Kaafiya – A Literary Festival Par Excellence
On Sunday, October 11th 2015, Delhi had one more reason to celebrate and feel proud, namely the tremendous success of the literary festival Kaafiya. Organized in the amphitheatre of the very famous India habitat Center, which is the hub of various cultural and literary festivals in the National Capital Region, this maiden poetry festival was the brain child of a bunch of young and enthusiastic poets. The event spread over two days, featured panel discussions, poetry reading sessions, dance performances and even a book launch, all of which were aimed at helping merging the various artistic forms with the beautiful and creative art of poetry.
The conceptualization and preparation for the festival stretched over two days, i.e. 10th and 11th Oct 2015, was started nearly 3 month back. The founder and director of Kafiyaa, Yaseen Anwer, along with the members of the organizing committee which include, Dipankar Mukherjee, Saumya Kulshreshtra, Aparna Pathak and various other artistic people, worked extremely hard to promote the festival on social media sites and amidst the younger crowd in Delhi.
The two were assisted by a team of young volunteers in making this wonderful event a great success. While #Kaafiya has been trending at top on twitter almost every Tuesday for the past month or so, the team was also busy visiting various colleges across the NCR to create awareness and generate support for the festival.
The festival was attended by some of the most famous names from the field of art and literature. Famous actress and writer Deepti Naval, had the audiences hanging on to her every word as she recited some of her beautiful poems and also when she held a small chatting session with the audiences.
Eminent poet Shri Ashok Chakradhar, Shri Sumant Batra, Ms. Ms. Arundhati Subramaniam, Ms. Peegy Mohan and various other scholars, poets and literary geniuses also graced the festival with their presence. In addition, the festival also provided a platform for some wonderful performances young upcoming poets and artists who left the audiences spell bound with their amazing skills.
There was also a book launch event, which was carried out in an innovative manner with the book being launched at the end of a mesmerizing dance performance by Adrija Sarkar. The book named Kafiyaana, features poems by 90 poets from across India and the globe.
This book was compiled from the poems selected from more than 700 submissions for the Delhi Poetry Challenge, which was a open competition organized by Readomania as a part of the run up to Kaafiya. There was also a poetry reading session by some of the poets featured in the book.
With Kaafiya, the literary minds in Delhi got a new and innovative platform, that not only addressed the various issues that plague the field in modern times but also sought solutions to some common problems faced by poets and other writers.
Most importantly it provides a means for young and upcoming poets to present their talent and for the audiences to learn something new about this creative field which is generally ignored by the society.
We wish team Kaafiya a happy and bright future and pray for even greater success in their future endeavors.
Photo Credit: Promilla Qazi
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