Annual Mystic Kalinga Festival to Kick-start In January

Annual Mystic Kalinga Festival to Kick-start In January

The Mystic Kalinga Festivalis touted to be world’s biggest festival on mythology, mystic, music, dance, spiritual literature and more with over 100 literary stalwarts including poets, writers, performers, musicians, dancers coming together on a common platform. The performances include celebration of formless divine invoked by Kabir, Tulsidas, Ravidas, Adi Shankara, Jayadeva, Tukaram, Meerabai, Salabega, Abhirami Bhattar, and others. The leading names this year include Devdutt Pattanaik, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Ashok Vajpeyi, Ramakant Rath, Sitakant Mohapatra, Pratibha Ray, Parvathy Baul, Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Jerry Pinto and Shabnam Virmani et al as speakers.The Mystic Kalinga Awards have been instituted to recognize and celebrate three prolific writers, poets and performers in Odia, in one Indian and one international language. To be announced on January 3, 2019, the three awardees have been chosen keeping in mind their contribution to their specific language and genres.

The Central Theme of this year’s Mystic Kalinga Festival is “From the Carnal to the Cosmic: A Celebration of Bhakti Poetry”. Eminent writers and Odisha’s Living Legends like Sitakant Mahapatra, Ramakanta Rath, Pratibha Ray et al will join the festival as Guests of Honour and speakers.Renowned writer and Hindi poet and critic Ashok Vajpayee will be the keynote speaker of the event. That apart, several Sahitya Akademi and Padma Awardees will be gracing the event to discuss how literature transcends boundaries of artificial human creations and emotions.

“Mystic Kalinga Festival is a celebration of bhakti – that great tearing disruptive experience of human longing. A longing so all encompassing that it has often blurred the divide between the sacred and the sensual, the erotic and the existential, the human and the divine. In a festival that is both celebratory and exploratory, the aim is not merely to discuss bhakti, but to distil its very essence. Hence, we will see the remarkable diversity of modes and styles at this festival. Poets, dancers, storytellers and musicians are as integral to this unique event as scholars and academics. The conversations it seeks to initiate are not merely through word, but through movement and melody, song and silence. The result is a mélange of poetry readings, lectures, music concerts, panel discussions and dance performances by some of the most exciting artists, seekers and scholars of our times”, said Arundhathi Subramaniam, creative director, Mystic Kalinga Festival.Rashmi Ranjan Parida, Founder and President of the festival, highlighted the need to focus on literature especially on Mythology, mystic, Music, Dance, and spiritual literature. He expressed happiness on the huge positive response from all over the world to Mystic Kalinga Festival. Recently, the team of Kalinga Literary Festival expanded its outreach to Koraput, Kandhamal and has plans to take Mystic Kalinga to different regions of Odisha, India, South East Asia and Africa.

Announcing the festival, Parida said, “Literature has the potential to connect a divided society and transform self-centeredness to world-centeredness. Kalinga Literature Festival was first launched in 2014 to celebrate this potential of literature. Mystic Kalinga Festival, an international festival of poetry and performances, emerged out of the need to connect to people’s hearts through poems, songs, dances, performances and meditations”.The festival, this year, features the inimitable Parvathy Baul who will share her personal understanding of bhakti, and what it means to walk the mystical path as a contemporary female seeker and musician. It features filmmaker, singer and pioneer of the Kabir Project, Shabnam Virmani, who will discuss how the mystic poets swept into her life and led her into a voyage she never anticipated. The participants will also witness contemplative writer and historian Lata Mani explore the relevance of bhakti for modern times, and why ‘to love is to know’.Leading mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik will reflect on why regional bhakti movements (including those of Odisha) are often ignored and eclipsed, while noted scholar Arshia Sattar will discuss the Valmiki Ramayana as a biography of Rama before he became a ‘God’.

Acclaimed poets, translators and scholars, including Ashok Vajpeyi, Ramakant Rath, Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Sitakant Mohapatra, Paramita Satpathy, Archana Nayak, Raj Kishore Mishra, Mani Rao, Sachidananda Mohanty, Kedar Mishra, Jerry Pinto, Bishnu Narayan Mohapatra, and Rahul Soni will be gracing this year’s edition. The eminent personalities will read and discuss the extraordinary verse of some of the greatest mystic poets of this subcontinent, from Appar and Sambandar to Tulsidas and Ravidas; from AdiShankara and Jayadeva to Tukaram and Lal Ded; from Meerabai to Janabai, from Salabega to Abhirami Bhattar, and several others.Prominent Odissi dance exponent Sharmila Biswas will discuss and demonstrate how she infuses bhakti into dance, while well-known theatre actor and storyteller Danish Husain weaves together an engaging performance that explores the blurred divide between Bhakti and Sufi traditions. As noted Hindustani vocalist Kalapini Komkali ‘sings emptiness’ in her celebration of the formless divine invoked by Kabir, contemporary dancer Sanjukta Wagh and sacred musician Shruthi Vishwanath will explore a mosaic of mystical poems in a riveting finale of dance and delirium.

Every year the Mystic Kalinga Festival hosts a variety of sessions in books, themes, subjects and its dense ideas representing literature. The festival promises to give you a deep idea about literature in both India and the world.