The South Asian Poetry Festival for Peace 2015 at Patan Durbar Square: United through Poetry and Peace
The sun streams again with a festive glimmer. There are people at Patan Durbar Square from all corners of Nepal and from all corners of the world. Abhaya and the Steam Injuns slowly set the stage and the ambience for a festival that could not have made its mark at a better and more essential time. South Asia is as much an ideal as it is a place in time. Importantly, poetry finds a potent particularity here - as it finds warm, atmospheric authenticity in Patan Durbar Square.
As the inimitable pigeons of the Square inform the event with a temporal awareness, an entire literary cannon begins its journey of peace into the future, lyrically aided by a step back into the past. In a way that only poetry can and must. Voice, expression, time, history and the human condition are brought together “as lovers of poetry, as lovers of art, as lovers of music.” “ Majhi Dai, laijau huan lai, parigaun …”
The Festival showcased poetry and poets from the South Asian Region “to share their voices, hopes and aspirations.” “Hami thulo mutu le huncham, jaat le hoina!” Chirag Bangdel, the Festival Director, says it succinctly, “Good poetry will travel beyond the eyes and the ears. It will travel to the soul.” This year, the Festival theme was bound with indigenous and folk forms of poetry from the Region. With poets such as Usha Serchan, Abhay K, Manohar Shetty, Viplav Pratik, Mritika Chakma, Padma K. Rai among other luminaries, it is a summation of a creative pursuit of peace that many seek and, indeed, find. “Pari ta pugnu thiyo, jasari pani …”
“Pragati jaba risaera tandav dekhaun chin …” – our Nepali poet, a first among equals, opened the gathering with a much needed invocation to nature. Poetry readings remind me of our elocutions in school. Rehearsals were, by far, the most enervating. The joy of rhymed verse read aloud can only be matched by the rhyme itself. The Iambic Pentameter was a constant quest for me as a student of literature. South Asia is a home, a square, a livelihood endeavour and, most significantly, a poetic dream that will be read, again and again, as an incantation. “Peace is flowing like a river …” Today.
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