The third edition of the Kolkata Literary Meet, held in association with The Telegraph, got rolling under a warm winter sun in front of the marble statue of Warren Hastings on Saturday afternoon. Paintbrush in hand, feminist icon Gloria Steinem scrawled the words “To the current campfire” on canvas before addressing “friends of ideas, books, reading and storytelling” gathered in the open west quadrangle of Victoria Memorial. “For millennia upon millennia we’ve been gathering in front of the campfire telling stories. I appreciate these festivals in India for bringing everyone back to the campfire,” she said. Governor M.K. Narayanan wrote “May the tribe increase”. Poet Sankha Ghosh kept it brief with “kalam” in Bengali to celebrate the opening of the city’s annual tryst with authors, artistes and thinkers. Malavika Banerjee, the director of KLM, hoped the six-day affair would be “serious in parts, entertaining in parts and at all times absorbing”, before a team of La Martiniere boys took the stage to perform a nukkad natak based on real-life instances of violence and stigma that women have been facing across the country. Continue Reading.
