Monsoon evokes different kinds of emotions. Romance, happiness, loneliness, melancholy — we all have different memories of the rains. For ages, writers, artists and poets have been etching their thoughts on the monsoon. The petrichor, the overcast sky, the pitter-patter, inspire artists to produce some of their most emotionally rich work. With this thought, Vandana Bokil Kulkarni came up with Pausvela — an evening of poetry reading, organised at the inaugural function of Akshardhara Monsoon Book Sale. Akshardhara has been coming up with Monsoon Book sale since June 2011 with an intention of creating an interest and promote literature among varied sets of readers.
The event was held on June 16 at Maratha Chamber of Commerce, Tilak Road. The poetry reading session was presented by Kulkarni, along with Aparna Kelkar, Anuradha Joshi and Akshay Vatve, and Pinak Aagte was on the synthesiser. Writer and humourist Mangala Godbole, and Dr Sadanand Borse, director of Rajhans Prakashan, were the chief guests.
THE CONCEPT
Talking more about the event, Kulkarni said, “To make the concept more appealing, we added the element of music as well. That said, I feel that without music, poetry reading is incomplete. My team had come up with a combination of music and poetry for the event. Kelkar selected several bandish to perform.”
Kulkarni, who holds a PhD degree in Literature, said that the rains evoke a huge range of emotions amongst us, but it’s different for different age groups of people. She explained, “This concept shows how the different phases of monsoon can have an impact on human emotions. We have included collages of the varied stages of the season like pre-monsoon showers which we experience in the month of May, the retreating monsoon, rains at different times of the day from early morning till midnight. The concept also includes the different relations people have with rains at different stages of their life, right from childhood to old age. So we named it Pausvela.”
LITERARY WORKS INCLUDED
Kulkarni said, “Last year during the closing of the monsoon sale, I was asked if I could come up with a unique concept related to the season as I have been doing Kavyavachan and Abhivachan since 2002. So for this event, I thought of coming up with a concept of Pausvela, how different phases of monsoon are relatable to different stages in human life. Along with my team, I performed a programme on similar lines and we received a good response. But this time we changed the content and tried to get new and lesser known poems, prose and small pieces of literature. There is no dearth of literature inspired by this season, also there are many wonderful literary works by writers that many people still do not know. So we decided to take up new and less popular content as it would add newness to the poetry reading session.”
The event featured prose and poetry by Sunita Deshpande, Durga Bhagwat, Mangesh Padgaonkar, G D Madgulkar, and many others. “We added works of new and old writers in which they have explained how they experienced rain through their words. We picked up small pieces from their literary works that best suited the concept and came up with the script,” she concluded.
