Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.2 - Malayalam writers M.T. Vasudevan Nair and M. Mukundan in conversation

 M.T. Vasudevan Nair and N. Mukundan

MT, as he is called is a path-breaking fiction writer who wrote about changes in Kerala society as it evolved from older matrilineal forms. He and Mukundan both hailed from modest rural families and had to go to great lengths to satisfy their thirst for literature.

M.T. Vasudevan Nair autographs a book

There was no TV, no radio, etc said Mukundan so only reading was available. MT spoke of how difficult it was to get published. When the poet Vallathol asked money for lunch at an appearance, they made fun of him: “A poet, and he asks for money?”

KumKum enjoyed

A writer in those days had to write about society, not himself, or psychological ruminations on a character. In those days the Form vs. Content argument was won by Content.

KumKum and Talitha relaxing

Mukundan said he read Maupassant for the drama in his short stories, and Chekhov for his novels filled with mystery and a problem to be solved. 

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Hay Festival Kerala 2011 No.1 - Outline

Kanakakunnu Palace

This was the second year KumKum and I were attending the Hay Festival in Thiruvananthapuram, and we were joined by Talitha from the Kochi Reading Group. Indeed, we stayed at her lovely secluded bungalow, a short walk from the Kanakakunnu Palace where the event was held in three concurrent sessions daily from Nov 17-19, 2011.

 Peter Florence being interviewed for TV

The chielf Hay festival organisers, Peter Florence and Lyndy Cooke were there; Peter had handed on his interviewing responsibilities for the most part to other capable people, but what a pleasure to hear him quietly walk the authors through their stories, their novels and their life adventures. We met poets from several countries: Simon Armitage from Yorkshire, Twm Morys from Wales, Carlos Aganzo from Spain, Arundhati Subramaniam from Mumbai, Anita Thampi from Kerala and many others.

Bright young faces from local colleges mixed with participants from the world over.

A lass from Kerala

 A fashionable lady  of the world

Simon Armitage, the poet, gave us this line: "You are beautiful because your politeness is instinctive, not a marketing campaign."   To be among book lovers is to be among those who make the world safe. 

KumKum with Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Productions

In the next dozen posts I will give an account of what went on, selecting four sessions on each day.

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis – Dec 2, 2011

The original cover

KRG Readers were lucky in the choice of the novel for the December reading by Thommo and Priya. Can a fifties novel still entertain and amuse us? To hear the chuckling and laughter at the Yacht Club Library during the reading of a dozen passages was to have the question answered resoundingly with a 'yes.'

Priya

The story goes that Amis was visiting his friend, the poet Philip Larkin, at Leicester University, when he passed by the common room of the faculty and imagined a story lurked there. When he wrote Lucky Jim it became a hilarious send-up about university life and the intrigues among the faculty. By exploiting the enormous material for comedy that lay hidden amidst the chicanery and incompetence within the university, Amis gave the world a novel whose mirth will last a long time.

Zakia, Priya, KumKum, Talitha, Thommo
(note on the table the Banana Raisin Cake which KumKum made)

Comparisons with P.G. Wodehouse arose naturally. The novel has many similarities: improbable situations, the build-up to a climactic accident in a chapter, polysyllabic humour, and people who are ridiculous foils for the comic anti-hero. Dixon marches doggedly through a sludge of difficulties that would damage irreparably the self-esteem of an Oxford don; and here he is, a mere lecturer at a provincial university.

Talitha, Zakia, KumKum, Priya, Thommo, Gopa, Mathew, Verghese, Joe

(the merriment had not subsided)

Imitations of various accents by Dixon are a source of much farce in the novel, and readers took on the challenge. Gopa even did a fine imitation of Dixon muddling through a madrigal by opening and closing his mouth, sans sound, in unison with the other singers.


To read more, click below.

Poetry Session – Nov 11, 2011

 Thommo, KumKum, Talitha, and Soma

Ten readers recited verse by poets of six nationalities, three each from India and USA, and one each from Scotland, England, Palestine, and Chile. Only two (from Scotland and India) are contemporary poets, the rest belonged to the twentieth century, with one exception.

Sivaram, Gopa, and Zakia

Readers introduced poets of rare skill who are not widely known outside their circles; this contributed to the exhilaration of hearing novel voices.

Talitha, Soma, Bobby, Sunil, and Mathew

Here is the happy group at the end of the session. Bobby was behind the lens.

Sivaram, Joe, Soma, Zakia, KumKum, Talitha, Gopa, Thommo, Sunil, and Mathew

To participate vicariously in the recitations and discussions that took place on the once-in-a-century day, 11/11/2011, click below.

Animal Farm by George Orwell – Oct 28, 2011

Animal Farm First Edition Cover

Animal Farm is perhaps the most popular and widely translated of the books by George Orwell. Its relevance continues unabated because leaders in democracies, no less than in autocracies, continue to behave in the ways satirised in the novella.

 Priya and Soma

When his first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, died in 1943, Orwell left London and went to the Hebrides Islands and worked there on Animal Farm from Nov 1943 to Jan 1944. He published it (after initial rejections from several publishers) in 1945 as the war was coming to an end.

Mathew, Sunil, Samuel, Bobby, and Sivaram

The themes of Animal  Farm cover a large canvas: Rebellion, Regime Change, Propaganda and Duplicity, Violence and Terror as Means of Control, Exploitation, Human Rights, Obsequiousness, Silent Acceptance of Despotism, etc. These themes were discussed, with illustrations from global and local politics.

Priya, Thommo, KumKum, and Talitha

 KRG welcomes four new readers in our midst. Here they are with the others gathered for a group photograph:

Thommo, Talitha, Soma, KumKum, Priya, Gopa, Bobby, Samuel, Sunil, Mathew, and Sivaram

To read a full account of the discussions and the readings, please click below.

Postponed Poetry Session held on Sep 29, 2011

The attendance at this session was scanty, although it had been postponed once for the same reason. However, the session was extraordinarily intimate. Two English poets, an American and a Spanish poet were recited; three were men, and one a woman.

KumKum, Talitha, and Thommo

We are resolved to get a few more committed readers in order to enjoy the customary liveliness the sessions have always had. The next will be on Oct 28, 2011 to read Animal Farm by George Orwell.

The question of art and science, and whether a scientist may have the same refined appreciation of nature and poetry as an artist came under discussion. Eugenics too was a subject of debate. Here are the foursome at the end:

KumKum, Talitha, Thommo, and Joe

In order to read the complete account click below ...

The Kite Runner - August 12, 2011

Many thanks to Priya who provided this account of the session. It was a highly enjoyable reading with seven members present.

 Bobby holds forth as Zakia, Talitha and Minu listen

Some felt that the book had too many coincidences designed to result in the right outcome. But all agreed the writing was very good and at times, even lyrical. 

The book deals with many subjects: the break up of Afghanistan, ethnic hostilities between the Pashtun and Hazara communities, gender inequalities, the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban. 

 Minu, Priya, Talitha, Sivaram, and Thommo

The readers thought The Kite Runner was ideal for a Bollywood Box Office hit and they chose actors from the industry who might play the roles.

Welcome back to Sivaram who attended after a lapse of two years.

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Poetry Session July 15, 2011

  Priya reads from Shelley's Ode to the West Wind

KRG readers were wide-ranging in their choice of poets to recite: five nationalities, and two poets in translation.

Talitha reads poems by Louis MacNeice

Many characteristics of poetry have been used to describe it. Here's one that Joe offered at this reading in connection with the French poet, Gérard de Nerval:

The end of a poem is creating a sound that resonates in the mind, long after its slight meaning is forgotten.

 

This will remind some readers of Dylan Thomas' reaction to a person who asked what his famous villanelle on death 'meant' – to which he replied, “You should listen to the sound of the meaning.” In the full account below you will come across further reflections.

Thommo shows Talitha his copy of The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Judging from the laughter that resounded in the CYC library, we all had a good time; a verbal record will not capture the fun that attended the actual reading, though the readers had put in serious preparation. Talitha had insights and diversions to offer at every turn, and so did others. 

Talitha, KumKum, Zakia, Bobby, Priya, Thommo,and  Joe

While offering our commiseration to those who could not attend the reading, perhaps they will derive something of its flavour by reading the full account below.

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 13: Short Stories

 

Tagore Short Stories on film:

Khudito Pashan, Teen Kanya, Ghare Baire, Kabuliwala and Char Adhyay †

In this post Padmanabha sets forth his personal appreciation of the style and content of Rabindranath's short stories.

N.K. Sidhanta recalls that when Rabindranath started writing, the short story form had not taken root in India yet.

“But there was something in the form, in its conciseness and compression, that appealed to Rabindrnath. He explained in a letter to a friend that he was repelled by the elaborate convolutions in a long novel, by the laborious analysis of static situations and of events that had little significance. Through its brevity the short story subjected the writer to a discipline, and for a period Rabindranath welcomed this discipline for his objective writing.” (Rabindranath Tagore, A Centenary Volume, Sahitya Akademi, 1961)

Syed Mujtaba Ali, the Bengali poet and writer who studied at Santiniketan with Rabindranath, has used superlatives to describe his reaction to Tagore's short stories. Padmanabha starts off with Ali's comment and covers a slew of stories to see whether the praise was indeed justified. At a minimum, this will impel readers to drink at the source, if not in Bengali, then in English translations, of which several have been released.

† The six DVDs of the set can be purchased for Rs 339 from:
http://www.flipkart.com/movies/itmczcsmgdzyzpze

Read Padmanabha's full account below.

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 12: Short Stories, Third Selection

Like other great writers, R abindranath was attracted to the challenge of the short story, and some of his creations have been compared to lyric poems. They meant a lot to the the author also, as we learn from a letter of his from Shelidah, a village he lived in when looking after the family property:

If I do nothing else but write short stories I shall be happy, and I hope to make a few readers happy too. The main cause of the happiness is that the people about whom I write become my companions: they are with me when I am confined to my room in the rains, and on a sunny day they move about with me on the bright banks of the Padma. Today, since early morning a petulant little girl named Giribala has entered my imaginary world.

(This excerpt is quoted by Nirmal Kumar Sidhanta in his appreciation for the Tagore Centenary volume published by the Sahitya Akademi in 1961).

KumKum, Padmanabha, and Soma come to the end of their reading of Tagore short stories with a third tranche consisting of the following stories selected by Padmanabha: Sampatti Samarpan, Kabuliwala, Atithi, Prayaschitta, Anadhikar Prabesh.

Read on below —