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Festival in honour of Edassery

The Thunchan Memorial Trust headed by writer M.T. Vasudevan Nair has drawn up an ambitious plan to organise a people's festival to mark the birth centenary of poet and playwright Edassery Govindan Nair.

The "People's festival to honour Edassery" would form a core component of the Thunchan Day celebrations in 2006, an event that has been attracting the top writers and poets in the country to Tirur, where the Thunchan Memorial has its headquarters.

Thunchan Festival-2006 will be held from February 1 to 5. The people's festival in memory of Edassery will be spread over the first three days of the festival.

The trust is banking on a generous support from the Kendra Sahithya Akademi to make it a fitting tribute to the literary genius of Edassery.

The Edassery Smaraka Trust is also being involved in the programme the highlights of which would be a national seminar and conferences on literary matters.

The Edassery festival assumes added importance since the poet, acknowledged as one of the greats in 20th century Malayalam literature, was a native of Ponnani, close to the seat of Thunchan Memorial.

While announcing the plans, Mr. Vasudevan Nair remarked that since the poetic genius of Edasserry was one that transcended geographical boundaries of Ponnani and Kerala, his ideas and philosophy and his eminence as a poet deserved to be brought to the attention of a world-wide audience. This was what the programmes planned during Thunchan festival in his honour hoped to achieve.

The Kendra Sahithya Akademi had recently supported a festival of the kind Thunchan Memorial Trust has planned for Edassery. That event was to celebrate the birth centenary of poet "P" and was held at Kanhangad. After the three - day `Edassery people's festival", the remaining days of the Thunchan Festival would be taken up by a South Indian Poets' Festival under the auspices of the South Zone Cultural Centre.

A book fair, literary quiz, music programmes, a competition in rapid versification and an awareness programme of National Manuscript Mission would be the other highlights of festival.

R. Madhavan Nair

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