Day 2 of Festival of Letters: CSA's encounter with royalty, jewish history, Palestine, journalism and poetry:
Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi is caught a strange situation that is more amusing than annoying. Of late it has been getting phone calls from several curious people asking what kind of letters are being composed by invited award-winning writers.
At first the questions were perplexing and confusion became more confounded when some local dailies announced that CSA was holding a "chitthiyan da vela" or a "Patra Mahotsav". And then the realization dawned that Festival of Letters was being interpreted as "Letters" as in love-letters or formal letters or resignation letters or their like. The mystery cleared, CSA would like to inform all concerned that Festival of Letters has nothing to do with letter-writing: it is concerned with words or 'akshara' or 'shabd', all of which go into the making of 'sahitya' or literature. And literature is the subject of our story!
So, putting this preamble behind, here is a sum-up of today's events that were held at the UT Guest House.
The morning began with Githa Hariharan who has written novels, short stories, essays and newspaper columns. Hariharan’s first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. Her work since then includes the short story collection The Art of Dying, and the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master, When Dreams Travel, In Times of Siege, and Fugitive Histories. This morning she read from some of her works and spoke at length of her latest book which came out just a fortnight back, a collection of non-fictional on Palestine titled From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity.
The speaker of the second session was Imam Mir Jaffar who is a social scientist specializing in human relations and industrial communications. He has a passion for history, Urdu and Persian poetry. He is a scion of the erstwhile ruling families of Surat and Kamadhia in Gujarat. He is the author of “Mirza Ghalib and the Mirs of Gujarat” and “For the Love of Mahatma” both published by Rupa Publications. At present he is working on a book on Rumi titled, “Sufism through Rumi’s poems” and a book on Lord Shiva titled: “Lord Shiva – The Cosmic Energy”. A person deeply influenced by Sufism, he hails from the Sufi Chisty Order. He spoke on the poetry of Rumi and his talk was moderated by Vijai Vardhan, a civil servant and poet in his own right.
Esther David, is of Jewish origins. She lives in Gujarat and is interested in recovering the history of Jews in India, a subject that has been neglected so far. Esther David won the national Sahitya Akademi award in 2010 for English literature. She is the author of The Walled City, By The Sabarmati, Book Of Esther, Book Of Rachel; My Father’s Zoo, Shalom India Housing Society, The Man With Enormous Wings and has co-authored a book on India’s Jewish Heritage, Ritual, Art And Life Cycle. She received the Hadassah Brandeis Research award 2011-2012 to work on a book on Bene Israel Jewish women of Ahmedabad with photographer Bindi Sheth. Today's talk related to her personal experiences, revolving around what it is like to be a Jew in India.
Rahul Singh, the son of the celebrated Khushwant Singh, was in conversation with Rani Balbir, a session that was free-wheeling, touching upon several aspects of the grand old man's personality, writings, and the influence he has had on Indian writing in English. The session was, predictably, punctuated with personal anecdotes and reminiscences. No doubt Khushwant Singh ji who has delighted in cultivating a bohemian mask all his life, is a remarkable man, but it is not hard to see traces of the old man's sense of humour in his son. Rahul Singh comes across as a very pleasant, likeable, self-effasive person.
Jitendra Srivastava is a poet who also an academician, teaching at IGNOU in Delhi. Although he was the last speaker of the day, he mesmerized the audience with his powerful poetry, a lot of which is concerned with life on campus, which is not surprising. Being a sensitive soul, he is distressed at the degradation of values and the lack of commitment in academic today. Srivastava, a winner of several Akademi awards, speaks strongly in favour of women, of the girl child and the ills of society. Much appreciated by the audience was his love poetry which got him the maximum applause.
Truly, it was a full day for the Akademi but the Festival of Letters is not over yet. Another day to go
TOMORROW'S EVENTS beginning 1030, will be held at the English Auditorium in Panjab University. The speakers are Manmohan Singh (Punjabi writer) and Geetanjali Shree (Hindi writer), both very well-known, both award-winning.
Post lunch tomorrow will be a QUIZ CONTEST open to all, followed by DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES to winners of competitions for school, college and university students. These competitions were held last month.
Manju Jaidka
Chairperson CSA
Today the audience comprised mainly youngsters from the campus who took a keen interest in two morning sessions, the first a ru-ba-ru with the Punjabi writer Manmohan Singh, followed by a reading and Q and A with Geetanjali Shree who writes in Hindi.
Punjabi poet and critic Manmohan's debut Punjabi novel Nirvaan has won this year's Sahitya Akademi Award. An Indian Police Services (IPS) of Bihar cadre, he is now the inspector general, police, with Intelligence Bureau at Chandigarh. In a highly charged personal interaction with the audience he shared his life experiences that have shaped his writings.
Prizes were also given to students who successfully participated in competitions at the school level and college level. University students who won prizes in competitions held last month were also awarded prizes.
