Padma Bhushan awardee Javed Akhtar was in town yesterday to inaugurate the 10th edition of Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet or KaLam at the Victoria Memorial Grounds. The veteran poet, lyricist and screenwriter took to stage in the presence of Dr. Jayanta Sengupta, Mr. Chanakya Chaudhary and Malavika Banerjee.
To set the tone for the literary meet, he quoted “As an Urdu speaker by birth, I took immense pride in our language, culture and aesthetics. However, as I grew up I realised the treasure chest Bengali language is in itself. It is an honour to be invited to the Kolkata Literary Meet as it is through books and literature which people connect with each other.”
The inaugural speech was followed by the book unveiling of Akhtar’s In Other Words, translated by Srijato in Bengali. An engaging discussion on the identity of a language, how it can be wrongfully linked to a particular religion was moderated by filmmaker Sangeeta Datta. A poetry session succeeded the conversation, where Akhtar narrated his originals ahead of Srijato’s reading of its translations.
Noble Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Bandyopadhyay took to stage after the inaugural event to discuss his newly published, illustrated cook-book Cooking to Save Your Life”. He was accompanied by illustrator Cheyenne Oliver and moderated by comedian Anuvab Pal.
Later, author Vir Sanghvi shared his memoirs with Sandip Roy and the first day of the meet came to an end with a Bangla session where Chandril Bhattacharya, Srijato and Anupam Roy discussed the challenges of writing columns and recording vlogs.
The Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet will be held from March 22 – 27, 2022 at the iconic Victoria Memorial Hall and GD Birla Sabhaghar on March 23. Sessions will be held to celebrate the centenaries of RK Laxman, Sahir Ludhianvi, and Satyajit Ray. Works of legendary actor Soumitra Chattopadhyay will be remembered by Madhabi Mukherjee, his daughter Poulomi Bose and Suman Mukhopadhyay.
The six day saga will witness the presence of Mallika Sarabhai, Ustad Rashid Khan, Usha Uthup, Simi Garewal, Remo Fernandes and Jim Sarbh to name a few. The annual literary festival will also feature enthralling performance every day through various art forms.
This year’s edition of Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet coincides with 100 years of the Victoria Memorial Hall.