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.

(Click here to read the whole post)

The PenTathalon sounded like fun. And unnerving given its ‘Five Exercises for Fiction Writers’ description. What does a fiction writer look like, one wondered. I found out on the morning of Saturday, 3rd February.

Kavita Bhanot, the workshop leader, turned out to be a charming, soft-spoken young lady with a clipped British accent and an eye (and ear) for detail. There were fifteen participants from various backgrounds - a journalist, a business consultant, an animation script-writer, an accountant, a former magazine editor and an advertising professional to name a few.

The five exercises were actually discussions on five aspects of fiction writing: Openings, Description , Characterization, Dialogue and Point of View. Kavita started with,

You all probably read a lot of books and enjoy them. There are actually several techniques employed by fiction writers that you would not have noticed so far because you aren’t familiar with them. In this workshop we will look at some of them and how you can use them in writing.

(Click here to read the whole post)

The Tenth Kala Ghoda Arts Festival will be from the 2nd to the 10th February, 2008.

Watch this space for more information about the events and contests.

First, a very big thank you to all our judges:
Samit Basu
Sarnath Banerjee
Jane Bhandari
Urvashi Butalia
Sampurna Chattarji
Devangshu Datta
Sonia Faleiro
Naresh Fernandes
Ranjit Hoskote
Marilyn Noronha
Manjula Padmanabhan
Jerry Pinto
Nilanjana S Roy
Arundhathi Subramaniam
Altaf Tyrewala

A huge thank you also to my colleagues at Caferati, Manisha Lakhe and Annie Zaidi, who with me, evaluated every single entry at the first stage, where the long lists were created, and then again, when the final round was being judged, across all the contests.

A big debt of gratitude to Megha Murthy, who designed and built the elegant judging system that made handling all those entries a very simple task (one groans at the memory of the time spent in past years collating, totalling and averaging entries), letting us give both contestants and jury extra time to do their thing. The system kept all personal information from entrants concealed from the jury, and did not let the jury members see what their colleagues were scoring. And then, at the end of it all, it totalled, averaged, shortlisted and presented us with winners.

Naturally, thanks ever so much, R Sriram and Shivmeet Deol, of the Literature section of the Festival, for your continued faith in us. It was, as usual, a pleasure working with you, and we look forward to future collaborations.

And last, and by no means least, thank you, every one of you, for your participation, for helping spread the word (we got around 400 valid entries across our contests, without a word of formal advertising), and for letting us know that we’re on to a good thing.

And now to the results.

====

Poetry Slam

At the finals, at the David Sassoon Library Garden, after four rounds, each of which eliminated 3 participants, from a starting field of 12, the winners were:

1st:
Jane Bhandari

2nd:
Rohinton Daruwala

3rd:
Mustansir Dalvi

You can see the scoresheets, and read the entries for the initial elimination round here. Update: And the scoresheets from the live contest are here.

Graphic Flash

In our other new contest, we got a fairly limited number of entries, but some very nice work all the same.

The winners were:

1st
pratheek thomas, sachin somasundaran (collaboration)

2nd (shared)
Mahesh Murthy
Shiladitya Chakraborty

4th * (another tie):
Dinesh P, Aravindakshan P (collaboration)
Shiladitya Chakraborty

You can see all the winners here.

*Please note, there is no 3rd place. Since 2nd place was shared, Mahesh and Shiladitya share equally the prize money for 2nd and 3rd place. Winners of 4th place are being mentioned here because we think they deserve to be, but they do not win a prize.

You can see the scoresheets (and see all the entries) from the initial round and from the full jury here.

Flash Fiction

The winners were:

1st
Shiladitya Chakraborty

2nd
Asif Anis Khan

3rd
Shiladitya Chakraborty

You can see all the winners here.

You can see the scoresheets (and read all the entries) from the initial elimination round and the full jury session here.

SMS Poetry

The winners were

1st
Nandini

2nd
Sridala Swami

3rd (shared a 4-way tie!)
Minal Sarosh
Minal Sarosh
Swetha Prakash
Falstaff

You can see all the winning entries here.

You can see the scoresheets (and read all the entries) from the initial elimination round and the full jury session here.

In a day or three, I will be mailing all the prize-winners individually, to get your mailing addresses so we can send you your prizes. Pretty please, with sugar on it, do not mail us in the meanwhile; we need a bit of recovery time too! [Done!]

We had a grand time thinking up and bringing you these contests. We hope you’ll come back when we next have something to offer. In the meanwhile, we hope you’ll come look us up at our forum or our blog, and on our various newsletters and city groups (list on the right).

Until then, all the very best to you and your muse,

(with Annie and Manisha) Peter

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.

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. :)

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Peter Griffin

12th February 5:30 p.m.

We’ll be starting off with the results and presentations for the SMS Poetry and Flash Fiction contests. Our prize sponsors, the British Council, India, will be represented by their Director, Sue Beaumont. The winning entries will be read by their authors (if they are present; entries came in from all over the country, and a few from abroad as well, so if the winners aren’t around, our tireless jury members will be pressed into overtime duty).

We will then move into a mixed programme. Straight readings from our members, with interludes staged by Theatre Watch, directed and moderated by Vivin Mathew Easo.

Theatre Watch was given a bunch of original writing by Caferati members, and Viv and his perfomers have chosen a few pieces which inspire them. So you will get to experience Ivan John on the piano, interpreting three poems, Jitendra Jawda on the violin, working with two poems and a short story, and Swaroop Biswas, who has chosen a short story, which he will use as his inspiration for a painting which he will execute live, while the other readings and performances are on. Vivin may also choose a piece, which he will use as the base for a solo theatre performance.

All of Caferati’s writers, as well as Theatre Watch’s performers, will be available for questions.

We will also be introducing the book we plan to have out by next month, Stories at the Coffee Table, which features the winners in a nation-wide short fiction contest we hosted last year. We hope to have a few of the authors present, to read extracts from their stories.

We hope to see you there

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

I’m on the outside looking inside
What do I see
Much confusion, disillusion
All around me.

You don’t possess me
Don’t impress me

Just upset my mind
Can’t instruct me or conduct me
Just use up my time.

I talk to the wind
My words are all carried away
I talk to the wind
The wind does not hear
The wind cannot hear.

(King Crimson, I Talk to the Wind)

A thoroughly interesting experience at the KGAF yesterday, being on the other end of the stick. Meaning: on the inside, looking outside. It’s not that I’ve felt, all these days, the pessimism King Crimson seems to feel - no confusion or disillusion on display at sundry puppet shows and the like that I’ve attended.

But yesterday Feb 9, I was on a panel discussing non-fiction, trying my damndest to look out at the audience but mostly failing, because the People Who Organized This Event (the dreaded PWOTE) had these ghastly bright spots shining in our faces. And I don’t know, if you can’t see the people you’re speaking to or with, you do get the strangest feeling that your words are all carried away, the wind does not hear, the wind cannot hear.

At least until they begin speaking back.

I have a great deal of respect for the journalism of my fellow-panelists, Dionne Bunsha and Darryl D’Monte. They write from intimate and hard-working knowledge of their subject. I’ve travelled with Dionne, and watched her dogged insistence on answers, her quest for detail. Similarly, Darryl’s meticulous way with facts and figures are a lesson to any journalist, certainly to me. So I was honoured to be up there with them.

Yet as always with these things, the best part was not just that, not that I got to say my bit from a spotlighted lectern, not the mild ego kick of being on a stage, but that a lively audience kept us going with their questions and comments. And as Yaz’s spirited account of the evening shows, they were lively indeed. There’s something humbling, gratifying, about having a pretty large (must have been 70 or a 100 people) audience that’s listening and interested.

Plenty of questions about blogging, which for some reason I had to field. Plenty more about the media, about the mill lands, about the business of reportage. And if I could have asked, I would have liked to know from the 70 or 100, what is your interest in writing, what kind of writing do you do or want to do, can I take a look at what you write? Because that’s how you learn writing, by reading what others write.

There was, as well, one guy in a cap (if that was a cap I thought I saw through the dazzle of the lights) who asked a fair amount about blogging. I would have liked to say hi at the end, but he left before I could go over to him. So if that was you, please get in touch. Would love to hear from you.

And since I began this with King Crimson, let me end it with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, which if I’m not mistaken was some kind of spin-off from King Crimson (my memories of these groups are starting to fade as I hit my 70s):

One day in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well.
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of a great black bell.

One day in the year of the fox

When the bell began to ring.
Meant the time had come for one to go
To the Temple of the King.

There in the middle of the circle he stands,
Searching, seeking.
With just one touch of his trembling hand,
The answer will be found.

Daylight waits while the old man sings,

Heaven help me!
And then like the rush of a thousand wings,
It shines upon the one.
And the day has just begun.

(Rainbow, Temple of the King)

Hmm. What the relevance is, I’m not sure. Hell, what it means, I’ve never been sure! Never mind.