Bhubaneswar: Kalinga Literary Festival (KLF) has launched ‘KLF Bhava Samvad’, an online dialog platform to bring poets, writers, thinkers, philosophers, public intellectuals, spiritual masters, researchers, performers, and common citizens to reflect upon the lives and emotions around us during this lockdown and beyond.
“KLF Bhava Sambad will be held every week in online platform of Kalinga Literary Festival”, said KLF founder Rashmi Ranjan Ladies, adding, “During Lokdown period ‘KLF Bhava Samvad will be held twice in every weekend days. “
The inaugural webinar session focused on ‘Poetic Reflections In Challenging Times’. Literary figures Jayshree Misra Tripathi, Meeta Sengupta, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Satya Mohanty, A.J Thomas, and Barnali Ray Shukla graced the panel.
COVID-19 has affected everyone everywhere. When people have been homebound, quarantined, the mother earth seems to have regenerated. Amid the session A.J Thomas spoke about how Olive Ridley turtles are hatching eggs on the sand beds of Puri and Chandrabhaga beaches. While few months ago, they were laying dead.
Rashmi Ranjan Parida, the founder of KLF felt an urgent need to make sense of human emotions in these difficult times. He argues that ‘in these contradictions and cobwebs of events, poets have made the inward journey, as usual, easy for them, the story writers see characters on every page of the newspapers, hence the need to connect with creative people.’ Parida also said KLF Bhava Sambad will be held every week in online platform of Kalinga Literary Festival.
No period in the recent history of the last 50 years has challenged our way of living the way COVID-19 or the Novel Coronavirus has done.
Kamala Kanta Dash, one of the board members of the team says,”As we know that literature always reflects society and sometimes guides as well, we at KLF are going to connect with people around the world know how literature has captured this and how successful has it been in reflecting the contemporary and ongoing reality of life.”
