New Delhi, January 21 (Manipur information Centre): The Jaipur Literature Festival, the world`™s largest free literary festival kicked off this morning at Diggi Palace, Jaipur celebrating national and international writers, and encompassing a range of interests including film, music and theatre.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who inaugurated the five day event, recalled the origins of the festival in the year 2006 and stated that when I came first to the festival there were around 40 people and last year it recorded a footfall of over 2 lakh people. At the festival, nearly 300 speakers from various fields are expected to speak on a series of thought provoking issues ranging from gender equality to the global economic crisis and other issues relating to literature, art and films.
On the opening day at Mahindra Humanities Durbar Hall, Diggi Palace today, L. Somi Roy from Manipur and Pradyut Burman from Tripura discussed with writer and poet Janice Pariat from Assam on the topic `“Binodini: Forgotten Kingdoms, Remembered Histories.
The legendary MK Binodini was born to the erstwhile royal family of Manipur. A singularly talented novelist, essayist, and playwright, she wrote scripts and screenplays and was also a sculptor. With a creative output spanning a major part of the past century, Binodini remains an important part of the literary heritage of Manipur and the North Eastern states. Her son L. Somi Roy translated her memoirs of palace life titled The Maharaja`™s Household.
The panel opened with Janice Pariat asking Somi Roy to talk about how the book came about, both the original as well as the translation. Somi Roy spoke about MK Binodini and recalled at New York Centre in 1992 about her difficulty in writing and her desire to write her autobiography and possibilities about writing a series of personal memoir essays.
He narrated, `We talked each other about MK Binodini`™s relationship with Poknapham where she published the original series between 2002-2007. We talked about how unique a process it was for me to translate most of the book with her writer`s input before she went into decline before her death. We talked about how as oral literature it was revisiting family lore as literature`.
At Janice Pariat`s invitation, Somi Roy read two excerpts from the book. The first was about the Samu Yaisa, the Supreme Elephant and Maharaja Churachand`s favorite elephant Phool Kumar the Prince of Flowers also known as Takhensa, the Beast of Tripura.
It set Maharaja Pradyot Manilya Dev Burman to talk about his Manipuri great grandmother and the succession of Meitei maidens taken as wives by the kings of Tripura. He also noted that the connection between the two went beyond exchanges of prize animals but to shared issues of isolation, discrimination and conflict in the region.
Janice Pariat commented on the nature of memory as written about by MK Binodini. She invited Somi Roy to read a second excerpt and he chose one about cricket. The tale starts with Cricket match playing at Mayo College in Rajasthan to MK Binodini watching cricket at DM College, the institution started by her mother. The interplay of reality and memory as she watched cricket played in simple humble, even deprived surroundings interplayed with memories of her father`s splendid field and luxurious games with visiting players and the British.
Shillong played an important part in the discussion, as the city that Pariat and Deb Burman have homes in but also as the Rajbari of Manipur and the place where MKB got her her political awakening.
It ended with the importance of Tagore and Santiniketan in creating MK Binodini the artist, for whom her life and work as a writer centralized and placed the creative artist above politics.