of Hema Malini and Amitabh Bachchan. Her books are a point of reference for students studying cinema at Whistling Woods, Manipal University, and JNU, Delhi. She has served on the Advisory Panel of CBFC India, and also the Governing Council FTII, Pune, and is the entertainment editor at 92.7 Big FM radio channel. In 2008, she released Keshava: A Magnificent Obsession, and Letters to Mother which is an English translation of the Prime Minister of India’s Gujarati book Saakshi Bhaav, published in 2020. Letters to Self is a translation of Shri Narendra Modi’s book Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe. Bhawana Somaaya was conferred with Padma Shri in 2017 and with an honorary doctorate by Jagran Lake City University in 2021.