Monday 6 June 2011

26th Gnansatra of Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, Ahmedabad

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, Ahmedabd organises Gnansatra in different regions of Gujarat every two years. There are many objectives for organising Gnansatra, the chief one being: to bring literature to the interior part of Gujarat where people are less prone to education or literature. And to serve this purpose, they deliberately choose, not cities, but villages as the venue of the Gnansatra every time. This time it was in Modasa (Sabarkantha) for three days(24-12-2010 to 26-12-2010) at M.L Gandhi Higher Education Association.

I had always wished to take part in it ever since I came to know about it, but it is only now that I got chance to do that. Soon after I read about it in “Parab”, I sent the registration fee and reserved my entry. On 24th of this month I was busy with official duty of visiting schools for classroom observation, so I couldn’t take part on the very first day. It was already 4.00 pm when I was free to leave for Modasa. As I couldn’t catch a direct bus to Modasa, I had to go to Ahmedabad first.I reached Ahmedabad at 10.00 pm. The night was getting colder and no travel was available for Modasa! I went to Geeta Mandir from where I boarded the ST bus for Modasa. When I ultimately reached there, it was already 12.30 and I was freezed with the cold wind that easily pierced through my body to the soul because I forgot my pullover and shawl at home. I cursed my forgetfulness while facing the music in the bus. There was not a single soul to be seen at the venue who could tell me whom to meet.There were cooks and some others who were preparing for food for the next day, but they were more stranger than I. I made two rounds of Shree M.L. Gandhi Higher Education Association campus and at the end of the second one, fortunately, I found an angel who advised me to spend the night in any of the rooms whose door was open. The formalities could be done in the morning

The next morning a boy’s voice awoke me: “Kaka, you won’t get hot water if you don’t get up at this time.” I opened my sleepy eyes and looked out of the door. It was still dark. Cold wind rushed through the open door. I would have preferred sleeping, but I shivered at the thought of taking a bath with cold water. I jumped out of the bed, went to the corridor and looked down. Two- three boys were igniting fire under a big vessel full of water in the compound. I finished my morning routine, along with exercise. And water was ready for me.
There were 8 sittings in all during these three days. I had already missed 3. The fourth was to start at 9.oo am that morning. I reached the auditorium much before the time after finishing my tea- and snacks. Soon audience started coming followed by the great authors of Gujarati literature. Raghuvir Chaudhari, Bholabhai Patel, Ratilal Borisagar, Bhagavatikumar Sharma, Chandrakant Sheth,Vinesh Antani( “Priyajan” fame), Narottam Palan, Varsha Adalaja, Dhirubahen Patel, Bindu Bhatt( “Meera Yagnik ni Diary” and “ “Akhepatar” fame), Sarifa Vijaliwala, Manilal H Patel, Nitin Vadgama, Harshad Trivedi, Shirish Panchal and many more whose faces I was not familiar with. I wasted no time in photographing them all.
The fourth sitting started on time. It is on any particular writer and his/her works. Speakers deliver their speech based on their study. This time it was Umashankar Joshi and rightly so because he(Umashankar Joshi) belonged to Sabarkantha. The subject was : “The Ctiticism and Research work of Shree Umashankar Joshi”. And the speakers were : Bholabhai Patel, Chandrakant Sheth, Narottam Palan, Ashwin Desai and Usha Upadhyaya and Shirish Panchal. Each speaker was given half an hour to discuss the different aspect of the subject.
After a two-hour break for lunch the fifth sitting started at 3.00 pm in which eight young writers gave their critiques of the books published during the two years: 2008-2009. And the literary genres were : Poetry, drama, novel, short story, essays, criticism, research, compilation, children literature and translation. Most of them complained about the lack of satisfactory output in these two years.

to be continued

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