Anita's attic is a complete creative writing course and mentorship program conducted by the author, Anita Nair at Rangoli Art Centre in Bangalore. She believes that language and literature are a constantly evolving phenomenon and such is the beauty of words that they may be used as much for storytelling as for resistance or change; to write a poem or a polemic; to bestow a blessing or sign a death warrant; to make or to break. But most words are those with which we voice our feelings and thoughts, shape our imagination and build our dreams on.

VK Karthika, an editor and publisher delivered the 2nd Attic lecture in which she described the journey of Indian publishing in English and her contribution in the industry. She started off by comparing the 90s with today. Twenty years ago, we did not have any access to practices in the industry outside our geographical location. We were basically learning majorly by trial and error method. There weren't good authors and publishers back then as compared to the current period. She talks about David Davidar, an Indian novelist and publisher, the author of The House of Blue Mangoes. He was an innovator as he always met with the international standards.

Things changed a lot after Arundhati Roy won the Booker in 1997. She joined a long and proud list of people who care deeply, and who listen deeply, and who then speak fearlessly. It paved a way for people to write more. This resulted in huge advances being paid to authors for writing the next big Indian novel.

According to her the big thing that changed the face of publishing houses in India was Chetan Bhagat. His books outsold every other authors. He was also the most successful writer of 2016, which made us realize that there are lakhs of readers in India. This motivated young writers to write more. What helped more was that Bhagat's books were adapted into movies that brought more readers into the fold.

Opening up of stores such as Crossword and Landmark which had seating spaces for people to sit and read peacefully meant that more people began to try out books. These stores had the capacity to stock books in large quantities, unlike the other stores which could only keep around 10-15 selected books.

Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.

Karthika believes that it is a great time to be a writer and an editor now. “There are good works getting translated from other languages into English and a lot of extremely good non-fiction is being written. It is an eco-system I love being part of and I would like to read much more than I do though” says the editor and publisher, thus encouraging others to read more and write more to preserve the lost art.