THE LIVING WORD: FOLK TALES REDISCOVERED 

Tuesday, June 12, 2007, 5.30pm – 7.00pm, at Open Space
Open Space invites you to its ‘The Living Word: Folk Tales Rediscovered’ through the Magical Art of Storytelling’ session in June with poet, writer and artist, Randhir Khare.
 
This is an engaging series of live storytelling sessions which aim to rediscover folk tales, myths and legends from traditional communities in India, connecting them to other similar tales from all over the world in an effort to reveal the common narrative and thematic web that connects people and cultures. In the process of engaging listeners, the storyteller will keep alive the age-old art of telling a story by stimulating, entertaining, informing and confronting listeners. Each session will present tales and trigger reflection and discussion, often enlivened by traditional music, images and artefacts.
 
The purpose of the series is three-fold: To revitalise the age-old art of storytelling, to create an awareness of the vibrant life of traditional communities, and to stimulate discourse on the values of folkways and rich cultural diversity that make up human civilization. 

The storyteller, Randhir Khare, is the award-winning author of sixteen volumes of prose and poetry and a critically acclaimed book ‘The Singing Bow: Song Poems Of The Bhil’. He has spent decades interacting with and writing about tribal and other traditional communities in the throes of change. His poetry has been set to music by A.R.Rahman and has been used in national and international puppet theatre performances. He has performed his own work in Bulgaria, (the former) Czechoslovakia, London, at the Jazz Café in Bali (Indonesia) and in India along with classical musicians and a choir. He brings to his storytelling sessions years of theatre experience. 

Entry free on a first come first served basis only

BOOK READING
 
Friday, June 29, 2007, 5.30pm – 8.00pm, Landmark, 1-B Moledina Road, Near Dorabjee's Pune Camp, Pune 411001
Open Space – Talking Poetry and Landmark, Pune invite you to a reading of the book, Neon Fish in Dark Water by Aniket Jaaware. Aniket Jaaware will read selections from the book. The reading will be followed by an informal interaction.

Neon Fish in Dark Water
A collection of brilliant, disturbing stories which speak to us of our own time as well as of a time to come, in a wholly modern, contemporary accent. The text is a composite of word and image, narrative complemented by graphic art reminiscent of Martin Escher’s visual puzzles, while the tales tease us into thinking about urban lives, singularities, obsessions, virtual realities, and the nature of people. Jaaware’s City is made up of eccentrics who are also, in the context of a postmodern urbanity, regulars: recognizably the denizens of the crowded but alienating space in which we all live our lives.

Jaaware’s style combines sympathy, humour and irony, making the act of reading itself an act of affiliation within a new imaginative order.

Aniket Jaaware teaches English at the University of Pune. His earlier publications include a few poems, an academic book called Simplifications: An Introduction to Structuralism and Post-structuralism, several academic essays and a Marathi novel Jawani Diwani: Arthaat Uddhav Dikhshitcha Prem-Bhang. He also translates between English and Marathi.

Entry free on a first come first served basis only