Lit@KGAF is having a mid-festival crisis and will therefore not put up anything today.
Besides, we want to be at the poetry workshop at the Elphinstone College Seminar Room at 10 where Simon Armitage will hopefully read Zoom!

In keeping with the sort of of writing showcased, I am going to not write much today, but put up some videos. I’m just learning, so the camera work isn’t exactly Oscar material.

Just a brief event report:

Smorgasword turned out to be one of our best events so far, in terms of attendance and the quality of discussion. Like I mailed the speakers, it was packed with insights, and lots of fun. Rafeeq Ellias was moderating, and framed the whole discussion with his opening speech. Rahul DaCunha showed us a set of the Amul ads. Mahesh Dattani spoke beautifully on the written word and the blank page among other things. Madhusree Dutta screened some clips from her documentary on Akka Mahadevi.

We had to cut short the very lively Q and A from our highly engaged full house, as the speakers for the next event were waiting to begin.

The Sahiyta Akademi’s Contemporary Plays series was launched by Partap Sharma, who was kind enough to come oxygen cylinder in tow. Anju Makhija and Alok Bhalla, the editors, put things in perspective with their speeches about the history of Indian theatre.

Ramu Ramanathan read from Collaborators, Vikram Kapadia from Black With ‘Equal’. But the surprise of the evening was Partap Sharma’s rendition of the opening of A Touch of Brightness with his friend Makarand. This sort of thing is always such a bonus, like Jaya’s singing the other day. Further, he read fantastically well, doing the voices for all his characters. It was amazing that despite needing an oxygen tank to be wheeled around for him to breathe, he delivered such an impassioned reading.

Both events were pretty well-attended, and in fact, like a true-blue hack now I must drop some names and tell you that we had a front row that would’ve done any major opening night proud: next to me, Arundhathi Nag, all the way from Bangalore, then Dolly Thakore, Partap’s daughter the film actress Tara Sharma, and Mahesh Dattani who’d stayed back for this.

I haven’t been able to embed the videos, so here are the links to them:

Rafeeq Ellias and Madhusree Dutta

Sahitya Akademi Series Launch

Ramu reads from Collaborators

Vikram reads from Black with ‘Equal’
Partap and Makarand

Let me put it this way - for a Monday evening, we started out better than we’d thought.
And ended a LOT better.

Beyond the Boundary was held off for 15 minutes or so as we waited for more people to turn up, but it more or less stayed at those who’d dropped in on time - and these were pretty serious about being there because I saw some take notes. It was good to put a face to zenwriter and Akshay. I hope they crosspost here too about the event.

Soumya Bhattacharya’s longish reading from his book You Must Like Cricket? was delightful, though I was scared he’d be dehydrated by the time he finished, because he must’ve lost at least a couple litres of sweat! His wife and little little girl had accompanied him, and they filmed the entire talk.

I really like his candid, unapologetic style that says, look, it is perfectly normal to be an obsessive sports fan, and there are more of us than you think. I especially like the bit where he takes a dig at the privileging of ‘high culture’: why is it okay, in fact practically a prerequisite for being considered civilised, to listen compulsively to Mozart, while the same sort of passion for sport is looked down upon?

Dileep Premachandran read out a short excerpt from one of his favourite pieces from The Picador Book of Sportswriting, Hugh McIllvanney’s The Best Years of Our Lives. He pointed out some of the reasons for the lack of good sportswriting and books about sport in India, chief among them the lack of editors who encourage good writing and individual, independent perspectives, rather than a dearth of writers with either talent or the perspectives. Further, as Soumya added, the publishing culture had a lot of growing up to do.

At the end of it, we wound up with some Q and A, and I saw that earnest looking boy in a red teeshirt, who I’d noticed had been listening most carefully throughout and had quite evidently enjoyed the discussion from his reactions during the reading and some of the lighter comments made by the speakers - well he went up to talk to Dileep and took down something on a notepad. Turns out he lives in London and wants to know how to become a sportswriter! Dileep was more than glad to pass on a contact, saying they had all started out as strays anyway. So we know now that these festivals do make a difference in someone’s life!

The advantage of the half hour break was that I could catch up with Bina Sarkar, who is presenting Voices from Iran on Thursday, and her husband Rafeeq Ellias, who is moderating Smorgasword tomorrow. He said they’d come to ‘case the joint’!

One thing we remembered today was to get mosquito coils. Yesterday, I’d been saved another evening of scratchy legs by Deepa’s suggestion to rub Vicks on them. However, today the lack of mosquitoes was made up for by the sudden appearance of hundreds of crows - or at least that’s what it sounded like. It was a bit annoying mostly because we had a small audience.

By 7.30, however, we had practically a full house again for The Future of the Past. This was discussion I had really been looking forward to, and was surprised by how many other people were too. As Darryl D’Monte said, it was about books that had been written about the city, that ought to be written about the city, and the kind of people who ought to write some of these books. Darryl moderated the discussion, so I could sit back and simply listen and take notes once I’d introduced them.

We had a little presentation by Marg publications, who have published Mill Lands, copies of which were available at the back of the garden at our Bookseller’s Table. (a name that I have just legitimised via boldface, ha.) Neera Adarkar showed us some slides and talked about her involvement in the mill workers’ movement, and how Meena Menon and she came about writing their book 100 Years, 100 Voices. She stressed the need for consciousness-raising about our architectural and natural heritage - for which I was glad to do my two-bit by simply having had this talk in our programme. Vikas Dilawari had really done his homework for the talk - much appreciated - as he gave out a list of what needs to be done to ensure the above.

I also learnt about a new concept today - ‘the edifice complex’! Go google!

Though this was a very high quality discussion over all, the credit for really raising the bar goes to Shyam Chainani. I was so glad he didn’t have to go to Delhi for a hearing as we’d feared. The evening simply wouldn’t have been the same without him. Crusty, anecdotal (but ‘I will not manufacture anecdotes’, ‘we were taking on the ONGC, the Navy, and the Government, with a borrowed typist’), ), forthright, provocative (’globalisation is rubbish’) - his style was much appreciated by everyone. He is apparently a compulsive chronicler and archivist, and is going to turn his last 9 years’ research into 3 books, the first of which is going to be called In Defense of Heritage: A Bombay Diary.

In fact the question and answer for this talk set the benchmark for the rest of the festival - I’d be glad if I get 75% of the speaker-audience engagement we had here for the other days. We had to literally cut it short, as it was past 9 by then. Folk were still milling (!!) around the speakers in the garden after I’d thanked everyone and said my byes. (I have put up photographic evidence, which took a while - which unfortunately means I have to make sure I don’t sleep right through the first event tomorrow.)

Zzzzzz….

Do you know how big an elephant’s sneeze is?
If you’d been at Desi Stories for Children today you would’ve known. Or about the room with gifts for everyone from every continent, town, city, village, building, inland, outland…
Deepa Balsavar is someone who loves to tell stories, and most of them are in her head rather than in a book. She held an audience of about 30 kids, 50 adults, and 2 kittens absolutely spellbound with her stories.
The lovely purple durries were a great idea, because the chairs filled up with grown ups. Deepa herself decided to sit on the stage rather than the park benches we had had set up, to be close to the kids sitting on the ground. We so loved her first story that we couldn’t help request her for a second one. The interaction with the kids was just great.
In fact we had a great bunch of kids, and while we were testing out all our various visuals (and screening our sponsors’ ads) a cheeky little girl in the front row struck up a conversation with me and wanted to ask why the roses on my shoes were beige, and not coloured. I promptly told her the truth - the shoemaker fell asleep before he could paint them, and they were sent to the shop colourless. This particular girl goes to St Anne’s, a girls’ school, ‘it’s so boring’.
‘Boring’ was what this little girl was mouthing to me when Deepak was reading. Unfortunately, while Deepa’s stories were great for the age group we had, mostly below 10, they couldn’t quite appreciate Deepak’s excerpt from Ranthambore Adventure. I personally know how great those are on the page, because my brother had come along just to see Deepak after reading that particular book and loving it.
Mukand and Riaz was very impressive, but I wish we could’ve started a little later, so that it was even darker. Nevertheless, the kids liked both the film and the book, and thanks to me, they now know its author Nina Sabnani as the filmmaker who only makes ‘cartoon films’ (thank god, said my cheeky little friend in the front row).
The slideshow is when the exits began, purely because we had very few people the right age for it. But for me it was made up for by the voice that piped up and said ‘Red Panda!’ as soon as the said animal made an appearance on screen. This particular child - I couldn’t tell from the voice if it was a girl or a boy - went on to identify a few other creatures with cameos in Wild India whom I must confess even I can’t name correctly. Thank God they still make kids like that!
From the children’s section, we moved on to Room to Read’s presentation by their country head, Sunisha Ahuja, and finally, to the event I had been waiting for.
CS Lakshmi had told me in an earlier mail not to make her come all the way if no one was going to come and listen. Though we didn’t exactly have a packed house for the screening of Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices, we did end with a handful of people more than we started out with. I believe that a forum like Kala Ghoda should be committed to showcasing projects like SPARROW too, besides the usual gamut of poetry and prose.
And there is always a special someone in the audience who stays on till 9pm and makes it worth it all: today’s special person award would probably be a tie between the surprisingly young boy who asked for extra SPARROW brochures and took down the website address, and our friend who shouted out Red Panda.

Sunday evening, 5.30pmonwards, author, illustrator and education material developer Deepa Balsavar with some live storytelling. Deepak Dalal of Lakshwadeep, Ranthambore, Ladakh and Andaman Adventures fame will read AND show a slideshow of his collection of wildlife pictures from his research for these books.
Tulika will launch Nina Sabnani’s book Mukand and Riaz, with readings by Chandita Mukherjee. The author will also screen her award-winning short animation film based on the book.
So bring your little ones, and not so little ones, and if you like me, you can’t resist a trip into the children’s section at a bookstore, please come and join us from 5.30 to 7.30pm at David Sassoon Library Garden!

If there is one event in the Literature and Writing programme that piqued everyone’s curiousity when I told them about it, it was Rocking ‘N’ Rolling With Kabir. With a name like that, it isn’t hard to imagine why.
Based on Chennai-based Jaya Madhavan’s book for young adults, Kabir The Weaver-Poet, this very unusual performance was co-ordinated by Ramu Ramanathan, award-winning playwright, director, and for those of us lucky enough to have had the chance, a terrific albeit unconventional teacher and encourager of creative young minds.
True to its name, Rocking ‘N’ Rolling with Kabir treated us among other ‘remixes’ to Dheere Dheere Re Mana set to We Will Rock You.
Yes.
And how it worked!



After the Akhtar-Azmi poetry reading, this too dealt with poetry, but it was the complete opposite of the earlier event in style, treatment and even the number of people on stage. Designed and enacted by Out of Context, a group of students from Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi College of Architecture, the performance was a topical, allusive and tongue-in-cheek take on Kabir.
So irreverent in fact that Jaya, who had seen this adaptation for the first time, confessed as much when we invited her onstage with Ramu and Radhika Menon of Tulika, the publisher. She sat suitably dazed while Ramu explained the rock and roll connection, and how not to underestimate its power to change people.

A question about whether the play then intended to lead us all into Kabirgiri left the speakers speechless :)
One of the questions was addressed to the performers, and I think it was just very brave of our young Kabir to simply come on stage and engage so well with the same audience who till then had been mesmerised by veterans…so clap clap clap, Tapan.
And then came the second surprise of the evening. Jaya talked about the book and about Kabir quite animatedly, and then broke into the most wonderrrrrful rendition of a doha, almost impromptu. (I can still hear it.) There was nothing left to do after that but applaud and shake our heads, too dazed ourselves to even say wah-wah!
Ah, yes. We love Dhaga.
Dhaga bhaga bhaga dhaga!

First we unstacked the extra chairs. Then we brought out the very rickety ones from David Sassoon’s stores, paint, bird droppings and other nondescript white matter splashed generously across them. Finally someone ran to round up whatever they could from other venues.
And still there were more people standing than sitting.
Let me rewind to 6pm, Saturday.
I am sitting right at the back of the Garden on one of the chairs - one which in all probability celebrated its centenary with the Library in 1970 - trying to figure out how to briefly introduce all 28 events of the programme in less than 2 minutes. Out of Context are rehearsing Rocking n Rolling with Kabir. There is still half an hour to go before we open.
“Excuse me, can we take this chair?” Two ladies, smiling politely, clutching newspapers.
When I look up to see behind them, all the other chairs are already taken.
Flashback over!
They warned me, the Indiscriminately-Called-They, that the bigger the name, the greater the nakhra. And starting on time, forget about it. So here is my two bit for those cynics:
Ha.
Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi were a dream!
We started on time, give or take a few minutes. This was a blessing in more ways than one because we were beginning to consider shutting off the entrance by then, so alarmingly packed was the Garden.
The two were such a delight, their only request was for some coffee and to be invited on stage as soon as possible. Once on, they simply charmed the crowd into a single, very still, listening mass of unblinking eyes - that’s exactly what it looked like from where I was standing.
He started with a little speech, confessing at the end of it that Shabana had instructed him before they came: “Don’t go there and start reading your poetry immediately, say something first!” That done, he switched to reciting his poems in Urdu from the collection Tarkash, alternating with her reading out the English translations from Quiver. Wah-wahs and ‘Kya baat hais’ abounded from all sections of the audience. The readings ended a little before 7.30, with an aptly chosen poem about time.
There was just about time for a few questions, and to all those who wanted to ask but couldn’t, I can only apologise - we anticipated a good crowd, but simply didn’t expect you’d turn out in such overwhelming numbers. So thank you, thank you, thank you!
And thank you, Javedsaab and Shabanaji, for helping us kick off the Literature and Writing Section in such brilliant style!

Well, technically, that should read ‘a few hours before the first event’ rather than ‘the night before’ . But what sort of a section head/executive/intern/whatchamacallit goes to sleep before 3am!?!
This one has gotten past the hyperventilation stage, and is now in fatalistic mode.
And that one thought, you ask, that one single thought above all at this point, exactly 7 and a half hours from the first workshop?
Is this:
I couldn’t be prouder of a baby if I had one tonight. Like all babies, despite all the crap and bother, I can’t help but absolutely love it!
And like any parent, I sincerely hope you do too. :)