“I have always had a deep connect with Bengaluru since my Sholay days,” poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar said on Saturday at the inaugural session of the first Bengaluru Poetry Festival organised by Atta Galatta.
The audience included college students and young professionals.
Amazed at the overwhelming response, Akhtar said, “It is a renaissance of sorts to see youth emerging in such large numbers. After the festival, I will be interacting with students. I do this often as the camaraderie reflects the expectations of young minds. Youth aspirations drive the cinema industry too. From ‘what public want’, the mood today is about ‘what the youth want.”
Love for words either has to be part of one’s growing up or developed for furthering creative urges.
‘Nurture art’
“Art has to be nurtured. We have dancing schools and music schools, but never poetry schools to tap our potential for poems and lyrics,” he added.
During a conversation with writer and literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil, he said, “It’s most difficult to answer what poetry means to me. Just as every sound cannot become musical, language gets poetical with aesthetic discipline and rhythm in its flow. If talking is prose, singing is poetry.”
Only when there is poetry, there is a dignity to prose
– Javed Akhtar, poet and lyricist
Although we have always had poetry in one form or the other, flagging off a dedicated poetry fest in Bengaluru opens up the world
– Jayant Kaikini, lyricist
