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National literary meet concludes

Creative minds: Kerala Sahitya Akademi president M. Mukundan addressing the valedictory function of a literary meet in Thrissur on Wednesday.

Thrissur: ‘Sahitya Bharathi,’ a three-day national literary meet organised by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi, concluded here on Wednesday.

The meet brought together about 100 Malayalam writers, 30 up-and-coming writers in the State, and a 10-member delegation of writers from the north-east.

The delegation included Keisam Priyokumar, Birmangal Moirangthem, Imran Hussain, Archana Puzari, Atulananda Goswami, Karabi Deka Hazarika, Deepanjali Devi and Jiban Narah. Though the meet was billed as a cultural interaction programme-cum-translation workshop, the delegation from the north-east said no serious effort was made for translation. Some of the participants, however, collected Malayalam literary works for possible translation into north-eastern languages.

Archana Puzari from Guwahati said she intended to translate four stories written by Vaisakhan (The Cart Festival, The Paradise Beckons, Clouds of Yesterday, Kapila Vastu) into Assamese. Atulananda Goswami from Guwahati said the meet explored the similarities and dissimilarities between Malayalam and north-eastern literature.

Imran Hussain felt that paucity of interpreters affected the meet. “We (delegates from the north-east) did not understand one word of what Malayali writers said except when they spoke in English. Nor did they comprehend what we said. As a cultural interaction programme, the meet must have achieved its goal, but as a translation workshop and seminar, it left much to be desired,” he said.

Karabi Deka Hazarika, professor at Dibrugarh University, said the meet was preoccupied with poetry and did not have space for genres such as short-story. “There were a few short-story writers in our delegation. They did not get the opportunity to present their works,” it was noted.

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