The Kolkata Literature Festival, in association with The Telegraph, had several sessions on the pull of literature against popular entertainment on the final day on Sunday.
Groups of speakers dwelled on whether literature would lose out to popular entertainment.
At the fair, which drew record crowds almost every day, the proposition seemed to stand on its head but not quite as each speaker took turns to point out the formidable contenders for books like films, web series, social media, television, even audio books and fusion music.
A group of Bangla band singers first took the stage to discuss if entertainment and books went hand in hand and most of them seemed to agree that books were part of entertainment itself. But in the entertainment race, books were fast losing out to other forms of entertainment like web series. The audio-visual will always steal a huge march over the printed word and the future seems to belong to video games with Augmented Reality and AI.
The Jit Memorial Lecture which was part of the festival had Mir, Boria Mazumdar and Bikram Ghosh espouse what sells, entertainment or literature.
“After doing 29 years of radio, I have had the opportunity to read both English and Bengali classics and even some classics from other languages. These classics and translations have got to more people through audiobooks,” said Mir, who has been dabbling with audiobooks since 2001.
Podcasts and audio stories are a new format which are bringing literature to a growing audience, said the former RJ turned entrepreneur.
Bikram Ghosh, who has accompanied Ravi Shankar on the tabla and had started his career in classical music, said his school buddies stayed away from his classical music concerts. While thinking of ways to get his friends to listen to him, Ghosh started fusion music.
“I found that the form of classical music lacked a frequency. I introduced very low octane. Subwoofers had already arrived and so low-end sound was in. The second thing was people don’t identify with the cycle of taal. I broke into the taal structure and broke into the groove,” said the fusion music maestro who lays great stress on identifying the soundscape of his audience.
Boria, when asked how he would market a test match against a T20 match, said it was difficult to answer that on a day India lost to England (Sunday) on home pitch.
“Everyone follows Sachin Tendulkar. If I have to bring Tendulkar to a far wider audience, I will bring out his humane side,” he said.
Once, Sachin and he visited a clinic where they met a child suffering from cerebral palsy. The wheelchair-bound kid was a huge Sachin fan. Sachin asked him to bat while he would deliver the ball. In the next 60 seconds, the child got up and batted. Perhaps that was the first and last time he did that, said Boria, adding that this story touches millions.