Two poles meet at Mussoorie International writers festival

MUSSOORIE, 8 OCT: On the 2nd day of the Mussoorie International Writers’ Festival, poets converged under the famous lyre tree in the Tea Garden of Woodstock School, today, to recite excerpts from their poems.
Stephen Alter welcomed the poets and the invited guests on the occasion.
Idrak Bhatty, the famous Urdu poet, read out verses from his poem, ‘Dense Snow’, which is about the beauty of Kashmir. Another poem read out by him was ‘Phases of the Wind’, which was interwoven beautifully using the rhythm of Urdu.
Idrak Bhatty was of the view that Urdu poetry is a universe of lustrous pictures that presents in words of varying hue a delicacy of thought and depth of meaning. Every word, every simile and metaphor bears within itself a whole world of meaning. He also said that poems ought to be written in the language which the writer is familiar with and that goes with the environment he lives in. He recited several verses from his collection of poems, which were appreciated by the audience present. Like most Indians of the present day, Idrak Bhatty, too, has been nurtured in both eastern and western cultures. The accent of his poems showed its own distinctive identity; their rhythm and idiom reflecting contemporary awareness.
Idrak Bhatty’s recent collection of Urdu poems is titled Sarchashma-e-abadi – The Eternal Spring, and was published this year by Mapin. Born in Sialkot, Punjab and educated in Allahabad and Toronto, Idrak Bhatty’s career as an economist has been both distinctive and utterly contemporary. After his retirement in 1991, Bhatty turned to his first love, literature. Although he studied English literature, it was Urdu, his mother tongue that he loved. While Bhatty has written traditional ghazals, he felt that it was time that Urdu writers experimented more with loosening the grip of tradition. The Eternal Spring gives voice to Idrak Bhatty’s humanistic temperament and perspective.
Following him, Sampurna Chattarji, a poet, fiction-writer and translator read out the poems ‘Dog mob and rock concert’,  ‘Mother Daughter Duet’ ‘Cement Ship of national highway 47’ and many other poems that were immensely appreciated by all present. Sampurna’s debut poetry collection ‘Sight May Strike You Blind’ was published by the Sahitya Akademi in 2007 and reprinted in 2008. Her poetry has featured on RTHK Radio 4 Hong Kong and in the international documentary ‘Voices in Wartime’ directed by Seattle-based Rick King. Her translation of Sukumar Ray's poetry and prose titled ‘Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray’ was first published in 2004 by Penguin and reissued in 2008 as ‘Wordygurdyboom!’ Her books for children include ‘The Greatest Stories Ever Told’ (Penguin/Puffin, 2004), ‘Mulla Nasruddin’ (Penguin/Puffin, 2008) and ‘Three Brothers and the Flower of Gold’ (Scholastic, 2008). Her first novel, ‘Rupture’, is forthcoming from HarperCollins. She has also translated the contemporary Bengali poet Joy Goswami. Sampurna was awarded the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Scholarship to Edinburgh University in 2005 and the Highlights Foundation Scholarship to the Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, New York in 2006.
The final poet of the day was Gieve Patel, who read out several excerpts from
‘Postmortem’ and ‘Old Man’s Death’. He says in the poem, “There may be a very small comfort
In knowing yourself finally.
Useless – when even grandchildren
Have grown beyond your love………”
The poem explains the pain of Old Age in a very subtle way. Gieve Patel also said that Multitude comes to a man when he requires power to heal. He also read out a poem called ‘Hill Station’. The enduring concerns in Patel’s poetry were its frailty, absurdity and perishability, the perpetual looming shadow of physical death. Patel believes that work of art must be born of a state of inner necessity.
Gieve Patel, a profane monk is one of India's most distinguished poets, dramatists and painters. He has published three books of verse: Poems (1966), How Do You Withstand, Body (1976) and Mirrored, Mirroring (1991), the last was published by Oxford University Press, Madras. His poems have appeared in several anthologies in India and abroad. A Prince, his first play, was produced by Theatre Group, Bombay, in 1970. His later plays, Savaksa and Mister Behram, were produced in 1982 and 1987 respectively. A volume of his collected plays, Mister Behram and Other Plays, has just been released by Seagull Books, Calcutta. His work is widely anthologised. Patel has been a recipient of fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC in 1984, The Rockefeller Fellowship by the University of Chicago in 1992 and he was presented the C.R. Parekh Writer in Residence Award by the Nirman Foundation, University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Gieve Patel is also a well-known painter. His paintings and sculptures have been exhibited widely and are represented in many museum collections around the world. He has written a number of essays on art, including a survey  of Contemporary Indian Painting, for Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Patel has worked as a medical practitioner in rural and urban India Gieve Patel lives and works in Mumbai.
At the end, Stephen Alter thanked the audience and hoped that the audience surely would have benefited from the work of these poets.
Earlier in the day, Fiction was read out at the library of the school in which the children also were invited to listen to eminent writers like Allen Sealy, Shamini Flint and Ken Spillman, who read out excerpts from their books. Allen Sealy read out excerpts from his book about Delhi, in which the backdrop is the Delhi University Ridge area through the eyes of an autorickshaw driver. Ken Spillman and Shamini also read out a few paragraphs from their books.

MUSSOORIE, 8 Oct: The meeting of two eminent writers, ‘poles apart’, took place for the first time at the “Joint Session on Polar Journeys - Two Writers’ Perspectives” at Parker Hall, Woodstock School, today. This was as part of the Writers’ Festival underway, here.
Gretel Ehrlich, one of America's foremost nature writers, born and raised in California, but moved to Wyoming to live in 1976, has published essays in The New York Times, Harper's, and The Atlantic Monthly. Her books include ‘The Solace of Open Spaces’, ‘Heart Mountain’, ‘Islands’, the ‘Universe, Home and The Future of Ice’. An extensively travelled person in the Arctic, she shared her experience with the audience and fellow writer Gabrielle Walker, who is an award-winning science writer, a PhD in chemistry from Cambridge. Walker has presented many programmes for BBC radio and has served as climate-change editor for Nature, features editor at New Scientist, and visiting professor at Princeton University. She is the author of “An Ocean of Air”: Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere and The Hot Topic: What We Can Do About Global Warming. She has extensively worked on Antarctica.
The two writers were meeting each other face to face for the first time.
Speaking to Garhwal Post, Gretel said, “Although we were working on different topics, but our goals are the same - to create awareness among the masses on the fragile condition of the poles.”
She added further that indigenous knowledge had to be respected and incorporated as indigenous peoples were much near to nature and knew the way to harness it with utmost humility. Gretel also said that the use of dog sledges by indigenous people, who are also known by the name “Inuit’, helped in conservation. The introduction of the snow mobile was harming the Arctic immensely. She further added that the Arctic was melting at an alarming rate. She was of the view that the Arctic had shrunk to half much more rapidly than the scientists had expected. Gretel said the meeting with Gabrielle had been fruitful and she was enjoying the time spent together at the festival. She said that it seemed they were now two polar sisters.
The two nature lovers are looking forward to such meetings at different forums in the near future.