Black horse neighs

Starting today, I'll pen down my experiences at the week long Kala Ghoda art festival. A Calcuttan who has suffered annual diarrheas of expos and fests, I thought I'd seen it all, but the initial glimpses blew me away. Bombay, really is streets ahead of other Indian cities in such festivals precisely because of fests like KG. I'll not spill all the beans in one go. Instead I'd provide a daily brief as events unfold.

Attended the first day of the 'Writing to be published' workshop. Organized by the authors' forum Caferati, the workshop provides tips to wannabe authors with a mint new manuscript in hand but little idea with what to do with it. I myself had no professional 'schooling' in the subject and gained quite a few valuable tips first hand: length of a short story, how to analyze your own work, packaging yourself to publishers etc. The workshop was also addressed by Amit Varma of India Uncut and My friend Sancho fame. He proceeded to demolish almost all starry eyed notions of making one's livelihood as a writer in India. With the economy booming more and more people are being exposed to the works of Indian authors writing in English and hence an emerging aspiration to contribute to the numbers of this tribe. While most will crash and burn, the upshot is that interest has returned to reading, even though it's death knell was sounded not long back by the advent of television and twitter (in that order).

The printed word still has its charms.

May the force be with the young brigade!