All of us inevitably must live through and respond to the highs and lows of our lives… Some of us choose to deny or get angry at the turbulence life entails, while some of us choose to accept in one’s stride, and emerge unscathed and stronger… It is not unusual for writers too, to experience the depth of their emotions; resonate with themselves and weave the lessons learnt into beautiful words of poetry. It is certainly not unusual. However, there are those days and moments when quite a few of such minds coincidentally experience this renaissance at the same time. That is what makes an evening, unusual.
Such a day of reckoning was experienced by the members of the Writers’ Forum, Kuwait when they met for their monthly meeting on September 23, 2016 at the residence of Dr. Navniit Gandhi. There are those days, when poets find themselves not trying to wave emotions into words, but rather words themselves acquiring emotional overtones and tumbling out earnestly… It was one such evening which was presided over by Mrs. Chhaya Athavale who writes poetry in Hindi, Gujarati, and Marathi. Aamir Diwan who philosophises with words and verses in Hindi, graced the evening as the Chief Guest.
A short story, titled: ‘A Missed Marriage’, was read out in English by Rajesh Verlekar in the first session. Vibheesh Tikkodi narrated a prose in Malyalam on the balance between spiritualism and materialism—which the festival of Onam signifies. The second session witnessed some very powerful and soulful renditions and recitals by Syed Qamar Minto, Afroz Alam, Kamaal Ansari, Sayeed Nazar Kadapvi, and Shabbih Ahmed in Urdu, while the President of WFK—Umesh Sharma, Dr Navniit Gandhi, Ravin Singh, and Sunil Sonsi recited their respective poems in Hindi. There was a young new participant – Sameen Azad-daughter of the WFK member and Urdu poet Syed Qamar Minto-read a verse in Persian from the poetry of Iranian poet Sa’adi—an extremely influential Persian poet from the medieval period. Sameen presented the English translation of the verse too.
It was an evening, which reflected contemplation and depth—so very essential and rare to sustain a literary organisation… The Chief Guest- Aamir Diwan presented his poem in Hindi and congratulated the President of WFK, for continuing to uphold the dignity of the WFK and for giving it the much-needed impetus to keep moving forward.
Mrs Chhaya Athavale- the President for the evening presented her own poetry in Marathi and summed up the deliberations as ‘one of the finest ever meetings’, held by the WFK.
Dr. Navniit Gandhi and Mr. Rajesh Verlekar were given special thanks for hosting this event.