JFK once remarked in the pink of his health, “In free society art is not a weapon…. Artists are not engineers of soul.” Nonetheless, the two aspects function synergically. It may seem as a puerile analogy but an Artist is to the society what Tom is to Jerry; incomplete without one another. This is where Indraprastha College’s Literary Fest held on February 27, 2013 took off to explore new links between “The Artist and Society.” The starting hours witnessed the paper presentation competition which saw everything from the juxtaposition of Charles Dickens and Chetan Bhagat to the stereotypes about pornography. In the paper presentation, one of the topics, Censorship, controversy’s favorite child and the parasite that derives its strength both from an artist’s creation and society’s admonishment, was resounded in a new tone and as we all know, the worst part about censorship is **************. The Paper presentation competition was followed by a small spectrum of competitions: Poetry and Fiction Writing, the only time you had the liberty to claim that a bird was a human being or to explain how human emotions and snails are alike, Book-Jacket Designing as half of the world judges a book by its cover, and Crossword for teachers. The results are still awaited. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the creme de la creme segment of the Literary fest was the session with the guest speaker, Jeet Thayil of Narcopolis fame. Narcopolis, his debut novel, had been nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Fully game to sedate the audience in a lyrical fashion, Jeet Thayil began by reciting his poems. His reference to Jim Morrison and Horses Latitude easily owned some people. Subsequently, he read one sentence from his novel-a sentence that spanned six and a half pages. Jeet Thayil’s advice to budding poets was quite simple-“DON’T DO IT! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!” Lastly, he entertained questions of general as well as of personal nature from the curious lot and later signed the copies of his book before the session ended.Everyone was still in a daze after he finished because of the pinch of heroin he must have added to his words when no was looking. Shreya Bharadwaj [email protected]]]>
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