G.Akila juggles the muse, work, home and a nine-year-old daughter. She engages in free verse and the Japanese forms of haiku and haibun written in English language. She has read and conducted workshops in writers’ carnivals organised in Hyderabad and her works have been published in anthologies and several reputed online and print journals. She has presented poetry at various reading events such as the Hyderabad Litfest 2019, Goa Arts and Literature Festival, 2016, TEDx -VNR VJIET College, Hyderabad and the Young Writers Festival 2017 edition of Sahitya Akademi. She is also an active member of the Twin City Poetry Club, Hyderabad. Her poem ‘Stains’ is one of the ten poems shortlisted for the Womeninc Sakhi Award 2018. Currently, she is deciphering contours of a dream in her first manuscript of poetry.
Manish Pathania, a software consultant by profession, has published two chapbooks on Amazon Kindle named “Poems that do not rhyme” and “Recycle Bin”
He was the winner of Juggernaut short story contest 2018.
His works has been published efictionIndia magazine, Muse India, The Hans India, Half baked books blog, and The Ancient souls.
Manish is a freelance public speaker, adventure sports enthusiast, traveler and a seasoned Toastmaster.
“One World, One Faith One Race, One Colour, Just A Different Face” – this is the motto of a man who juggles between three worlds; the world of IT, the world of cinema and the world of poetry. Born and raised in Goa, Tagore Almeida shuttled between Goa and London to emerge with an ideology of a world united in peace. Tagore’s passion is cinema. He has already scripted two commercial films in India and written, produced and directed a handful of short films, some of which have featured in short film festivals across the world, including the Cannes Short Film Festival. A computer science graduate from the UK who has worked in London, Dubai and Singapore, he has just completed writing his first novel, is in the pre-production phase of his next short film ‘The Forgiveness’. In this exclusive, he talks of what makes him tick and what drew him to spoken word as a form of poetry – a style which he has exploited eloquently to question the social trauma faced by many with an impactful poem called “Whose Side?”
You have an interesting name — Tagore Almeida. Was this something you adopted or was it given to you by your parents?
My late father was initially a journalist and has also authored two books in Konkani back home in Goa. He admired Rabindranath Tagore immensely and felt that if he named his son after the great man, his son too would show signs of great literature. Ooops, let’s not go there!
So, you have started moving towards your father’s expectations! You have taken to words. Now you have started putting your poetry in a format called spoken word and have started putting it on you tube. Can you tell us a little more about this form? Most people use visuals with words but you only use words and no photos Why?
A friend of mine back home encouraged me to get on board spoken word late last year. He was frustrated like most of my friends that I wasn’t doing much with my verses and had been spending a lot of my time writing films. So I finally decided to give it a go, just to test the medium. So I shortlisted twelve of my verses and said I was going to focus on those over the next eighteen months.
Sheldon John Dias was born and raised in Kolkata. The city, with all its chaotic grandeur and unyielding magic, has left an indelible mark on him. He acknowledges its shortcomings, yet celebrates its chaos. He has been teaching in Dubai since 2016. Sheldon began his career as a journalist before moving to the Education industry. He was associated with Trinity College, London before taking the leap to Dubai. Sheldon has dabbled in the creative Arts and has worked as an Assistant Director in a few plays in Kolkata before writing and directing his first play at The Short and Sweet Theatre Festival in Dubai. He is currently working on his first book where he attempts to experiment with various forms of literary expression.
Malcolm Carvalho writes poetry and fiction when he is not occupied with his daytime job of a software engineer. His work has been featured in Bengaluru Review, 365 Tomorrows, Narrow Road, Spark, Reading Hour, Literary Yard, Muse India and in Urban Shots, an anthology of stories with urban settings. He has attended the Bangalore Writers Workshop and is a regular at weekly poetry meet-ups at Lahe Lahe in Bengaluru. You can read more of his work at www.grainsofthought.wordpress.com.
Preeti Vangani is a poet & personal essayist. Her work has been published in BOAAT, Juked, Gulf Coast, Threepenny Review among other journals. She is the winner of the RL Poetry Award 2017 and her debut book of poems titled Mother Tongue Apologize was published in Feb 2019 (RLFPA Editions). She holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco.
Paula Puolakka (1982) is a Beat poet, writer, and MA (History of Science and Ideas) who has won poetry and short story contests held in the USA and Israel. In April 2019, her long essay concerning the problems with technology and the invisible warfare was given credit by The Finnish Reserve Officers’ Federation and in June 2019, Puolakka’s poem was given an honorable mention by Tiny Spoon Literary Magazine. Her work can be found through Poetry Potion. Puolakka has also been judging a few small writing contests in Finland.
In 1980, Satyajit Ray made a movie with a story he had written which won him both national and international acclaim — Hirak Rajar Deshe (In the Land of the Diamond King). A sequel to his earlier Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, this film depicts a tyrant who brainwashed people with a machine to think: “Lekha pora kore je, anahare more she (Those who study, die of starvation).”
Does this strike a chord?
Perhaps that is why we find educational institutions coming under flak and violent strikes on professors and students who are trying to study and lead a peaceful life. The attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University students yesterday has the social media filled with empathy for the victims. Is this reenactment of Hirak Rajar Deshe?
Poetry by well-known writers of yore used to express student solidarity and hope has also been coming under attack. In Kanpur, IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) students organised a meet to show solidarity towards the students of Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi and recited a well-known poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a 20th century legend who was even nominated for the Nobel Prize. One of the faculty and fifteen students initiated a complaint and demanded expulsion of the protest organisers, accusing them of “spreading hate against India”. A panel was set up to ban the poem. The empowering poem that led to all this controversy is called ‘Hum Dekhenge’ (we will see).
Rahman Abbas
Rahman Abbas, the 2018 Sahitya Akademi winner for Urdu, had much to say in favour of Faiz’s poem: “It is disgusting to have to give clarifications of Faiz’s poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’ to absolve it from being called critical of the Hindu faith or any faith. It is as absurd and laughable as absurd as claims such as the RSS was a cultural wing of the Jamat-e-Islami of Pakistan, or Rabindranath Tagore’s Novel Gora was anti-Christian, or Kabir had mocked Charlie Chaplin in his dohe*. Such absurd parallel could only be drawn by an insane or moron appointed to create deflection and disharmony.
“Faiz Ahamd Faiz is best known for being a revolutionary poet who aesthetically merged romanticism with the desire for a revolution, a social struggle or peoples uprising against the tyrant rulers. His poetry and life were a struggle to become the voice of the voiceless — it challenges dictatorship and repression. ‘Hum Dekhenge’ can be seen as the voice of the masses against the tyrant rulers or dictators who have subjugated poor people. The poem is a beacon of hope against darkness spread by authoritarian regimes. The poet imagines a world where tyrannical persecutors would be defeated and people will govern crushing falsehood and its followers. The tyrant rulers will be humiliated when their crowns will be thrown off and the people will reclaim being the God of the planet. The people will rule — we all are people — and we should celebrate that time and that day as it is a victory of people over tyrannical systems.
