A city can be a lonely place, says Seema Punwani at a recent literary session, titled An Evening of Stories: The City as a Muse held at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Sadashivanagar.
And this isn’t just true for migrant workers or people from lower socio-economic classes for whom every day is a constant strife. “You could have a proper job. But still, a city can be lonely, “she says in response to a question from the audience about whether cities really provide what they promise. Punwani, one of the five writers who read at this event, part of IIHS City Scripts and held in collaboration with Sangam House, adds, “You may not relate to everything in that city, but you will be able to find one spot that you can own and make it yours. It is important to find what your place is and what speaks to you.”
Vidya Rao and Sumana Ramanan | Photo Credit: IIHS Media Lab
Multiple perspectives
Cities, how they shape people and how people are shaped by them, were a recurring theme in the work of these five writers -- Sumana Ramanan, Vidya Rao, Seema Punwani, Felipe Franco Munhoz and Francesco Leto -- who are currently part of the Sangam House writing residency. The evening, which consisted of these writers reading from their current manuscripts, followed by an audience interaction, offered insights into all their multiple perspectives and worlds: from Rao’s tenderly told encounter with an ageing tawaif, Mahtab Bai, in Delhi’s G.B. Road to Ramanan’s deep dive into Khayal, Munhoz’s version of Koshy’s as fictional as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Punwani’s pithy short story about class conflict, migration and domestic violent and Leto’s no-holds-barred meditation on writing, passion and pain.
Felipe Franco Munhoz (Left ) with Seema Punwani. | Photo Credit: IIHS Media Lab
Urban voices
“What do you do with a courtesan who has become old,” asks Rao, during the post-reading audience interaction, pointing out that Chanakya’s Arthashastra, for instance, has a huge section detailing what one could do with these women. And, yet, despite the hardships that these women frequently encounter, she also noticed this: “A sense of great courage and ability to laugh at anything,” she remembers.
Talking about how the event was conceptualised, Pooja Sagar, who leads the Word Lab and Library teams at IIHS that curates the monthly and annual City Scripts, says, “For us at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, locating nuanced art and cultural practices that transform urban spaces across the world has been a strong interest,” believes Sagar, adding that since Sangam House provides a space for authors to curate their voices, it perfectly matched with Word Lab’s interest in discovering urban voices. Also, “we always see a good turnout for events organised around author’s craft and writing processes. There’s a lot of interest in this from the public.”
