Guest post by Mayank Bhatt

The literary segment of the on-going Kala Ghoda Art Festival provides a rare avenue to discuss the personal and collective trauma of the Partition and the panellists discuss the untold story of Sindhi migration.

Jackets, shawls and woollens really have no place in Mumbai’s winter that normally lasts for about 2-1/2 days. These are fashion accessories for a set of Mumbaikars that likes to believe it is liberal. But this year’s been an unusually cold winter for Mumbai. So, the khadi jackets, the woollen pullovers and the shawls did not seem out of place at the small garden of the David Sassoon Library at Kala Ghoda late Saturday evening; although the number of people at the garden did seem out of place. Perhaps the reason for the high turnout must have been the subject. So little of the Partition is ever discussed in Mumbai; it is such an India International Centre sort of issue.
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A guest post from Melody.

A: More than you can imagine!

Photographs taken at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, the annual art festival in Mumbai housing “Gallery and pavement shows, exhibitions, literary events, film screenings, music concerts, dance performances, theatre shows, workshops, heritage walks, a food fiesta, and a buzzing street festival bring in audiences and participants from all over the city” (cf Kala Ghoda Association)

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Ten days ago, I stood in the line for tickets at Bandra station and noticed that the guy in front of me had these lines printed calligraphy-style on his T-shirt:

Stone Dead Forever
Auttgart Sineers
Galaxy Rainers
Bengrance — Witteilingen.
Being Outstanding in a Complex Society Revolution

I know, I know. You feel envious that you weren’t there to read these words for yourself. Believe me, I felt privileged.

But on Sunday (Feb 10) at the Kala Ghoda Festival, I noticed this on a T-shirt that passed by:

Being Outstanding in a Complex Society

Now that has to rank as a seriously improbable coincidence. In years of being a T-shirt slogan watcher, I’ve never seen the same wacky slogan twice. Here it’s happened within ten days. Naturally, I wonder if this is some popular quote, sort of like “Don’t tase me, bro”.

Is it?

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Here you go:

The shortlists:
Flash Fiction
SMS Poetry
Flash Essay
Poetry Slam
(No short list for the Open Book Pitch.)

The winners and the winning entries.
Flash Fiction
SMS Poetry
Flash Essay
(The Poetry Slam final was a live event, and we don’t have recordings, alas. The top 3: 1. Mukul Chadda, 2. Tarun Durga, 3. Arka Mukhopadhyay)
Book Pitch

All scoresheets
Flash Fiction
SMS Poetry
Flash Essay
Poetry Slam Qualifying & Live Rounds
(The Book Pitch had a three-stage yes/no grading system, which would be simple enough to reproduce in a table, but all that’s really relevant is the final ‘yes,’ which is shown in the ‘winners’ list.)

Okay fine, the above title may not be entirely true but adding a little credit to it – Something Relevant, the Jam Band that performed at Kala Ghoda Arts festival yesterday afternoon, mainly consists of some fine Parsi Dikaras.

Needless to say, these guys (Parsis + Non Parsis) completely rocked da house. And such was their impact that even my mum (a non-videshi music listener) sat thru most of their play time without any complaints.

In all honesty, I am not very fond of Jazz/Rock genre but give me Pop or R&B anytime and I am game. However this experience, I will admit made me realize how rigid in my music taste I had been all along.

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Courtesy Aniruddha Kadam.

Click here for some Day 1 pictures.

And here for some from Day 2.

Got pictures? Leave a link in the comments space, and we’ll add you here.

As someone else on this page remarked earlier, mornings at the Kala Ghoda festival are special. Reminds me of times I’ve gone flamingo-watching in Sewri on weekend mornings. There and here, there’s a slow move to wakefulness afoot, and it lends an air of lazy stretchy languor to everything.

So on Saturday morning (Feb 8).

I stumble across a man eating breakfast behind one of the stalls.

Two men sit on the stairs chatting in whispers even though they don’t need to but maybe they feel they must. When I first see them, I stop short — because from that angle, with the vast branches of a tree spreading above them, they are the only two humans in my field of view. And there hasn’t been a previous moment at the Festival when I could have made such a statement.

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On Tuesday evening (Feb 5), the tables got turned. Up on stage at the David Sassoon Library, discussing travel writing, were four people: Naresh Fernandes (editor of Time Out Mumbai) moderating, Sarayu Ahuja, Hartosh Bal and me.

Naresh got the wagon rolling with excerpts from various ancient travellers/writers, mainly focussing their keen eyes on the chiquitas. Then he asked the three of us to read bits of our writing, to give our audience a flavour.

About now, a scrawny kitten climbed the stairs leading to the stage, but stopped at the last step.

Sarayu read first, a bit from a book she wrote with Dom Moraes, about the travels of a British writer. Hartosh had earlier confessed to me that he was a product of my college, BITS Pilani, where he studied Mechanical Engineering. He was at Pilani a few years after I graduated. His reading was from a book in progress, about a journey around the Narmada river. Mine was a short piece about a tiny place that touched my heart, Cayce in Kentucky. (Click here to read the whole post)

So much of the colour at Kala Ghoda comes from not just the artists but the visitors as well. That little street is awash with colour. Art students display their fledgling works. Aspiring writers congregate with journalists. Photographers stroll around, cameras casually hung around their necks. Families wander around wonder and curiosity writ large on their faces. Busy corporate types step out to ‘catch the fest’, ties loosened around their necks and their reactions escaping from their normally controlled faces. Tourists bustle about, wide-eyed at the colour. Teenagers mill about, their natural energy, for once, shared by everyone in the crowd alike, age irrespective.

The different faces of the city walk around marveling at the sights. And at each other.
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The art district of Mumbai is hosting a festival. Movies are being screened, workshops conducted, books discussed, plays (and other acts) staged. There is also a mela happening!

Don’t believe me?

Here is a potter. He beckons…come closer. A grinning imp, paint streaked across his face settles down to touch the clay.

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At the core of the KGAF, every year, is the street art. From the bizzare to the thought provoking, from the quirky to the cute…. each year the street exhibits manage to get the crowds gawking. And, this year was no exception.
At the centre piece of the KGAF exhibtion was a giant ferris wheels of cycles with dabbhas….

Mumbai Masti - from the exhibition:
If the world is your playground, then Mumbai is certainly a giant ferris wheel. And one that carries everything with it, as it goes around its axis going about its daily business.
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Bae Chang-Ho’s My Heart shall be screened today at the Max Mueller Bhavan at 1830 hours i. e. 6:30 in the evening. The director is considered the foremost exponent of the Korean New Wave cinema. In a stark departure from his usual style of film-making, My Heart is set in the Korea of 1920’s.

The movie is shot amidst the beautiful scenery of Korea. It tells the story of Sun-Yi (played by Kim Yoo-Mi, the director’s wife), who is married off to a ten-year old spoiled brat. When her husband grows past adolescence, he brings home a mistress much to the petrifaction of Sun-Yi. The movie tells the story of how Sun-Yi leaves home and searches for an identity of her own. In a way, the movie mirrors the struggle of Korea to find its identity in a shrinking world. (Click here to read the whole post)

Two of the gems of experimental cinema - Manhatta and The Man With The Movie-Camera - were screened at the Gallery Beyond yesterday. Since I missed the first one (I watched it on the internet anyway), I shall review only The Man With The Movie-Camera.

Made in 1929 by Dziga Vertov with cinematography by his brother Mikhail Khaufman, The Man With The Movie-Camera captures the Russian life in all its avatars. The movie has no story as such, yet one could call it the story of a people and a time.

The movie shows the Russian way of life in minute detail, and not often in the sad way that directors of art movies are wont to perceive. The camera captures in a most natural way the beautifully uncertain smiles, the lips that make unheard whispers, basking ladies, the victories and the excitement, the routine and the indifference - all captured with the devouring eye of a greedy voyeur and the detailed panache of a keen observer. The result is a movie which speaks of life without judgment and the consequent pitfalls that a jaundiced eye brings to the task of film-making. (Click here to read the whole post)

Nilanjana S Roy in Business Standard:

The gardens at the Sassoon Library make for a small, intimate setting, with the audience fluctuating from about 40 to about 120. Writers are often joined on stage by the three kittens who seem to belong to the library; and Bombay’s own literary luminaries, from Adil Jussawalla to Altaf Tyrewalla, can be spotted in the audience. The feel is quiet and intimate, and novice poets and writers are welcomed with as much warmth as the Kiran Nagarkars and Paul Therouxes.

(Got more links? Send them to me or leave a comment, and I’ll add them to this post.)

After Kiran Nagarkar, Saeed Mirza. Mirza’s new book, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother, is out from Tranquebar Press. On Monday night, an hour after her conversation with Nagarkar, Nilanjana Roy sat on stage with Mirza to talk about Ammi. And Rahul Bose read several passages from the book.

Nilanjana said that when the manuscript came to her (as Tranquebar’s editor), she figured it would take her a week to read it. Instead, she sat up one night and finished it, and knew right away that she had to make it Tranquebar’s first book.

That was introduction enough.

Mirza began by telling us that his mother came from a “tradition of inclusion”, and had a “largeness of spirit.” These were values, he said, that are disappearing today, leaving only a chauvinism and a lack of the generosity he knew in his mother. Rahul Bose echoed that theme. He said of the book that it speaks of a world we all know; it is a lament for this country, a mixture of longing, love, unslaked thirst and a sense of loss. Books like these, people like Mirza, he said, are the “bits of chewing gum” that keep us together.

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