3rd LIC-Gateway LitFest to honour Kosli poet Haldhar Nag

The third edition of the annual LIC Gateway LitFest will be held here on February 25 and 26 and Kosli poet Haldhar Nag will be the star attraction this time, organisers said today.
The Litfest, to held at NCPA in south Mumbai, will have 50 writers from 15 languages, including National Award winner K R Meera, script-writer Anjali Menon and ace filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan.
Jnanpith laureates Kedarnath Singh and Reghuveer Chaudhari and a number of national and state Akademi award winners, poets, and DMK leader Kanimozhi will also be present.
Nag, the class-III drop-out, who writes in the Kosli dialect of Odisha, was honoured with the Padmashri last year. He will be presented the first Gateway LitFest Lifetime Achievement Award, the organisers said.

The poet was forced to quit school after the death of his father when he was 10, and worked as a dish-washer and later as a cook at a school before setting up a small shop.
His poetry speaks about social issues, fighting oppression, nature, religion, mythology, all derived from the everyday life around him.

"Nag epitomises the richness of the known and unknown talents in our languages, especially in the nondescript villages. He represents the indomitable spirit of our language writers who survive and uphold the literary traditions of their own mother-tongues, notwithstanding the rising popularity of English writings," an organiser said.

The festival, which aims to promote language writings and put them on par with English and Hindi, is being organised by Kaakka, a Mumbai-based quarterly Malayalam magazine, and communication consultants P4C.
The theme for the third edition is 'the contemporary face of Indian literature', focusing on five languages -- Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi and Tamil.
There will also be a discussion for writers from script-free languages such as Ahirani, Bhojpuri, Khasi, Konkani, Kosli and Santhali.