Even if I hadn't read of word of what Mridula Koshy had written, the title of her first book of short stories would have intrigued me enough to want to read it. I won't say much about the book itself because there'll be more about it coming up here soon, but this is to let you folks know that Mridula Koshy will be reading in Chennai and Bangalore (but not, alas, in Hyderabad), details below:
Chennai:
Hosts: Tranquebar Press/Westland Ltd. in association with Prakriti Foundation.
Tuesday, 11th August 2009 at 6.30 p.m.
at Connemara Hotel, Chennai.
K. Srilata, Associate Professor, IIT, Madras will be in discussion with the author.
*
Bangalore:
Hosts: Toto Funds the Arts in association with Tranquebar Press.
Thursday, 13 August 2009, 6.30 pm
Crossword Bookstore, ACR Towers, 32, Residency Road (G.F), Bangalore.
Novelist Usha K.R. will be in conversation with the author.
*
Chandrahas's review here; and the author in conversation with Aditi Machado here. Also Mridula Koshy's blog (which links to some of her stories available online).
Do go if you can. I wish I could.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Friday, August 07, 2009
Wilderness Tips: 2
When the potholes upstream grow large enough to contain water from the sewage that flows a good 100 yards away downstream but which sewage has been brought back on the wheels of the million trucks that pass; when the millionth-and-one truck arrives at half past three in the morning and takes an hour and a half to offload granite blocks; when said truck gets stuck and roars like a trapped and wounded animal...
...is when you buy yourself earmuffs, noseplugs and cocoon for nights and wellies (even in a failed monsoon) for the days.
It has often occurred to me in the last couple of weeks, that someone should invite Herzog to come and make a film on our neighbour building the mountain. The project has the right mix of lunacy, obsession and futility that would appeal to the man.
Wilderness Tips Part 1.
...is when you buy yourself earmuffs, noseplugs and cocoon for nights and wellies (even in a failed monsoon) for the days.
It has often occurred to me in the last couple of weeks, that someone should invite Herzog to come and make a film on our neighbour building the mountain. The project has the right mix of lunacy, obsession and futility that would appeal to the man.
Wilderness Tips Part 1.
Friday, July 31, 2009
what it means is...
...only JP was partly right: I may not have urn'd my rest, but I'm taking it anyway. So, because you came, saw and should not find the field barren of daisies:
1. I really should stop but I can't seem to help myself: Frozen has to be the one film I've blogged about most without actually having seen. But hey - anything that reminds me of Tony Leung Chiu-wai is good, right? But I was talking about Frozen. No, actually; Shanker Raman is talking about Frozen.
2. A photograph from Kiarostami's Rain Series in the Guardian. [via BM and Politics, Theory, Photography]. More photographs from this and other series available here.
3. And Ludwig, who returns only when the fields are white, is going to be in the dumps. Reason: the VP is visiting and all roads leading to his Greenco quiz are out of bounds. But if you live nearly and can afford to curl your lip at VPs, please go.
Is it really already the weekend? How?
1. I really should stop but I can't seem to help myself: Frozen has to be the one film I've blogged about most without actually having seen. But hey - anything that reminds me of Tony Leung Chiu-wai is good, right? But I was talking about Frozen. No, actually; Shanker Raman is talking about Frozen.
2. A photograph from Kiarostami's Rain Series in the Guardian. [via BM and Politics, Theory, Photography]. More photographs from this and other series available here.
3. And Ludwig, who returns only when the fields are white, is going to be in the dumps. Reason: the VP is visiting and all roads leading to his Greenco quiz are out of bounds. But if you live nearly and can afford to curl your lip at VPs, please go.
Is it really already the weekend? How?
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Lost and Found: The Translation wiki
A quick note to point readers to the new Translation Wiki for Indian Poetry. It is very new, still finding its feet, but it's a start. The wiki came out of this discussion on Falstaff's blog.
Those of you reading this who do translations, please consider contributing and participating. Binu Karunakaran, who set it up, is the person to write to. [His email in the comments of Falsie's post linked to above.]
I realise that some of you may be working on translations very seriously indeed and might have issues with putting your work out in the public domain, but you could consider contributing work that is in progress.
I'm looking forward to this!
Those of you reading this who do translations, please consider contributing and participating. Binu Karunakaran, who set it up, is the person to write to. [His email in the comments of Falsie's post linked to above.]
I realise that some of you may be working on translations very seriously indeed and might have issues with putting your work out in the public domain, but you could consider contributing work that is in progress.
I'm looking forward to this!
Friday, July 24, 2009
Fata Morgana: 'Even one of these thoughts would have done'
Tuesday, Herzog's Fata Morgana. The plane descends seven, eight times and I know I am going to like this film. It comes down like a cloud and the air shifts beneath it. In some takes the birds are indifferent. In one, they fly across the sky as if they were released at the right time. This is Herzog: I wouldn't be surprised if they had been.
*
A few minutes into the film, in one of those times between the narration (Lotte Eisner's voice in Part 1) I listen to the music and watch the dunes and my mind starts to wander. This is where it goes.
*
What if the music slipped a few frames? Or if the editor had deliberately moved it by a second or two? Would Herzog know? Would he have come in to watch the edit one day and realised that the editor had shifted the music, perhaps a shot or two to create a slightly different film? How much could one get away with? How many changes, too small in themselves, would one have to make before a film like this becomes a film not like this?
*
There's an abandoned WWII plane in the sand, crashed and broken. I know, because I've read about it somewhere. It could be any military plane from any-time but what are the odds? There are shelters - what else to call something that bubbles out of the sand, only slightly less temporary and yet much more impermanent than the sand?
There are people who have been rehearsed, people who laugh, who have one gesture, as if they were rudimentary toys.
*
Why is this a documentary? (Why does it matter what we call it?) With its soundtrack, its imposed narrative of Mayan creation myths spoken in German over visuals of the Sahara, the film resists not only categorisation, but easy interpretation: I am back in the editing room, wondering how the director and the editor communicate what the purpose of the film is and how that shape is to be achieved. The possibilities are endless and every film that did not emerge was once valid.
*
What is Leonard Cohen doing here?
*
The first thing I think of when I see the shivering sky from which the plane lands is: this is what the world looked like the year I was born. I have never thought this before while watching a film. That sky, that sand, that plane, those birds, would be exactly as old as I am now.
No, that's not right, is it?
Even the film that I am watching is as old and not as old. If I was looking at the world as it was that year, this is not how it looked. In all this time, the blue in the film is less blue, the red more red, and the occasional vertical dances across the frame tell me that the film has aged along with me and nothing has been preserved exactly as it was. Every record is less than whole.
*
Somewhere towards the end, before the turtle is released into the water, there are holes in the ground and adults and children are trying to scramble out of them. This is, the section title says, The Golden Age. The voice over, as a child tries to squirm out of his father's hands: "That's enough, even one of these thoughts would have done."
Maybe so. But since we can never know what any one thought could have or would have done, and because we are used to guarding against a drought, we put in more than we need. We put in everything we have, every time. Sometimes, there's something left to be taken, even decades afterwards, something left after every time.
*
PS: The Herzog documentary weekend begins this evening at the Goethe Zentrum.
Today's screening begins at 6pm. Sat & Sun screenings begin at 3pm, two films a day.
No charge, anyone can attend.
The Goethe Zentrum is on Hill Fort Road, opposite Kalanjali, near the Public Gardens in Hyderabad. See you there!
*
A few minutes into the film, in one of those times between the narration (Lotte Eisner's voice in Part 1) I listen to the music and watch the dunes and my mind starts to wander. This is where it goes.
*
What if the music slipped a few frames? Or if the editor had deliberately moved it by a second or two? Would Herzog know? Would he have come in to watch the edit one day and realised that the editor had shifted the music, perhaps a shot or two to create a slightly different film? How much could one get away with? How many changes, too small in themselves, would one have to make before a film like this becomes a film not like this?
*
There's an abandoned WWII plane in the sand, crashed and broken. I know, because I've read about it somewhere. It could be any military plane from any-time but what are the odds? There are shelters - what else to call something that bubbles out of the sand, only slightly less temporary and yet much more impermanent than the sand?
There are people who have been rehearsed, people who laugh, who have one gesture, as if they were rudimentary toys.
*
Why is this a documentary? (Why does it matter what we call it?) With its soundtrack, its imposed narrative of Mayan creation myths spoken in German over visuals of the Sahara, the film resists not only categorisation, but easy interpretation: I am back in the editing room, wondering how the director and the editor communicate what the purpose of the film is and how that shape is to be achieved. The possibilities are endless and every film that did not emerge was once valid.
*
What is Leonard Cohen doing here?
*
The first thing I think of when I see the shivering sky from which the plane lands is: this is what the world looked like the year I was born. I have never thought this before while watching a film. That sky, that sand, that plane, those birds, would be exactly as old as I am now.
No, that's not right, is it?
Even the film that I am watching is as old and not as old. If I was looking at the world as it was that year, this is not how it looked. In all this time, the blue in the film is less blue, the red more red, and the occasional vertical dances across the frame tell me that the film has aged along with me and nothing has been preserved exactly as it was. Every record is less than whole.
*
Somewhere towards the end, before the turtle is released into the water, there are holes in the ground and adults and children are trying to scramble out of them. This is, the section title says, The Golden Age. The voice over, as a child tries to squirm out of his father's hands: "That's enough, even one of these thoughts would have done."
Maybe so. But since we can never know what any one thought could have or would have done, and because we are used to guarding against a drought, we put in more than we need. We put in everything we have, every time. Sometimes, there's something left to be taken, even decades afterwards, something left after every time.
*
PS: The Herzog documentary weekend begins this evening at the Goethe Zentrum.
Today's screening begins at 6pm. Sat & Sun screenings begin at 3pm, two films a day.
No charge, anyone can attend.
The Goethe Zentrum is on Hill Fort Road, opposite Kalanjali, near the Public Gardens in Hyderabad. See you there!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Vivek Narayanan in Open Magazine
Turn to each case of a thriving, vigorous poetry community and a common thread seems to emerge, not a prefabricated mass audience, not international acclaim, but rather a culture of frank talk and close engagement, vivid with ferocious, voracious arguments, unending discussions, even intellectual fist fights or several rival aesthetic camps. Most of all, there is a deep awareness—even if an antagonistic awareness—of one’s own poetic history. And that is where we fall short.Poetry, then, does need readers, a community to survive; but it is the intensity and not the size of that community that matters. In an insipid poetry/literature scene, including one saturated with publicity, an inability to muster enough historical awareness, informed critique, ruthless honesty and close, complete reading means that we turn our hopes outward, in a wish for love and affirmation from an imaginary audience that never shows up.
The whole thing here.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The Inaugural Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
2009
Call for Entries
Entries are invited from young poets in India writing in English for the inaugural
Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize.
The Prize was instituted by the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English and is being administered jointly by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. The prize consisting of a cash award of Rs.10, 000 and a citation will be presented annually at a literary event in Hyderabad in the month of October. The entries will be judged by a distinguished jury of poets and literary personalities.
Entries are invited from all Indian citizens between 20-40 years old and writing poetry in English.
Entries must include:
1. Five (5) different poems written by the applicant;
2. Evidence of age
3. Complete contact information (including phone numbers and email addresses)
Note: Please do not put your name on the poems to be submitted to the jury members.
Entries must reach:
Dr. Aparna Rayaprol
Convener, Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
c/o Study in India Program
University of Hyderabad
Hyderabad 500046
rayaproltrust@gmail.com
Deadline: September 1, 2009
The winner will be announced latest by the first week of October and arrangements for the travel and accommodation for the person chosen for the award will be made by the Trust and the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.
The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust was started in the year 2000 to perpetuate the memory of the poet and also promote Indian writing in English. Srinivas Rayaprol (1925-1998), the son of the famous Telugu poet Rayaprolu Subba Rao, is considered one of the significant personalities of the early Indian English Poetry in India. His three major volumes of poetry are Bones and Distances, Married Love and Other Poems, and Selected Poems, all published by Writers’ Workshop in Calcutta.
Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust Department of English, University of Hyderabad
2009
Call for Entries
Entries are invited from young poets in India writing in English for the inaugural
Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize.
The Prize was instituted by the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English and is being administered jointly by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. The prize consisting of a cash award of Rs.10, 000 and a citation will be presented annually at a literary event in Hyderabad in the month of October. The entries will be judged by a distinguished jury of poets and literary personalities.
Entries are invited from all Indian citizens between 20-40 years old and writing poetry in English.
Entries must include:
1. Five (5) different poems written by the applicant;
2. Evidence of age
3. Complete contact information (including phone numbers and email addresses)
Note: Please do not put your name on the poems to be submitted to the jury members.
Entries must reach:
Dr. Aparna Rayaprol
Convener, Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
c/o Study in India Program
University of Hyderabad
Hyderabad 500046
rayaproltrust@gmail.com
Deadline: September 1, 2009
The winner will be announced latest by the first week of October and arrangements for the travel and accommodation for the person chosen for the award will be made by the Trust and the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.
The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust was started in the year 2000 to perpetuate the memory of the poet and also promote Indian writing in English. Srinivas Rayaprol (1925-1998), the son of the famous Telugu poet Rayaprolu Subba Rao, is considered one of the significant personalities of the early Indian English Poetry in India. His three major volumes of poetry are Bones and Distances, Married Love and Other Poems, and Selected Poems, all published by Writers’ Workshop in Calcutta.
Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust Department of English, University of Hyderabad
The Shakti Bhatt First Book Award: Call for entries
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation invites nominations for the 2009 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.
Last year's winner was Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Entries may be in any genre: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography, and narrative journalism), and drama. All authors from the subcontinent are eligible but their books must be published in India. The books must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language. Books that have been published elsewhere and have already won prizes are eligible, though less likely to win. Vanity press publications are ineligible.
A 3-member advisory board will shortlist 6 books published between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. This year, the board includes writers Anjum Hasan, Zac O'Yeah and poet Jeet Thayil. The shortlisted books will be sent to the 2009 panel of judges: novelist Rana Dasgupta, editor Mukund Padmanabhan and Professor Meenakshi Mukherjee.
The winner will be announced in the second half of November and the prize presentation will take place in December 2009. The winner will receive a cash award of Rs One lakh and a trophy.
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust set up by the late writer/editor's family to keep her memory alive. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages.
For further information, contact shaktibhattprize@gmail.com
[Via Jeet Thayil]
Friday, July 17, 2009
Events in Hyderabad over this weekend
Two events, do come for either/both.
1. Book reading from Pinki Virani's Deaf Heaven. (It's also billed as India's first cell novel but whatever. For the purposes of this event and announcement, it's a regular book.)
Saturday, 18th July, 6pm
Crossword Bookstores, City Center Mall,
Road Nos. 1 & 10, Banjara Hills.
The Little Theatre will read with the author.
2. Urban Changes. A photography exhibition showcasing India through the lenses of young South Asian photographer.
1. Book reading from Pinki Virani's Deaf Heaven. (It's also billed as India's first cell novel but whatever. For the purposes of this event and announcement, it's a regular book.)
Saturday, 18th July, 6pm
Crossword Bookstores, City Center Mall,
Road Nos. 1 & 10, Banjara Hills.
The Little Theatre will read with the author.
2. Urban Changes. A photography exhibition showcasing India through the lenses of young South Asian photographer.
Opening Sunday, July 19th, 6 pm.
At: Kalakriti Art Gallery
Road Nr. 10, Banjara Hills – Hyderabad
with artist Baptist Coelho
followed by a panel discussion
panelists:
● Vijay Marur - Theatre
● Sridala Swami – Literature/Film
● Shankar Narayan - Architecture
● Vinod Pavarala – Art
● S. P. Shorey – Urban Planning
● Sujata Patel – Sociology
(Gah. Formatting. I give up).
Also, a couple more announcements coming up but will post them tomorrow so that they can have your undivided attention.
Also, a couple more announcements coming up but will post them tomorrow so that they can have your undivided attention.
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