f estival W riters

intelligence about the struggles, triumphs, everyday joys and sorrows of the Dalit people of Telangana, there were few dry eyes in the audience. She spoke of language being highly politicized, and of how she writes in an indigenous, ‘authentic’ Telegu that is vastly different from the Sanskritised Telegu spoken by the powers that be. Our languages are perforated differently by the different politics of the places in which they are spoken. So while in India, Sanskrit may be the language of oppression and erasure for some; in Australia, it is a language that maybe used to resist oppression and erasure, deliberately marking diversity and claiming legitimacy within a multicultural society, as the Indian Australian poet Michelle Cahill told us through her precise and illuminating poetry. Kynpham

Sing Nongkynrih from Meghalaya, in enlightening and entertaining the audience with his poem about a ‘cantankerous mother’, reminded us of the power of words and the responsibility with which they must be handled.

The politics of the publishing world did not go unremarked.

Kabita Dhara, founder of Brass Monkey Books, an Australian publishing house that aims to publish writing from India in Australia, said she was “looking for stories that show how similar we are rather than how different we are”. Yet she and Mita Kapur from Siyahi Literary Agency - a writer herself, spoke of the challenges they faced with the dearth of literary sensitivity and professionalism of some publishers and booksellers in India and elsewhere. Sharan Kumar Limbale, the Dalit writer and activist writing in Marathi pointed to an economy of oppression within publishing. He spoke of the challenges faced by Dalit writers trying to get published and paid in an industry dominated by upper castes. “If anything is revolutionary (in a manuscript), they just delete it,” he said. Uday Prakash, the celebrated Hindi writer, spoke of the majority of writers who are very poorly paid by many roguish Indian publishers.

Storytellers of our culture

As a growing presence in Australia, we in the Indian Australian community want to see ourselves in the mirror of the Australian story. What does it mean to be an Australian? Does being Indian Australian fit into that story? Writers are the storytellers of our culture, be it Indian, Australian, or IndianAustralian. The AILIF panel chaired by Christopher Cyrill, comprising emerging Indian Australian writers such as Manisha Amin, Aashish Kaul, Chris Raja, Kunal Sharma, and this writer, try to tell the stories of Indian Australians. In doing so we are trying to write ourselves into the larger multicultural, multilingual Australian story, writing back but also writing forward, writing ourselves into this Australian landscape while being mindful of course, that it always was and always will be, Aboriginal land. Finally, Mridula’s words amplify the whispers around the State Library during AILIF, where appreciative multilingual conversations repeatedly asked for more such encounters, more such opportunities for Indians and Australians to meet, to perforate borders both linguistic and cultural.

“I would like to see, coming out of AILIF, translations of Indian literature into English; the Indian community in Australia can make a significant contribution by sponsoring and funding the translation and publications of such books,” she said. “On the other side, I would like to see the stereotypes about Australia being broken in India through translations of aboriginal, indigenous and multicultural Australian literature into the various Indian languages. There has been a clamour to have this forum become an annual event in Australia: this is very much possible given the diversity of the languages and literatures in both countries. However, the big aid to make this vision happen will be financial support. There is enough goodwill and momentum at this moment to make AILIF go places: we should ride the wave and make this happen!”

There is a world out there, in here, waiting for our stories. All that is left is for us to create them.

Khynpam

SingNongkynrih,

Prabodh Parikh

N.S.

Uday Prakash

This

Kabita

Suneeta