A poetic reading in English, Bengali, French and Santhali was held at an old residential building overlooking Maddox Square, owned by Santanu Ghosh.
The three-member cast comprised French consul general Didier Talpain, Jean-Frederic Chevallier and Surojmoni Hansda from the Trimukhi Platform team in Borotalpada Santhal village in West Midnapore.
Jean-Frederic Chevallier performs with Surojmoni Hansda
“We had done this performance earlier at a public garden under a 300-year-old tree in Paris. For this audience, we reduced the French part. If you know either French and English or French and Bengali you will understand 90 per cent of the reading,” said Chevallier.
Barun Chanda and Anik Dutta in the audience
The text that was read, sometimes with dramatic movements, was mainly from Chevallier’s poetry collection and extracts from what has been published in the fifth opus of the magazine Fabrique de l’Art, brought out by Trimukhi, and partly comprised works by Joy Goswami, Amit Chaudhuri, Joseph Danan from France, Tarik Hamdan from Palestine and Luis Vicente de Aguinaga from Mexico. Both books were launched that evening. “We wanted to share what is in the book instead of having a boring book launch,” he said.
German consul general Manfred Auster in an ethnic Naga jacket
Talpain read out the French part in the patchwork of poetic and phisophical extracts. “It was a nice idea. They needed a French speaker so I agreed to step in,” he said.
Riazul Islam of the Deputy High Commission of Bangladesh with Antonia Hoogewerf
Surojmoni Hansda, the young Santhali performer, will fly to Bordeaux University along with the Trimukhi team in March for a residency.
