Bengali lit fest explores changing tastes, language evolution

Kolkata: Specially curated sessions, themed on "changing literary taste" and factors that influence it, were highlights of a Bengali lit fest at Jorasanko Thakurbari, the ancestral home of Rabindranath Tagore.

The three-day fest, which began on Friday, discussed issues ranging from heritage and partition to sports and cinema, highlighting the contributions of Bengal and its literature in an ever-changing world, its director Swagat Sengupta said here.

Altogether, 20 sessions have been curated for the 'Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsob', keeping in mind the interests of the younger generation, he said.

Tridib Chatterjee, the general secretary of 'Publishers and Booksellers Guild', said luminaries from different walks of life, including writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, poet Shankha Ghosh, and prominent filmmakers Arindam Sil and Kaushik Ganguly, reflected on the appeal of Bengali literature and the evolution of language over time.

Rabindra Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, who played a host at the event, noted that the Jorasanko Thakurbari was an "apt venue" for the three-day lit fest.

"We are very happy that this year, the lit fest which made its debut in 2015, is being held at Tagore's abode at Jorasanko, where the bard, the first Asian recipient of Nobel Prize for Literature, was born."

The Oxford Bookstore at Park Street, in the central part of the city, had hosted the first three editions of the fest.