Riyaaz – August 2021

August 2021

“To write a poem is to find a poem.” With these words, the eminent Hindi writer, Mr. Vinod Kumar Shukla opened his address on writing, literature, and the everyday. In the first of his two-lecture series, he spoke on the place of the “I” in writing and art in general. This has aptly been the most recurring question in the sessions each month. Somewhere in the middle of his address, he also said: “I am never absent from my writings”. This perpetual presence is even more of a pursuit for an illustrator as visualizing somebody else’s text means that they have to find the ways in which they stitch their vision without overpowering that of the text and its author.

This question of eking out a space for oneself in the midst of projects thrown one after the other by worldly commitments was also spoken about at length in a span of two sessions by Mr. Piyush Sekhsaria. This “I” is subject to the meandering roads of creative vocation. Having dabbled with different forms, routes, reading material, and genres, Mr. Varun Grover’s session on writing and writing for children was an enlightening as well as empowering experience as he spoke about maintaining nonchalance while writing for children without covering up the political world they will soon inherit and carry on. The standard modus operandi remained at least one assignment per day with an interlude in the form of an interaction with one of the founding faculties, Mr. Atanu Roy wherein his works from different years, done in different media, were revisited and discussed. All in all, the August sessions pushed the envelope of pondering questions concerning art, creation, and subjectivity in a most sophisticated and unwavering manner.