The four-day long annual Goa Arts and
Literary Festival was declared open with the inaugural event of the festival in
the presence of President of The International Centre Goa, Yatin Kakodkar,
eminent poet and Emeritus professor – National University of Singapore, Edwin
Thumboo, internationally acclaimed designer and author, Wendell Rodricks and
Co-Curator – GALF and fiction writer, Damodar Mauzo. While architect Charles
Correa couldn’t be present for the inaugural event due to health issues, Union
Minister Shripad Naik remained absent for reasons unknown.
The annual festival, popularly known as
GALF, started off as a small literature festival in 2010. Since then, the event
has come a long way and focused on literary works from the North Eastern part
of India, Pakistan, Singapore, etc. The event has been an apt occasion for
numerous book launches, book-readings, discussions, debates, workshops,
performances by artists and so on.
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President of The International Centre Goa
and organiser, GALF, Yatin Kakodkar while extending a warm welcome, said, “GALF
is gaining its strength with every edition. One of the challenges has been to
prove Goa as a good venue for literature festival, and we have survived the
challenge.” Co-Curator of GALF, Damodar Mauzo chose to address the audience in
Konkani and expressed pride of the achievements of the festival in the last
five years. Mauzo said, “We will be paying tribute to U R Ananthamurthy who
inaugurated the first edition of this festival. This year, we will also observe
Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s death anniversary by having a session, ‘Ambedkar and
Reservations’ by Varsha Ayyar. Contingents from Nepal, Singapore and Pakistan will
be attending the event.”
Prof. Edwin Thumboo in his speech said that
coming to Goa for the event has been a learning experience. Thumboo while
addressing the audience further said, “When we study other cultures, we study
ourselves. The differences teach you more than the similarities; they teach you
to ask questions and find explanations.”
The keynote address by popular fashion
designer Wendell Rodricks turned out to be interesting as he went on to discuss
life on social media. Wendell said, “With the excessive use of social media, are
we becoming a narcissistic society? Study shows that since social media has
taken over a majority amount of our time, there has been an increase in narcissistic
personality by 30%.” He also expressed his concerns over the number of readers
who prefer reading actual books to those who do it on kindle, saying, “As long
as we have people who prefer crisp cold cash over plastic, we will prefer crisp
paper reading over reading on plastic.”
The festival poster designed by artist,
Subodh Kerkar was unveiled at the inaugural ceremony. It was then followed by
launch of Mahableshwar Sail’s Konkani novella ‘Aranyakand – Forest Saga’ at the
hands of Suresh Amonkar and in the presence of Vidya Pai and Mini Krishnan. The
inaugural event concluded with a session on ‘Changing India: A Healthy
Democracy?’ which saw Rajmohan Gandhi in conversation with Sagarika Ghose.
