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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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.)

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.

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.)

here:

www.flickr.com

More photos in Kala Ghoda Gazette

Date: Sunday, 10th February
Time: 13:30 – 16:30
Venue: Elphinstone College, Seminar Room 2
Conducted by: David Raphael Israel

‘As a poetic form in the English language, serious efforts to practice the ghazal (a form with long and distinguished antecedents in Arabic, Persian and Urdu literatures) represent a fresh development among some contemporary poets.

‘I have been experimenting with ways of approaching ghazal-writing in English for many years now — and I feel these efforts are beginning to bear some fruit worth sharing. In this workshop, I will sketch a brief history of the form in English, and will draw on some of my own English-language ghazals by way of illustrating qualities and requirements and expressive possibilities of the form. As a group, we will approach a ghazal-writing exercise.’

(More about the workshop leader and details on how to register below the fold.)
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Date: Saturday, 9th February
Time: 14:30 – 16:30
Venue: Elphinstone College, Seminar Room 2
Conducted by: Arka Mukhopadhyay

This workshop is intended to serve as an introduction to poetry in performance for young children. It will encourage them to look at poetry as a performance medium, by playing around with the oral and aural aspects of poetry. It will also explore ways of using the body in poetry performance - stamping, stomping,clapping, clucking, moving, dancing and anything in-between! Through all this, the workshop will also explore a number of themes that are of importance to the immediate surroundings of the children, including (but not limited to): countries of the imagination (the title of the workshops is from a Walter de la Mare poem about an imaginary land called Tartary), sights and sounds of the city, heroes and heroines, etc.

(More about the workshop leader and details on how to register below the fold.)
(Click here to read the whole post)

A 20 foot “wall” for nine days, for those for whom words on paper are the ultimate form of expression.

The venue at the David Sassoon Library garden will have one wall devoted to writing by anyone who wants a slot. (Click here to read the whole post)

We have an almost-final version of the programme up here. And here’s a map:

[Click on the image for an enlarged version. 314kb.]

Update (Feb 29th) The emails we referred to in the 13th Feb update were sent out on the 24th Feb. To all the selected authors, good luck and godspeed. We hope to see your name in lights soon.

Important update (Feb 13th) We’re having a little hassle with our automated emails to scouts and selected authors.
And, several of our scouts have requested more time to evaluate pitches - last week was a very heavy one for our friends in the publishing business.
So, making a virtue of necessity, we are opening up the scouting console to them up to the end of this week.
And we will send out those connecting emails on Monday, 18th February.
Please ensure that you’re subscribed to Caferati Contests for further updates.
Update ends

Have you wondered how to catch the eye of a publisher? Have you despaired of getting them to take just one look at the manuscript you’ve toiled over? We have a contest this year that will help you to do just that. And the prize? You could wind up being published. Doesn’t get simpler. Or better.

Submission method

Simple.

Go to this web form. (But puhleeze make sure you read the entire page here first.)

Fill in the following:
- The Title of your book - up to 5 words
- A Blurb, exciting enough to grab your target’s attention - up to 50 words
- An Synopsis of the book - up to 500 words
- An extract from your Manuscript - up to 5000 words
- Select one or more genres that your book fits into.

And then?

From the 4th to the 9th February, Talent Scouts from several publishing houses and a few literary agents will be checking out all the submissions.

Each scout will first see only your Title and your Blurb (so make sure that those work very hard), and the genre(s) that your book fits into.
If those catch her/his eye, s/he can then click through to the Synposis.
And if that meets with her/his approval, then s/he will click through to the manuscript Extract. Then, if your submission interests her/him, we will make the connection between that Scout and you. If more than one Scout likes your submission, then hey, you’ll hear from all of them, you lucky so-and-so! After that, it’s up to you and the Scout to take the whole thing forward.

Deadline

Midnight (Indian Standard Time), 3rd February, 2008.
(Click here to read the whole post)

Flash Fiction (also called micro-fiction or short-shorts) presents a simple challenge: tell a story with all the classical elements: a beginning, middle and end, a conflict and resolution, a credible protagonist.. but do so in a very limited number of words. Fire up your favourite web search engine. There are plenty of tutorials and guidelines available online, as well as excellent examples of the genre.

This contest kindly sponsored by Sulekha Blogs. Please go visit them.

Flash Fiction is now in its third year at the Kala Ghoda contests.

Theme

Tall story
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SMS Poetry has one simple guideline: The entire poem must be short enough to fit into a single 160-character SMS.

This contest is now in its fourth year at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

Theme

An Anti-Valentine
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Making its debut this year, this contest widens the genres that our Kala Ghoda contests cover. We’re looking for incisive essays that see different sides of the story, that have an opinion of their own, that are lucid and engaging, and, because we live in an information overload age where no one has time to read—and because we, the judges, have lives—essays that can make a point faster and more clearly than this convoluted sentence did.

Theme

The Death of the Essay
(Click here to read the whole post)

This is an attempt to give performance poetry a bit of a push, to bring some new voices out into the open, to put a little more audience participation into poetry, and, not least, to have a little fun.

The slam made its debut last year (the first in India, actually) to much enjoyment from the audience and the participants. You can see the scoresheets from the live contest here.

Themes

There are four themes:
Name
Place
Animal
Thing
You must also have one more poem—your choice of theme—which we’ll call the ‘Free Poem.’
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