CAESURAE COLLECTIVE AND BHASHA PARISHAD PRESENTATION: A LITERARY MEET & AN INDIAN CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTALS WORKSHOP WITH INDRADEEP GHOSH ON THE VIOLIN

CAESURAE COLLECTIVE, an organization with a peer reviewed international e journal (www.caesurae.org),  which has been holding events on literature and other arts,  across the nation now, organized two such events in collaboration with Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad. The first was a Literary meet of young and acclaimed writers and poets, writing in English on the 21st December, 2015.  The participants included, Bashabi Fraser, from Edinburgh University, Anjum Katyal, Kolkata who was previously associated with Seagull publishing and now is the Director of the Apeejay Lit Fest, Saikat Majumdar, from Stanford University, Rajat Chaudhuri, a writer based in Kolkata who recently got the Hawthornden Literary Award, Sanjukta Dasgupta, from the University of Calcutta,  Jayita Sengupta of Sikkim University, Debasish Lahiri, of Calcutta University and Julie Mehta, from Toronto University. The event was inaugurated by Dr Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay, the writer and President of Bhasha Parishad and Vice-chair of “Caesurae”. The writers read rom from their unpublished works or work in progress. There was an august audience, which included international students as well, who later interacted with the participants closely to make the event meaningful and effective.

This was soon followed by a two day Indian Classical violin workshop on the 2nd and 3rd January, 2016, with the much acclaimed violinist Sri Indradeep Ghosh, in collaboration with Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad. Dr. Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay , the President of Bhasha Parishad and Vice-President of “Caesurae” and Dr. Kusum Khemani, the Vice-President of Bhasha Parishad, inaugurated the workshop and felicitated the musician, with a lot of warmth. “Bhasha Parishad is looking forward to more such occasions on literary meets and events with musical interface, programmes and workshops”, said Dr. Kusum Khemani to Indradeep Ghosh and the Caesurae team.  This was a violin workshop for fairly advanced students. Young participants from mufassil areas, Sikkim and North Bengal, and a young violinist from Paris who is now in Kolkata joined this intensive  workshop for two days from 11.00 am to 4.30 pm,  with an eagerness to learn as much as they could. On the first day, the acclaimed violinist, Sri Indradeep Ghosh made the young participants do basic exercises meant for students who are in the fairly advanced stage of learning. This included complex paltas, exercises on gamaks and meers. On the second day, the musician  offered them lessons on raga presentations, which included the composition of alaap, bistaar, taans, jhala  and the various nuances involved in the playing of a raga. Sri Gopal Das accompanied on the tabla in the second session of the workshop on raga presentations.

The workshop, left the musician, who is part of the “Caesurae collective” and the organizers  with a lot of satisfaction. The students went back with a craving for more such workshops in the future. Sri Anjan Chattopadhyay, one of the senior-most musicians (sitarist) associated with the Caesurae collective, gave away the certificates of participation to the students. As a closure to the workshop, there was a lively conversation between Sri Chattopadhyay and Sri Ghosh, the two musicians, on music and the teaching-learning process along with two senior students, Nandakishore Das and Surjo Sengupta.