Barinder Saluja, Chandigarh,Jan. 30: Chandigarh born bureaucrat, Mr. Vipul Mittra, IAS, who currently holds the portfolio of Secretary Tourism and Civil Aviation, in the State of Gujarat, released his debut fiction ‘Pyramid of Virgin Dreams’.
Published by Rupa Publications, ‘virgin dreams’ basically connote unfulfilled aspirations of a bureaucrat which is like a pyramid, narrow from top and broad from the bottom, and its really very hard to reach at the top, explains Vipul Mittra. This book is not about files and folders in the life of an IAS but is about the creativity in the mind and life of a bureaucrat. It tells about the difference between the city bureaucracy & country bureaucracy. Mr. Mittra said that he has lived through the book as it took Ten long years to compile this book because he jotted down all the small small incidents which came across him in his tenure of those years as a bureaucrat, which lately he penned down in his creation.
The book will be launched on 30 th January in Ahemdabad.
Vipul Mittra explained that it is a funny satire around the life of Kartikeya Kukreja, the protagonist of the book and a bureaucrat who sees life around him in a quirky, sardonic manner. It is the story of a middle class boy, his growing years, and his perceptions of bureaucracy and society. The story oscillates between Kartikeya’s dreams and reality, and describes his fantasies, unfulfilled virgin dreams and the happenings within and outside the pyramid of bureaucracy. Several characters, including Kartikeya’s immediate family, his college sweetheart and his very own conscience by the name of ‘Selfmusing’, find a place in the narrative. From a child to an adult and a bureaucrat, it is a story told differently with candour and ample tongue-in-cheek humour. The book has resulted from my own experiences to a large extent, but this creative urge had been there even before I joined the service and lingered on till date, Vipul said.
Though ‘Virgin Dreams’ is a fiction, but like most fiction, it draws from reality and therefore, this novel is also an intermesh between a large dose of story with bits and pieces of reality from here and there, he explained.
Born to a former Punjab bureaucrat, Vipul Mittra attended DAV College and later Punjab University before being selected in IAS in 1986. He had been recently in news for successfully associating Amitabh Bachchan as brand ambassador for state tourism.