The fourth edition of the two-day Travel Writing Festival organised by Walking Bookfairs (WBF), an independent bookstore in Bhubaneswar, began on September 5 with a photo exhibition on Beat Poet, Allen Ginsberg at The 3rd Space, a repurposed warehouse. Akshaya Bahibala, co-founder of WBF and author of Bhang Journeys, explained that 23 of these pictures, showcased in collaboration with The Allen Ginsberg Project, New York, had never been displayed before. The only known photograph is the one that appears in Ginsberg’s Indian Journals, where he stands before one of the stone chariot wheels of the Konark sun temple. Few know that Ginsberg and his partner visited Puri in 1962.
Editor, Orissa Post and Dharitri, Tathagata Satpathy invited all the speakers on stage before the programme commenced with the first literary panel, The Past, Present and Future of Reading and Writing, that had Aakriti Mandhwani, author, Everyday Reading, and Chandrahas Choudhury, author, My Country Is Literature, in conversation with Swati Murmu, English literature lecturer at PN College (Khorda). Choudhury emphasised the crucial role that parents can play by encouraging reading and gifting books to children.
The next session, Exploring Odisha Through Food: How Migration, Trade and Travel Shaped Odisha’s Cuisine, had Chef Rachit Kirteeman in conversation with Sweta Biswal, author, Beyond Dalma about everything from the availability and usage of different ingredients and how long-lasting ingredients were used during travels throughout history. Speculation on the origins of dahi bara-aloo dum, a street food delicacy, led to a discussion that touched on everything from the coastal borders where Bengal’s luchi-aloo dum meets Odisha’s bara, and how the Marwari communities of Cuttack contributed with the addition of sev. Needless to say, the discussion left the audience hungry for more.
{{/usCountry}}The next session, Exploring Odisha Through Food: How Migration, Trade and Travel Shaped Odisha’s Cuisine, had Chef Rachit Kirteeman in conversation with Sweta Biswal, author, Beyond Dalma about everything from the availability and usage of different ingredients and how long-lasting ingredients were used during travels throughout history. Speculation on the origins of dahi bara-aloo dum, a street food delicacy, led to a discussion that touched on everything from the coastal borders where Bengal’s luchi-aloo dum meets Odisha’s bara, and how the Marwari communities of Cuttack contributed with the addition of sev. Needless to say, the discussion left the audience hungry for more.
{{/usCountry}}The session titled Stories Beyond Borders: The Role of Publishers, Translators and Readers in Making Stories Travel had Abinash from the University of Georgia in conversation with publisher Ravi Singh of Speaking Tiger and author and translator Jerry Pinto. The panel discussed the idea of things being gained in translation and how translation is at the very core of human existence. They also acknowledged the ubiquity of Sarat Chandra’s books in both Odia and Hindi translations. At the end of the session, Pinto encouraged the audience to recite Sorrow and Joy, a poem by Muktabai, with him.
“Being here gave me a lot of inspiration and I have added everything to a list that I maintain about things I want to write about,” said high school student Amvi Avyukta. During the Q&A sessions, she asked questions about reading manga versus literary novels, class hierarchy in food, and finding the right word for translations in the absence of dictionaries available in different languages. “Such festivals show young people that reading is not boring like many assume, and that it opens you to a whole new world of literature,” she said.
The evening ended with an Odia pitha tasting session and a musical jugalbandi featuring Hindustani classical flautist Keerthanraj Shetty and tabla player Susanta Kumar Jena.
On the second day of the festival, about a hundred people gathered at the Bhubaneswar railway station to board the local train to Daspalla as part of the Rail Reading Campaign of the East Coast Railways (ECR). Parmeshwar Funkwal, general manager of ECR, inaugurated the campaign, and 500 books, in Hindi, English and Odia, were distributed to passengers.
“What I found really lovely about this moment was the way the festival simply grew out of its boundaries, pushed past the barriers that are erected and the books began to spread across the train,” said Jerry Pinto. “Watching an entire train being turned into a library, a reading zone, will be one of my most precious memories.”
The train moved through pastures, hills, and long patches of autumnal kaash flowers. “In other fests, you are just a spectator. Here, you are a character in a book. You are travelling in a train. You engage with other people while you are listening to someone else talk. So, a lot of layers are present, just as in a book,” said Romanian Catalina Pavel, who travelled from Kerala to Bhubaneswar for the festival.
As the train stopped at Daspalla, everyone gathered in a tent on the platform for a poetry session that began with Funkwal’s work on Mumbai locals. Several other participants, including established writers, also recited their own poems. “There are other festivals which are small — the novelty and the satisfaction is not in the smallness but in the intimacy. In the respectful sense of community — there’s enthusiasm, there’s excitement but there’s also respect for each other as readers and writers,” said Ravi Singh.
Author Chandrahas Choudhury too applauded the spirit behind the event. “I like it here as it is started by a bookshop and it is run by the bookshop organically every year on very small funding given by a few organisations and it is a participatory festival in which everybody assembles together,” he said.
Indeed, the event brought together enthusiastic readers and gave them the opportunity to mingle with established authors and literary professionals in a welcoming setting. Everyone left enthused at having formed fresh connections and promised to return for more next year.
Akankshya Abismruta is an independent writer.