The first edition of Bengaluru’s World Famous Semi-deluxe Writing Program, started by Anjum Hasan, Zac O’ Yeah and Eshwar Sunderesan, concluded last week with a convocation at Shoonya. This was followed by a talk by Sugata Srinivasraju in the ‘Speaking of the City Series’.
“We invite writers, artists, journalists, scholars, architects, scientists, entrepreneurs, historians, geographers, activists or anyone who has worked on Bangalore to talk in the series,” explains Anjum. Talking of the program, spread over 12 weekends, the novelist said, “we offer a broad-based creative programme for anyone interested in writing. We asked people to send in a short essay and chose candidates based on that.”
The idea is to expose them to as many genres and writing as possible. We had fiction, thrillers, short stories, poetry. We also had someone teaching children’s fiction, business writing, scripts, short plays, translations and so on.”
A literary agent came and spoke about how you can market your book and we also covered criticism. Most participants were novice writers.”
Talking of how the programme came into being, Anjum said, “Shoonya chose us. It is a kind of a collaboration between us. They wanted to open up Shoonya to any kind of art, including literature and asked us to create a programme that would draw people to it.”
And that also led to the monthly conversation series, “Speaking of The city”. Sugata spoke of Malleshwaram where he was born. He spoke of the transformation of Sankey Tank and the temples in and around Malleshwaram, how the old landmarks have gone and the changes in the lifestyle then and now.
Sugata also spoke of the kinds of writers, their styles and the language that each one uses. Talking of the great poet Gopal Krishna Adiga, Sugata said, “His writings taught me that Kannada as a language can be broken down and reconstructed.”
Speaking of Shivaram Karanth and Kuvempu Sugata said, “These people sat in tiny rooms on their desks and just wrote. Today their words have reached across the globe. That is the power of writing.”
