The Anthonian Literary Club: THE KOLKATA LITERARY MEET 2013

The second edition of the Kolkata Literary Meet or KaLaM, as the acronym goes, was held from 30th January 2013 to 3rd February 2013 by the sidelines of the Kolkata Book Fair. Inaugurated by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Amitav Ghosh, the meet was bigger and better than the inaugural year’s event. Primarily it was so because the literary event has managed to grab a place for itself in the minds of readers and writers as evident from the participation of a plethora of writers from around the globe. Decisively it was so because, unlike the previous year, the event did not require prior audience registration. Thereby most of the sessions saw good attendance by enthusiasts and book lovers.

Sukanta Chaudhuri and Amitav Ghosh

Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and Chinmoy Guha

No doubt the quality of the writers like Samaresh Majumdar, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Pico Iyer, Bharati Mukherjee, Javed Akhtar, Ali Sethi, Jeet Thayil, Ahdaf Soueif, Shashi Tharoor, Kunal Basu, Farah Ghuznavi, Sugata Bose and the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen was a great attraction. The last literary session of the event was by none other than Thomas Keneally, the Booker Prize winner for Schindler’s Ark. The range of writers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, Egypt, China, Arabia as well as from Europe and USA was ample testimony to the rapid status and popularity that this literary meet has gained.

Thomas Keneally and Sandip Roy

Of course there were certain disappointments like Philip Hensher not being able to attend the event because of an accident, Murong Xuecun not being able to attend due to visa problem between India and China and Salman Rushdie being actually debarred from attending the meet by the State government. Rushdie’s absence hung like a spectre over the whole meet especially in the session by Rahul Bose introducing Deepa Mehta directed movie on Rushdie’s memorable novel Midnight’s Children. The special attraction of this meet were the AfterWords sessions at the end of each day celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema attended by luminaries from the film world like Rituparno Ghosh, Aparna Sen, Sharmila Tagore, Madhabi Mukherjee and others.

Neelanjana S. Roy and Rahul Bose

Sandip Roy and Pico Iyer

The event, organised by Gameplan, had a number of interesting sessions in the Google Dome and the Adda Zone at Milan Mela ground and one at Trincas of Park Street. Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay spoke of the presence of ghosts in his stories in the opening session. In the Sunil Gangopadhyay Memorial session Prof. Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak discussed with Prof. Chinmoy Guha about her work on subaltern studies. Narayan Debnath, the creator of Nonte Phonte and Batul the Great, spoke about his cartoon creations. Pico Iyer was eloquent about his fascination with Graham Greene and Dalai Lama. Bharati Mukherjee spoke of the racism prevalent in the West when she migrated there and the internal migrations taking place in current India. Thomas Keneally expressed his views on what it means to be an Australian writer and what attracts him towards characters who are apparent sinners but with a redeeming quality. Kunal Basu waxed nostalgic about the Coffee House Adda culture and Amitav Ghosh explained that the British Empire was nothing more than a massive drug running cartel. Amish Triparthi elaborated his views on mythology and Sourav Ganguly disclosed that he does not want his daughter to be a cricketer. The underground filmmaker Q expressed that film is dead and he is like a film DJ churning out tracks from the archive to keep his audience spellbound for a couple of hours.

Rituparno Ghosh, Aparna Sen, Madhabi Mukherjee and Sharmila Tagore

Shashi Tharoor

The inimitable Shashi Tharoor said that there is competitive intolerance shown by various factions of society, especially political ones, when the need of the hour is to show competitive tolerance. He also spoke about being subjected to female fans’ gaze which he embraces without embracing them. He even graciously obliged one who called herself his devotee to take the mineral water bottle from which he was sipping. There was also a panel debate on whether capital punishment should be given to rapists. In most of the sessions when the floor was open to audience’s questions it was, as Javed Akhtar rightly pointed out, that the first two questions were difficult to come but after that every person had two questions of his/her own. The whole experience was engrossing and exciting. We can hopefully look forward to an even more enriching experience the next year round.