An Author’s Afternoon presented by Shree Cement and Prabha Khaitan foundation on 6th September, 2014, featured Yatindra Mishra at The Taj Bengal, Kolkata. The writer-poet spoke on the many biographies he had written in a conversation with musician duo Soumyojit Das and Sourendro Mullick.

Yatindra Mishra has four collections of Hindi poetry to his credit – Yada Kada, Ayodhya tatha Anya Kavitayein, Dyorhi par Aalap & Vibhas. As a music and film critic he has also written Girija (the life and works of thumri singer Girija Devi), Devpriya, Sur ki Baradari and Humsafar. His Meelon Se Din won the Best Publication Award for 2010. He has also translated the twelfth century Lingayat mystic poet Akka Mahadevi’s Vachanas in Hindi titled Bhairavi. He is the recipient of many awards for his literary contributions including Raza Award, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Yuva Puraskar and Parampara Rituraj Samman.

When Soumyajit told him of the change in the language of Bollywood in the last 100 years and that today a Bollywood song would sound like an American song which means it has become global Mishra argued the point by saying that even earlier Bollywood got foreign acclaim. He explained that when Chetan Anand took his film Neecha Nagar to Cannes it won an award. Apu trilogy also established Satyajit Ray worldwide. In 1974, Lata Mangeshkar sang for the first time at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Mishra gives reason for the global perception of today – ‘’At present we have become very technical, our technology has advanced and we are living in an era of information technology and everything seems to have come to our neighbourhood from around the world. Today people talk about Aishwarya Rai and Katrina Kaif. In the early ’60s, people used to talk about Madhubala. If Madhubala or K L Saigal were alive, they would have become global’’.