SOURCE: THEHINDU

The inaugural edition of the Pondicherry Literature and Arts Festival (PLAF) was held with a spotlight on two patriot-poets associated with the city, Sri Aurobindo and Subramania Bharati, whose thoughts and ideas continue to cast an influence on modern minds.

The two-day event, which featured music, dance, philosophy and poetry, was hosted through sessions at the Aurodhan Art Gallery and Krtashraya Gardens, on the theme, ‘Towards the Essence: Emotion, Humanism, Poetics, Ecology’.

Sunday’s programmes began with a virtual reading of Sri Aurobindo’s ‘Who’ by Karan Singh, former chairman of the Auroville Foundation, Alok Pandey and Anand Reddy.

Historian P. Raja and Meenakshi Amma drew out the diverse aspects of Bharathiyar’s poetry.

The speakers also dwelt on the meeting of minds when the lives of the two giants intersected in the city during the second decade of the 20th Century. In fact, they came to be kindred souls during that period of the freedom struggle.

Anuradha Majumdar and Sabin Iqbal were among those who presented poetry and fiction/non-fiction readings. One of the innovations was the BYOP (Bring Your Own Poetry/Prose) ‘open mic’ session, where established and upcoming names presented excerpts from their work, said Lalit Verma, founder of Aurodhan and co-curator of the event.

The event was launched on Saturday with an invocation from an organ melody of The Mother, who was the spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, and readings from the poet-philosopher’s works by poet Sudeep Sen. Arshiya Sethi and Aneesh Raghavan presented lec-dems on dance.

A flute recital by Shashank Subramanyam, a performance by Hari Sundaram (mridangam) and Trichy Krishna Swamy (ghatam), and a concert by Mahesh Viku Vinayakram and team were the other highlights. A photography and sculpture exhibition was also hosted as part of the event.