Jan. 30: The literary legacy of Mahasweta Devi is being carried beyond her life with theatre director Usha Ganguli trying to bring the author's novel Bayen on stage and her niece Ina Puri working on a documentary on her.
Writer Swapnamoy Chakraborty, Ganguly and Puri discussed all this and more on the inaugural day of Kalam.
Chakraborty, who started writing in the 70s, was inspired by Mahasweta Devi's writings. "I cannot call myself a torch-bearer of Mahasweta Devi but maybe I am a legacy bearer," he said.
Usha Ganguly had never read Rudali in the original, she confessed. Rangakarmee (her theatre group)'s Rudali, based on the novel, had a record run in Calcutta and elsewhere. "Goutam Ghose made me read Rudali.... I was astounded by her humanism," she said.
Curator-author Ina Puri remembered her " bada mashi" keeping the kids of the family engaged with her stories. "She excelled in ghost stories that would leave us squirming in our beds at night."
