CHENNAI: The fourth edition of the Chennai Literary Festival kick-started on Monday at the University of Madras, Students. It will have 18 workshops and 22 competitions over three days.
Remembering an incident from last year when a student tearfully thanked the organisers for the cash prize since it would help him pay the fees, Latha Rajan, chairperson, Chennai Literary Festival, said that cash prizes would be awarded for all competitions this year too. “When we started the festival four years ago, only around 15 colleges took part. Now we have more than 30 colleges, even from Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts, taking part,” she added.
The programme has workshops on an array of topics ranging from Dalit and tribal literature to animation and cyber security. The workshops will be conducted simultaneously in 18 different colleges in the city. A range of competitions from dubsmash to book reviews and debate will be held.
Talking at the inaugural function, Gandhi Kannadasan, president, Book Sellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI), said that in an age where messages and posts were being forwarded on social networks without being spared a minute to read them, such literary fairs would help things turn around. “Literature is also about listening,” he said, adding that it is never the man that chooses the book but vice versa.
Tamil oratorical competitions are also scheduled to encourage Tamil literary pursuits among students. Reminiscing the days that he read Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and poems like Tiger Tiger Burning bright, P David Jawahar, registrar, University of Madras, spoke about the unmatched joy that only books could bring.
The chief guest for the programme, MM Murugappa, vice-chairman of the Murugappa Group, also spoke about some of his favourite literary works and how they shaped him.
Urging students to learn from their defining moments, happy or sad, he said that it was important to learn the solution than the formulation. However, he said, it was unfortunate that in many educational institutions, the formulation carried more marks than the solution.