: Mysuru Literature Festival 2021: Audience get a double treat of short stories #IndiaNEWS #News Stories are everywhere, we need specific eyes to see them, says celebrated author Vasudhendra Mysore/Mysuru:

Mysuru Literature Festival 2021: Audience get a double treat of short stories #IndiaNEWS #News
Stories are everywhere, we need specific eyes to see them, says celebrated author Vasudhendra

Mysore/Mysuru: The third panel discussion of the second virtual edition of the fifth Mysuru Literature festival had a double treat to audience in the form of two panel discussions with celebrated Kannada author Vasudhendra, hailed as the next Masti Venkatesh Iyengar, being a panellist in one of the sessions.

The session ‘The Unforgiving City and Other Stories’ began after Chairperson of Mysuru Literary Forum and Charitable Trust Shubha Sanjay Urs welcomed and introduced moderator Mysuru Nataraja. Trustee Sucheta Sanjay introduced Vasudhendra.

Mysuru Nataraja began by explaining his attraction towards Mysuru as he carries the name of the city along with his name. Vasudhendra played a short video clip to introduce his novel’s English version. The video graphically represented how modernity could be a technical trap for human minds.

Story plot in mind

Nataraja asked Vasudhendra about the process by which the story plot develops in his mind. Vasudhendra acknowledged that the stories are small experiences spread out over time, somewhat like the dots of a rangoli and each dot could carry an emotion like one of the Navarasas. With a set of dots, the human mind can develop an infinite number of stories. And the same set of dots given to different people can design themselves into different stories.

He quoted A. K. Ramanujan who said, “Stories are everywhere, we need specific eyes to see them. ??? Vasudhendra gave an example of how he had gone three times to trek the Thadiyandamol peak in Kodagu and had stayed in the base camp which is an old and palatial building. Later when he was reading Masti Venkatesh Iyengar’s Jnanpith award-winning novel ‘Chikkaveera Rajendra’, he learnt that Masti had visited that same building which was actually the Palace of that king and hence he had been inspired to write that story.

Talking about this particular book of his, Vasudhendra said that the stories in this book were outside the LGBT world and it has everyday stories of everyday people like Kashavva and Varadayya. He also reiterated that more than ordinary personalities it is always a tougher challenge to develop historical characters.

A formal education is not obligatory to create wonderful stories, he emphasised, by pointing out that most of the fascinating stories spring out of illiterate people as stunning folklore. But the logic should sustain throughout the narrative and for that he gave the example of one of the most flamboyant characters of Ramayana, that of Hanumantha who sustains a literary logic till the end, in the long narrative.