While the International Kolkata Book Fair is a treat for book lovers who flock to the venue with great enthusiasm, Kolkata Literature Festival is a bonus that lights up their souls with sessions that touches varied topics and brings celebrated authors, poets, critics, historians and others under one roof. The ninth edition of the literary festival organised in association with The Telegraph from February 9 to 11 at Central Park Salt Lake witnessed many thought-provoking, enlightening and entertaining sessions. So while eminent thinkers like Sanjaya Baru, Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Sumantra Bose discussed the evolving idea of India, author-publisher David Davidar talked about the trajectory of Indian literature over the last century. Again while city poets like Joie Bose, Chandrimaa Roy, Ipsita Ganguli, Sunil Bhandari and others put the spotlight on performance poetry, cine stars Moon Moon Sen, Rahul Bose and Arindam Sil discussed the different mediums of entertainment. The evenings were enchanting with local as well as international artistes bringing the curtains down with their performances.
“With 70 writers, 20 sessions, new and established writers, and a wide range of topics that involve us in these times, cultural evenings, the Kolkata Literature Festival 2023 excited thousands of people who come into the Boi Mela for the love of books,” said Sujata Sen, director, Kolkata Literature Festival.
Award-winning publisher, novelist and anthologist David Davidar spoke about his latest anthology A Case of Indian Marvels. It is a collection of the best short fiction of Indian writers below the age of 40, belonging to two cohorts: the millennial generation and Gen Z. He discussed about these new-age writers and how brave they are to take up critical issues like suppression of freedom and authoritarianism. “This generation is the writers of the future,” said Davidar as he mentioned the excellence, originality and rootedness of these writers.
This session was a celebration of fearless and little-known voices from Eastern India. JCB Prize for Literature shortlisted authors Manoranjan Byapari and Chuden Kabimo, and Ramen Shresta and Minakshi Thakur came together to discuss Translating East: Focus on Languages of the East and North-East India for New and Fearless Voices.
(L-R) Babul Supriyo, Dr. Kunal Sarkar
Babul Supriyo rocked the auditorium with a bunch of hit numbers, enthralling the audience on the evening of Day 2.
Dr Kunal Sarkar delivered a hard-hitting lecture at the annual Jit Paul Memorial Lecture at the Kolkata Literature Festival, 2023 on the topic ‘India After Covid’. With Covid-19 pandemic ravaging the world and India still reeling under its repercussions on several fronts, the ace cardiac surgeon expressed his doubt about the future of healthcare in the country. He discussed the condition in West Bengal and particularly in Calcutta during that time and how the city’s situation was better thanks to the people in heavy engineering and iron and steel industry. “If not for heavy engineering and iron and steel people we would have been in the same situation as Delhi was.” He also spoke of the vaccination drive, and how India played a pivotal role in developing vaccines.
Dr Sarkar called the health budget a ‘Rubik’s cube’ and referred to many neighbouring countries of India who were much ready to handle a pandemic like Covid.
On Day 1, city poets Joie Bose, Chandrimaa Roy, Ipsita Ganguli, Sunil Bhandari, Sekhar Banerjee and two eminent Spanish poets, Violeta Medina and Guillermo Busutil, enriched our minds with their genre of performance poetry. The session, Poetry in Motion, started with Joie Bose paying tribute to her fellow poets Keshari Nath Tripathi and Souvik Bandyopadhay who passed away earlier this year, by reading out their poems namely On the Beach by Souvik Bandyopadhyay and a small verse from The Wings of Age by Keshari Nath Tripathi. Sekhar Banerjee recited the poem Fluid Room from his latest collection of poems The FernGatherer’s Association in memory of his grandmother. As the focus country of the book fair was Spain, Spanish poets Violeta Medina and Guillermo Busutil recited their poems in Spanish, which was then translated into Bengali by Shukti Roy. Ipsita Ganguli filled the atmosphere with love as she recited love poems from her first compilation of poems titled Of Love, Longing, and Random Pondering. Finally, performance artist Chandrimaa Roy talked about the importance of International Mother Language Day celebrated on February 21, as she recited and performed Ami Jonmechi Banglay, Ami Banglay kotha boli accompanied by lilting music. She ended the session by reciting the last poem of the day — Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Kobir Mrityu, a poem about the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca who was killed in the Spanish Civil War.
Cinema, Cinema saw a packed auditorium that consisted of fans of Rahul Bose, erstwhile Tollywood diva Moon Moon Sen and filmmaker Arindam Sil. The session started off with Sen talking about her trajectory in the Bengali and Hindi film industries. “I started working in Calcutta accidentally, I went to Mumbai and started working there accidentally. I have done many commercials as well and have had to face many challenges,” said the charming actor stressing that she is an Indian actress and is not defined by any region. Taking up from her, Sil, a self-trained actor, producer and director, started off by saying he is enjoying the role of a director more. Sil pointed at the contentdriven culture that’s on the rise, thanks to the OTT platform. Mentioning the success of Pathaan as an example, he said, “The big screen is getting redefined and now we will have to rethink our content.” Joining in, Bose focussed on the relationship between OTT, TV and cinema and he went on to describe the three mediums of visual entertainment in terms of viewership. “While the film is a collective medium as there’s a collective pulse that goes on when someone is watching a film in a cinema hall with others. TV is more intimate than the collective pulse that film offers and it is an expanded experience. OTT is personal, it is a solitary medium.”
Rahul Bose, Moon Moon Sen and Arindam Sil pose post the session that drew a large crowd
This Indo-Spanish concert, 2 India’s Ensemble by Sahil Vasudeva, was a spectacular synthesis of two musical worlds — East and West. Pianist Vasudeva reimagined the work of Spanish piano maestro Isaac Albeniz for the first time with an Indian classic ensemble, transcribing 150-year-old scores to Hindustani classical text to present an innovative interpretation of Spain’s greatest composer.
The session Kya Yahi Pyaar Hai saw music and film aficionados come together under one platform for a delightful dialogue. It saw Anirudha Bhattacharjee, Ram Kamal Mukherjee, Sangeeta Dutta and Samarjit Guha in conversation.
A Fistful of Moonlight — Stories in Translation From Assam, named after the Write Assamese project that is a collaboration between Untold and BEE Books and a part of the ongoing India/UK Together, Season of Culture, British Council’s landmark program to mark India’s 75th anniversary, saw Lucy Hannah, founder and director of Untold Narratives UK, Manaswini Mahanta, an emerging Assamese writer, Ranjita Biswas, a translator of Assamese literature, in conversation with Debanjan Chakrabarti, director East and Northeast India, British Council. The discussion delved into the role of translation in bridging cultural divides and promoting cross-cultural understanding. “Write Assamese brings together the three things that India/UK Together: A Season of Culture is all about — it celebrates Indian writing and languages, connects the writers from India to readers in the UK and the world, and creates new opportunities for a two-way exchange of ideas. And I am delighted that we are having this important conversation in the heart of Boi Mela, or Kolkata International Book Fair, a book lovers’ event like no other in the world. It’s encouraging to see how the translation ecosystem is growing, bringing Indian literature and our multilingual wealth to a global English-reading audience,” said Chakrabarti.
In the session, Storied Lives, the audience witnessed the launch of Gopinath Mohanty’s book Oblivion and Other Stories, which is an anthology of 20 short stories written in Oriya, across half a century (1935-1988). Sudhansu Mohanty and Sudeshna Mohanty, a former civil servant and associate professor of English at Bangalore University, respectively, co-translated Mohanty’s new book. The duo also shared their views on the struggle while translating the book. Joining the dialogue, Devalina Mookerjee talked about translating nine short horror stories of the great Bengali writer Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay which she published in the form of her 2022 book Taranath Tantrik and Other Tales from the Supernatural. As a professional storyteller and content strategist, Rajessh M. Iyer also added interesting insights to the session.
Sapphire Creations Dance Company put up a grand show at the end of Day 1. Creative director of the dance group, Sudarshan Chakravorty, said, “We performed Sapphirescope, an amazing amalgam of dance, music and visuals drawing from impulses of tradition and modernity celebrating the eclectic and hybridity of the physical aesthetics and vocabulary of the Sapphire signature style. It included choreographic pieces from 2006 to 2019 and combined acro yoga, Indian aesthetics, and acrobatics including the use of poems and music by Bankimchandra and Rabindranath Tagore. The production was also performed previously in USA, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and other places in India.”
The Identity Quotient saw quizmaster, author and educationist Barry O’Brien in conversation with novelist Nilanjana Bhowmick; creative producer and programme director Lucy Hannah, and author, academic and women’s right activist Jael Silliman. Starting off, Bhowmick implored the topic with her debut novel Lies Our Mother Told Us: The Indian Woman’s Burden while O’Brien talked about the fascinating story of Anglo-Indians in the backdrop of his book, The AngloIndians: A Portrait of A Community. “I think this book was long overdue and it sets the record straight that we have chosen to stay in India,” remarked O’Brien. Picking up from him, Lucy Hannah, who has founded and led Commonwealth Writers, the Commonwealth’s agent for civil society, which operates in 53 countries, and is the founder and director of Untold, which discovers and nurtures writing talents, recounted stories of working with women from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Sudan and other places. Talking about the poignant issues raised by these women, she said, “These women chose fiction as the medium to tell their stories, as it was easier to explore and were powerful.” Jael Silliman, who developed a digital archive called Recalling Jewish Calcutta, added to the evening with her insights on the community.