(Top) Charles Darwin and (below) Sonal Mansingh sings at Krishna Rang Rachee

Charles Darwin did not travel again after his Beagle voyage. However, throughout his life, he was a prolific letter-writer. It was his way of cementing scientific friendships, pursuing collaboration and gathering observations.

Darwin Now, an exhibition on Darwin, the naturalist who changed the world by claiming that Man was descended from the ape, has travelled to the city. It has been organised by the British Council at the book fair in its stall and seeks to answer a few questions, as well as offer interesting facts and the reaction to his pioneering work The Origin of Species.

A quiz was held at the exhibition venue every day. Writer and scholar Gillian Beer delivered a lecture titled Darwin’s Curiosity on Saturday at the fair as part of the exhibition.

So, who was Charles Darwin really? Why was he so controversial? Why is he still relevant today? Why do some people hate him still? Find out on the last day at the Book Fair.

The exhibition was started on the 200th birth anniversary in 2009.

Swastika Mukherjee and Bappi Lahiri at the largest jewellery show in eastern India, Sonar Sansar, organised by Anandabazar Patrika and Swarna Shilpa Bachao Committee, at Netaji Indoor Stadium on Friday. Picture by Pabitra Das

Writers’ meet s

The launch of Speaking for Myself — An Anthology of Asian Women’s Writing brought six writers from across the continent to the city.

The city is not familiar with the literature of most of the countries. There was Agnes Lam from Hong Kong, Putsata Reang from Cambodia, Afghanistan-born and US-based Donia Gobar, Manju Kanchuli from Nepal, Kungzang Choden Roder from Bhutan and Kishwar Naheed from Pakistan. Their works have been included in the anthology, published by Penguin Books India and India International Centre.

The group, along with Mahasveta Devi, one of whose stories has been included in the book, took part in a panel discussion on the morning of the launch last Sunday.

Mahasveta Devi set the tone. Quoting a proverb, she said a woman is praised only when she is dead. In a lighter tone, she thanked the organisers for inviting her and said that others did not for fear that she would say something “bad”. “But I am a nice person.”

A Flavour of Mexico, presented by the culture ministry of Mexico at the ICCR, offered two scintillating glimpses of Mexico. February 3 saw a performance by The Ballet Company from Nayarit (picture above). The dance with machetes, which the men in sombreros tossed and juggled, impressed the audience most. The black-and-white feature film María Candelaria, which won the Grand Prix at the 1946 Cannes film festival, was screened on February 4. Directed by Emilio Fernandez, it is the love story of a man shunned by society and killed by a mob

Reang spoke of the cultural destruction of her country in the Pol Pot era. “Most of the history that I found of Cambodia was by foreigners. I looked at the empty bookshelves in the libraries and wondered who would fill them again. That spurred my passion for writing.”

Naheed recounted how she had been put in jail for her translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

Mrinal Sen did the honours at the launch, organised by India International Centre and the Prabha Khaitan Foundation. Apart from the editors of the book, Sukrita Paul Kumar and Malashri Lal, and Kapila Vatsyayan, who wrote the foreword, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Nabaneeta Dev Sen attended the launch .

Dev Sen said she wanted to bring out a collection of works by Asian women poets in Bengali in 1988. “I couldn’t find a publisher. The book was finally printed in 2005,” she said.

Mansingh the singer

Sonal Mansingh is well known as an Odissi, Chhau and Bharatnatyam performer who has reinvigorated these classical forms by injecting new thoughts and ideas into them. Her contemporaneity is what distinguishes her performances from those of other dancers.

Like many great artistes she does not mind experimentation and last Monday she presented Krishna Rang Rachee in the geet-katha form at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. So instead of dancing, she sat on a dais surrounded by accompanists and sang and narrated text she has culled from various sources on Krishna in regional languages as varied as Oriya and her mother tongue Gujarati.

Donia Gobar at the panel discussion. Picture by Aranya Sen

The vocalist Bankim Sethi sang exquisitely, but what stood out was the eclectic text. This included a part of a composition by the Gujarati poet of the 15th century, Narsinh Mehta, on a brilliant exchange between the young Krishna and the serpent Kaliya whose venom had turned the Yamuna toxic.

Interestingly, while reciting a composition on the three ages of man, she referred to Prophet Mohammad and Jesus being cradled by their mothers. The entire programme organised by Parampara was centred around the concept of bhakti and this was the only point where she deviated from the tried and the tested. It was just this kind of touch that one looks for in Sonal Mansingh’s performances.

(Contributed by Soumitra Das, Ranjabati Das and Poulomi Banerjee)