Meda Marwein
SHILLONG:
Ward’s Lake, the city’s iconic tourist spot is all decked in pink cherry blossom trees and Chinese lanterns. The call of the pink flowers enticed a rather rich and vibrant group of characters we lovingly called writers. A year ago, Shillong Literary Festival made its entry in the Cherry Blossom Festival with the lake as its backdrop whilst storytellers in their niche, the visuals or the literary, gather round to engage in discussions on their narratives pertaining to this region of the world.
The stage is set yet again for another edition of the well-received literary fest, this time stretching the event for three days from November 21 to 23.
The inauguration ceremony of the festival was graced by the Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on November 21, with his key speech on the need to promote young talent in the literary sphere, music scene and other vocational learning.
Dignitaries present at the gathering included Vijay Kumar D, commissioner and secretary of Meghalaya, Cyril V Darlong Diengdoh, Director of Tourism Department, Badaplin War, professor of Khasi (NEHU), and Sanjoy Hazarika, a human rights activist, filmmaker, scholar, author and journalist and the International Director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI).
The event had ten sessions with renowned authors like Jerry Pinto, Mamang Dai and even Rahul Bose, actor turned writer featuring in the list. The literary festival according to Badaplin War, serves as a platform or space for writers and budding writers along with literary enthusiasts to get together in this small city and engage in pedagogy of human history.
Session one of the first day focused on the late Temsula Ao, a renowned North East poet, writer and ethnographer who was an icon in Northeastern Hills University (NEHU) as the professor with her Manipuri pan (beetle nut and beetle leave) as Esther Syiem puts it. Ao has put Nagaland and North East on the map through her well-thought characters with themes that closely resemble human experiences in all their vulnerability. Moderated by Chitra Ahanthem, a writer from Manipur, with panelists consisting of Esther Syiem, professor of English from NEHU, Julie Sun Wahlang, professor of English from Union Christian College, and Theyiesinuo Keditsu, a professor from Nagaland, the session was titled “Temsula Ao: A Tribute to her life and work”.
“Her feminine characters are part of the feminist movement but minus the aggressive voice we keep hearing and seeing in the global movement,” says Keditsu. “We’ve so long associated Nagaland with magical realism which has been catering to the mainland as what constitutes our literature, but Ao in her poetry and fiction has put forth human experiences drawn from her experiences and conditions of people in general, and women in particular when it comes to dismantling the patriarchy,” she added.
In another session, Jerry Pinto, a renowned Mumbai-based writer spoke on his newly launched book, The Education of Yuri. He spoke on the intricate nature of character building from different sections of society and the country. Luigi, a character from the North East represents an all too familiar St Edmunds’ boy that Shillong is widely acquainted with. In his session with Karishma Upadhyay, a film journalist and writer, a question was raised by Upadhyay if his work was entirely autobiographical but Pinto says, “That’s the beauty about writing. You take known experiences and familiar personalities and through our imagination and creative fervour we create a character that is part of us and not a part of us either.”
While some visitors paddle their boats on the lake, a great number of others walked towards food stalls or the books sections where authors sit at a signing desk to give snippets of their anecdotes and go through a round of autographs to young adults intoxicated by the very presence of their revered author.
Another highlight of the event was the Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha space, where a huge number of the beloved graphic novels were piled in stacks with life-size characters like Shambu and Supandi greeting the young and old.
A spokesman of the widely acclaimed Tinkle, a national monthly comic that everybody has grown to love it, says that it is their team’s first time at the event. “The range of talent and the ambience of Shillong lives and breathes freshness in all forms,” he said.
The North East is varied in terms of ethnicity and culture. Even the narrative is distinct in different points of the NE map. Here, at the Shillong Literary Festival, great personalities come together to engage in intelligible discussions about the need to voice our own narratives. Despite its fictional stance, glimpses of history right from tribal kingdoms, the struggle of independence, and the modern age along with harsh human truths could be seen in pages.
Beyond the Chicken Neck, were a group of people longing to narrate their stories and open up the eyes of mainlanders of the varied number and perhaps, influence a different narrative that departs from the overused “magic realism.”