BHUBANESWAR: Anusvara, the much anticipated open-mic event exclusively for Indian languages, was organised at Cherry Blossoms Pre-school at Shree Vihar here Sunday.
Open-mic events have become the most popular medium for expression these days. The youth is attracted by its free nature, unlike the conventional style of performing arts. Like the rest of the country, Odisha makes no exception to it and such events have been engaging a delightfully increasing number of budding writers for more than a couple of years now.
However, at the same time, it is being witnessed that the qualities of patience and reading with an approach of learning and growing better are not much cherished. Realising this evolving problem, Anusvara was an attempt by the organisers to address the issue.
“This is a series of open mic of its own kind inviting people who write in any aboriginal language (or dialect) of the Indian subcontinent and want to not only perform but are also open to receiving some constructive feedback from the audiences as well as the people who have been contributing in the literary field in some or the other manner,” said Akshita Agarwal, one of the members of the organising team.
This series is organised by Samskriya.org under Sambhasha, one of its programs dedicated exclusively to the Indian languages. It is basically a group of some young language enthusiasts which was formed in 2012 in Jaipur and is active in Bhubaneswar for the last four years after operating in Ranchi for two years.
When asked about the idea, Aryaman Chetas, the founder coordinator of Samskriya, said that poetry and short-stories have started becoming like some strange product to be consumed by both its writer and the listener which is doing injustice to both the content and the language. “One of the major reasons is that our education system gives linguistic science a secondary treatment and children are not given proper exposure to it at the right time”, added Shweta Agarwal, the founder of the Unmukt Foundation which has been supporting the group.
“We should respect all the languages, but we have to have our own languages flourishing above all because the world out there is looking up to us and this kind of mutual learning is just the first step in the desired right direction,” said Saurabh Ghosh of Advait Solutions, a US-based studies facilitator encouraging the group’s literary and research activities.
It is made sure that the whole exercise is performed in the most suitable manner and the performers are encouraged. Some well known young faces in the literary circles of Bhubaneswar like Monideepa Sahu, Rhiti Bose, Shagufta Jabeen, Agnivesh Mohapatra, Anup Agrawal and Balaram Behera are also closely associated with the group, some of whom acted as the chief commentators at the event and shared some insights from their experiences too.
Seeing the importance of the issue and the dedication towards writing in the mother-tongue, Gayatri Mavuru has offered the premises of her pre-school to be used for the workshops on different literary techniques and Anusvara event-series organised by Sambhasha.