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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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.)

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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(Apologies for the technological incompetence that resulted in this being empty when I first put it up).

I’ve never read Kiran Nagarkar, but after Monday evening when he spent an hour in conversation with Nilanjana Roy, I resolved to fix that lacuna in my life. Not so much because of the samples of his writing we heard or heard described, but because of the man. If that makes sense.

For one thing, his sense of humour. It was there in the first bit of reading he did. This wasn’t a passage from any of his books, but three short fictional biographical blurbs about himself that he wrote for what he said was a short-lived website he had once. “Take your pick”, he said of the three, and it was hard. In one, he claimed to be the most prolific writer in history, having written works now claimed by such luminaries as Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Shobhaa De and the various apostles who put together that book known as the Bible. In another, he claimed to be the inspiration behind the crimes of Idi Amin, Osama, Mugabe and others. It wasn’t just that these outlandish claims were funny by themselves; it was the way he made them, and the way he read them out to us, that had the audience chuckling.

And it was apparent in the rest of his conversation too. Something about the way this man spoke with and to his audience hinted at an alert, vibrant mind, always a good substrate for humour, and so always on the lookout for humour. Not the laugh-out-loud slap-you-on-the-back humour of a Bollywood-style Johnny Lever, yes, but a subtle, self-deprecating kind that grows and builds with that twinkle in his eye. It brought to mind Davy Barry, or Groucho Marx, or perhaps someone even subtler, like Art Buchwald or PL Deshpande.

But there were other things about Nagarkar. (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.

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In the one hour I had between the two writing workshops An Introduction To Freelance Writing and The Art Of Translation yesterday, I wandered the corridors of Elphinstone College and its narrow dark staircases that looked as if they belonged to a cold time-forgotten castle more than a college.

I even happened to venture unnoticed into their staff room which has six larger-than-life portraits hung across its walls. And guess what I found!!! One of the portraits was of William Wordsworth (eponymous grandson of the great poet William Wordsworth), who was a principal of the college at one time. Another portrait was that of Peter Peterson, who had been a Professor of Oriental Languages in the college. It might be history to those who know Elphinstone, but it is certainly news to me.

As for The Art Of Translation workshop that followed, it soon regressed into The Craft Of Translation workshop. It is very necessary to have an agenda or at least a purpose which implicitly sets some sort of tacit agenda, especially if the workshop session is going to be as long as three hours. The discussion was often punctuated with silences that hovered in the air of Elphinstone’s Seminar Hall which hosted the poorly attended workshop.

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Jeet Thayil is a widely published Indian-American poet. I had seen him read his poems in Jaipur Lit. festival in 2007. When I found out that he will be taking a workshop on Performance poetry during KG, I rushed to enroll.

I was asked to submit a sample of my work AND memorize it by heart. That was a toughie, but managed it somehow. The whole week saw me mumbling my lines.

I reached the venue, NGMA, at 2.15 pm, 15 minutes before time. I ran into the great man himself, being interviewed by some one. A tall man, with a shaved head, he had looked very austere on the stage in Jaipur. Here, with a casual attire he looked more approachable. When he found out I was there for the workshop, he asked me if I had memorized the poem. I said yes, keeping my fingers firmly crossed.

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Braving the inclement weather in the morning (I do not do this even for the most important of my college lectures, preferring to amble into the lecture hall only after noon), I managed to reach Elphinstone College well on time. The trains were empty on account of the weekend, and minus the effort that one needs to exercise in the daunting crowds of Bombay locals, the faces of commuters looked sadly careworn and unoccupied.

Held in Elphinstone’s Seminar Hall, Kavitha Rao’s workshop was quite a success - in addition to the twenty people already registered for the event, there were others who dropped by and had to be accommodated. (It would have been that wee bit better if all of them had showed up on time and not trickled in one by one throughout the duration of the workshop.)

A quick note on Kavitha Rao:

Kavitha Rao has lived and worked in London, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Tokyo, and reported from Cairo, Beijing, Seoul and various cities in India. She currently lives in Bombay.

I came across her website just a few months back while researching an article on the internet. I think it was her review of Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled in South China Morning Post that caught my eye. I remember thinking that it must take a gritty freelancer to sell such a story to SCMP.

And her website is another lesson in making the right first impressions, especially in a profession where first impressions can often also be the last. Though her website is clean, free of frills, and minimalistic, it exudes a quiet authority, is regularly updated and never undersells her strengths as a freelancer. In short, just the sort of online portfolio that can make an editor sit up and take notice.

(Click here to read the whole post)

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)

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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