Reading Adventures

Recently I learnt about the Jnanpith Awards.

The Jnanpith Award is the oldest and the highest Indian literary award presented annually by the Bharatiya Jnanpith to an author for their “outstanding contribution towards literature”. Instituted in 1961, the award is bestowed only on Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India and English,[a] with no posthumous conferral.[2]

Vinod Kumar Shukla received this award in 2024. Till date, I haven’t read many books in languages other than English so I wasn’t aware of his work. A few days back I saw this video (with an inviting thumbnail) on my Youtube feed - Chaar Phool Hain Aur Duniya Hai - Vinod Kumar Shukla. A documentary on him and his family. I wanted to know more, not just because of his work, but also because he has some connection with the city where I have lived most of my life. As per his wikipedia page, he studied at Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, Jabalpur.

On a recent trip to Delhi, I happened to be in front of Bahrisons Booksellers. Found what I needed. A copy of दीवार में एक खिड़की रहती थी. The book was published in 1997. Vinod Kumar Shukla received the Sahitya Akademi award for this work in 1999. It’s a simple story about everyday, with no major twists or plots. A story about human relationships with each other, with nature, with things around us. A good book to start this stint of exploring Indian literature.

To read Shukla is to be reminded that the act of living is an act of bearing witness.

A brief search to figure out the next book led me to these two books translated from Malayalam - Goat Days by Benyamin and Hangwoman by K R Meera . I did went into a few other rabbit holes. First was the National Award category for Writing on Cinema. This category includes a couple of awards - Best book on cinema and Best Film critic. Here, I came across the book titled - From Raj to Swaraj: The Non-fiction Film in India by Bhagwan Das Garga, a film historian. That led to this article on Caravan - Reeling in the Raj (India in early non-fiction film). A lot is still left to be explored in these holes.

This book by Sohini Chattopadhyay has come up in a few discussions - The Day I Became a Runner, but a TIL moment was when I saw her name on the list of Best Film Critics. She received this award in 2019. This led me to her website, where she writes about books, films, characters, etc. This article - Nagarkirtan: Unusual Loves and Marginal, Gig Economy Lives - led me to other interesting works and convinced me to subscribe to her blog.