-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)
Although he has just entered his first teenage year, Karnav Rastogi (13), a class VIII student of Mumbai’s top-ranked R.N. Podar School, has already written four paperback novels and three e-graphic books titled Kartik and Mixie featuring a ten-year-old boy and walking-talking robot.
Acknowledged as India’s ‘youngest fiction writer’ by India Book of Records (2017), Future Kalam Book of Records (2018), and Indian Achievers’ Book of Records, Karnav released his first book Kartik & Mixie — A Journey About Creation when he was only eight years of age. His latest ouevre Kartik, Mixie & Climate Change: It’s Now or Never was released on World Environment Day (June 5).
“I believe in the power of the written word. The world is confronted with grave challenges of environment destruction because of climate change. The objective of my latest book is to suggest ways and means to combat climate change,” says this woke young author.
Similarly, Kartik, Mixie & Corona: A Journey about Coronavirus Prevention (2020) provided practical suggestions about Covid prevention while Kartik, Daddy And Plastic attempts to find solutions to the menace of plastic pollution. Moreover, for his poem ‘Plastic — A Curse’, Karnav was felicitated by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2020.
The only child of Paras Rastogi, a cybersecurity professional, and Dr. Shweta, a clinical dietician, Karnav started reading when he was four. “I am blessed with parents who gifted me books of my choice over the years. They even signed me up as a library member when I was in kindergarten. However, my late grandfather and cardiologist Dr. S.K. Rastogi whose medical articles I have grown up reading, was my major inspiration,” says this gifted teen author.
To inspire young children into creative writing, Karnav has since conducted 20 ‘Author in You — Magic with Words’ workshops at prominent schools in Mumbai, Aurangabad, Pune and Bengaluru. “After I complete my Plus Two, my goal is to qualify as a doctor while continuing to write books for the betterment of humanity,” says this woke idealist.
Power to your pen!
