Sowing the seeds and love of literature among the young

PANAJI: In Goa, rarely can any place that’s not a church manage to garner a crowd early on a Sunday morning. On December 7, the International Centre Goa in Dona Paula proved otherwise, as the concluding day of the Goa Arts and Literary Festival (GALF) saw a good 60-80 students gather on its lawns. Admittedly, creepy tales don’t sound as creepy in a crowded locale when the sun is out, but author Jessica Faleiro nevertheless had them spellbound as she read an extract from her book, ‘Afterlife: Ghost stories from Goa’.
The GALF, which concluded a week ago had children from schools around Goa dutifully lined up every morning to listen and learn. Samar Halarnkar spoke to them about ‘How to read a newspaper’ and what goes into reporting; Ali Aftab Saeed and Chee Malabar spoke about music and writing; Dilip D’Souza spoke about writing his new book on Sachin Tendulkar’s last test, then regaled them with the joy of numbers; Trusha Ganesh, all of 13, spoke about blogging. Even Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma, interacted with children from the Konkani-medium Ravindra Kelekar Kalamandir, to great mutual enjoyment.
This focus on young blood was a highlight of the fifth edition of GALF. It was a deliberate attempt on the part of the curators to include them, providing a worthy addition to the high-quality discussions and deliberations that have distinguished the festival for a few years now.
Vivek Menezes, the festival’s co-curator, explained the logic to TOI: “As a festival run by volunteers from the Goa Writers Group, we take responsibility for nurturing the next generation of readers,” he said. “So we reached out to schools across the state, from both rural and urban areas, to send their kids for programmes tailored to give them a taste of what GALF offers.”
It wasn’t just kids at the GALF. College students from around Goa also made their presence felt at many sessions. In fact, some were roped in to actively be part of the festival. For instance, a posse of students of event management from S S Dempo College, Altinho Panaji, handled the crowd and guests with remarkable efficiency. Giving them company were some students of journalism and mass media from St Xavier’s College, Mapusa, who were roped in to record sessions and conduct interviews.
“The experience at GALF is of intense learning and work experience,” Nitin Volvoikar, assistant professor of journalism at St Xavier’s, told TOI. “Students actually get to practice what they learn in college.” In a blog maintained by the department, his students wrote about their experiences interviewing media and literary giants.
Other highlights of this edition of the annual festival were punctuality (in previous editions, sessions were regularly tossed about), the series of Babasaheb Ambedkar lectures (delivered by Varsha Ayyar and Chandrabhan Prasad) that tried to highlight issues of backward castes and communities, sessions on food (a swathe of food writers and bloggers descended upon the festival) and the usual area focus (it had delegates from and focused on issues regarding Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore and Australia).