When I first moved to Chennai, one of the things I missed most was winter, a season to sit in the sun eating oranges. With the passing of years, I find that Margazhi with its nuanced pleasures has taken that place in my heart. The onset of cool, grey mornings, when all true Chennaites wrap up heads and ears against the dew, the showers that mute the sun, the pastel shades of December blossoms, the air-conditioners that can finally be switched off — such are the subtle ways the city announces the softening of the jagged contours of its harsh summer. And then, the Season arrives, with overflowing sabhas , lengthy music and dance schedules, canteen critiques, silk-clad audiences, and hot upma-vadai .
Riding piggyback on these charms comes another event, unique in its conceptualisation, but even more so in its reception. Poetry with Prakriti — presented by The Hindu Lit for Life this year — is a seven-day festival initiated eight years ago, which extends the city’s saturation in culture into a different, less familiar, more intimate medium. In fact, creator Ranvir Shah says the very idea for Poetry with Prakriti was conceived while returning from a music evening one December. “I thought of how I could extend the Sabha concept to poetry, the idea of following a favourite artiste across venues.”
How do you bring a degree of layering back to the 140-character era? How do you tell the instant gratification generation about the slow-release magic of a poem? That’s the challenge of a festival such as this, but the fact that it has not only survived so long but attained a modest fame is nothing short of miraculous. And a sign of hope that this tiny core of aficionados cannot, after all, be killed off so easily. But why am I surprised? Our lives, after all, are steeped in poetry — from loris to morning azaans , from film songs to a fruit vendor’s call, from wedding sangeets to dirges.
More, our poetry — Hindi and Urdu especially — has a rich tradition of kavi sammelans, where poets read aloud in intimate gatherings — smaller, more frequent, and highly popular versions of today’s ‘fests’. With one difference, the modern-day revivals bring together poets from all over, writing in a dozen languages. Says 26-year-old Hindi poet Saurav Roy, who’ll be in Chennai for the first time: “It makes me happy that the city has invited a poet who writes neither in Tamil nor English. Every language brings in a new perspective and readers should get to see that.” This year, the poetry festival will showcase poets from Australia, Singapore, Germany, Gujarat, Goa, Orissa, plus Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, and Mangalore.
Ranvir Shah calls poetry the “single malt of literature”, and extends this idiosyncrasy to the festival’s format. About 25 poets read their works across 60-odd venues around the city — schools, colleges, auditoriums, art galleries, cafes, even sari shops and banks. And Shah is known to have dragged in unsuspecting software employees into a reading at their in-house cafeteria (much to their subsequent enjoyment).
Most poets simply read aloud, some in consonance with another art form. For instance, in one session in Kalakshetra some years ago, haikus were read out with simultaneous interpretations in dance. Poet and two-time participant Arundhati Subramanian says Prakriti’s unconventional venues are a big part of its success. “My first reading was at Fabindia; I really enjoyed that.” She also loves reading in schools and colleges — “I have no problem with poetry being unfashionable, but I dislike how it’s taught. These sessions tell students there are other ways of hanging out with poems, of having fun with them.”
When Chandramohan Naidu was a student, he loved poetry. But it’s not a fondness that middle-class Indian parents take seriously, so he became a banker in Mumbai. “But I stayed in touch with poetry, especially Hindi and Marathi poetry and theatre.” Now in Chennai, he never leaves the city in December. “The event is part of my calendar; I haven’t missed it once in eight years.” For Naidu, what makes it special is hearing poems read out by their creators. “It means a lot to me,” he says.
Earlier, Roy had spoken of the disconnect between readers and writers: “More people are reading today; but earlier, there were fewer but more critical readers.” That’s a caveat that comes with popular culture — good and bad lumped together in the great democracy of public opinion. It’s one reason why some writers are a bit wary of the two-edged sword that is the literary/poetry festival today. But seeing the face of your reader is an intimate temptation few can resist. And poetry lovers like Naidu get to hear their heroes in flesh and blood.
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