Sadanand Manon as the interviewer is always a pleasure to watch. With his in depth knowledge of fine arts, he usually enhances the quality of the interview, enriching it with more info in addition to what the artist interviewed conveys.
Menon’s Raghu Rai interaction yesterday was one such memorable event. Rai came up with some from-the-heart talk like ‘put the heart on the camera sensor to get the photograph with a darshan not dhrushyam… you have to touch and connect to each and every minute space of the frame and have to enrich it with the inner spiritual experience .. et al.
Menon asked him as expected about Rai’s obsession with clouds and drew the best response from Rai.
(I’ll be writing a detailed article in Tamil on Raghu Rai interaction).
It is a pity not even a single photograph clicked by the master photographer was exhibited while the discussion was going on about them. Internet has tons of Raghu Rai photographs as everyone knows. Someone could have tapped that resource and could have provided on a flash drive enough material for the interaction.. #TheHindu Literary Festival
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Last century’s sculptor and paitner Ram Kinkar (Shanthiniketan)’s works are being recreated by ‘Installation artist’ and foremost painter/sculptor of present times, Vivan Sundaram. The exercise is comprehensively captured in a massive movie documentary of 120 minutes duration run time, by the ace cinematographer R.V.Ramani.
To engage a 500 strong crowd in a post lunch session on Ram Kinkar is pretty tough, as everyone other than the event organizers understand, especially when 90% of the audience don’t know Ram Kinkar, Ramani, Vivan and installation art, in that order.
But the interaction proceeded merrily and ate away 10 more extra minutes too #TheHindu_Literary_Festival
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Happy to observe Thirukkural is in the lime light again. There is absolutely no doubt It deserves all the adulation it receives and much more. But scholars and poets like A.R.Venkatachalapathy and Sukumaran going gaga over Gopalakrishna Gandhi’s translation of Thirukkural into English is something one can’t understand why. Gandhi recited a few of his translated kurals on stage today which left one wonder what is so extraordinary about them.
பரந்து கெடுக உலகு இயற்றியான் – let God wander cursed – Does this convey the meaning of பரந்து கெடுக?
Gopal Gandhi says Kural is like a telegram and within a 7 words structure, Valluvar has packed so much information in each kural paa. GG has sort of attempted to translate Kural into English, adopting the 7 word framework as in Tamil.
At least two generations of Tamils blissfully unaware of the technology of 19th century like telegraph now exist and the telegram metaphor cannot provide an instant connect with them being outdated. Tweet may be the new form that could engage the GenNext ensuring Kural glides efforlessly into the next century and it provides the ability to come out with brilliant transcreation 140 letters in length, per kural paa.
Setting Thirukural to (carnatic) is also not happening for the first time in history, now. 30 years ago a similar venture to release a series of discs commenced with much fanfare – a disc each for a chapter of 10 kural paas. The singer was Sirkazhi Govindarajan and the ambitious initiative petered out after singing full thorat, the first few chapters. #TheHindu_Literary_Festival
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Sanjay &Raghu Rai interaction superb…& painter Gulam Mohamed Sheik’s. Enchanting paintings.. Devadutt Pattanaik has lot of fans #LitFest
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Question : Like bringing out national integration through sports, can’t it be ushered through carnatic music?
Response: Do you suggest getting 11 vocalists perform together on the stage?
Sanjay Subramanian – Audience interaction yesterday #TheHindu Literary Festival
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Erotica created in English gets centre stage in the annual literary festival; its country cousin in Tamil gets the beep