NALSAR celebrates its first literary festival

Hyderabad: NALSAR has hosted the first edition of the literary festival on July 18-19 at the university campus. The central theme of the festival was Literature and Dissent and the sub themes for the panel discussions ranged around the topics: Protest Movements and the Arts, Post Independence Literature: Unravelling Partition and Emergency Narratives, Discrimination Depictions: Interwoven Identities.

Authors like Urvashi Butalia (The Other Side of Silence), Amit Chaudhuri (Odysseus Abroad), Deepa Dhanraj (documentary film-maker, Invoking Justice) and Vithal Rajan (author and member of The Little Theatre) were present at the event. Urvashi Butalia shared her experiences with collecting partition narratives for her book The Other Side of Silence; she also spoke at length on the nature of gender identities and her experiences in discovering the absence of dichotomy between male and female. Her experiences with working at Zubaan Books, an independent feminist publishing house, based in Delhi, were also discussed.

Amit Chaudhuri spoke about his introduction towards creative writing, and the shift in focus and value from poetry to prose in the Indian context. He spoke extensively about his experiences abroad, and the differences and similarities between legal writing and creative writing. He also discussed the processes that went into the writing of his most recent book, Odysseus Abroad, and the slightly autobiographical nature of the work.

Deepa Dhanraj conducted a screening of her documentary, Invoking Justice. The documentary was very well received by the audience, who got a very different perspective on the lives of Muslim women who established their own Jamaat. She was also a part of a panel on Discrimination Depictions, alongside Susie Tharu (professor at EFL University) and Vithal Rajan.

There was also a theatre performance by the Chennai based theatre group, Thespian and a book reading by the Little Theatre Hyderabad, which also featured Neal Hall. A spoken word poetry workshop was organised by the Airplane Poetry Movement founders, Shantanu Anand and Nandini Verma, which was followed by a performance by the workhop participants.

The enthusiastic crowd demanded an encore from the participants, which led to an informal Open Mic event for poetry.A Literary Quiz, which was conducted by NALSAR students, Pallavi Balakrishnan and Amritha Kumar also took place on Sunday, which saw very enthusiastic particpation from quizzers across Hyderabad.