By Sukant Deepak New Delhi, Nov 26th : .Some of Ali Sethi’s songs were performed at an event in Mestre, Italy by author Amitav Gahh, a few days ago.
Everyone wanted to know where they could purchase them later.Ghosh told IANS that they are currently developing a stage performance of “Jungle Nama” with the assistance of the University of Pennsylvania.
Amitav Ghosh’s verse adaptation from Bon Bibi’s legend, Jungle Nama (HarperCollins), is the basis of the novel ‘The Hungering Tide’ (2004).It tells the tale of Dhona, an avaricious merchant, and his mother.
It also tells the story Dokkhin Rai, a powerful spirit who appears to humans in the form of a Tiger, and Bon Bibi, a benign goddess of forest and her warrior brother Shah Jongoli.
This legend was originally printed in 19th-century Bengali verse meters.
The book is a free adaptation, telling the story in a poyar-like manner with 24 syllable pairts.It also replicates the original cadence.
Amitav Gosh’s first book-in-verse, “Jungle Nama”, evokes the beauty of the Sundarbans with its poetry.It is also accompanied by artwork by Salman Toor.
Audible, a leader in audio storytelling and creator of premium audio storytelling, has now created an audio edition of the folktale, performed by Ali Sethi.
Ghosh is drawn to the Sunderbans because of something about them.”It is an amazing and rich landscape, teeming in stories of all sorts.What is of greatest interest is that these stories often involve non-humans as well as humans,” says the Padma Shri Honour recipient.
Talk to him about the unique collaboration between Salman Toor, Ali Sethi, and the author, who has known Toor since his time as a student at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, where he is located just a few blocks from the author’s house.He remembers that it was obvious that Toor was extraordinarily gifted and has proven this repeatedly over the years.
“So, his name was the first that came to mind when I was looking for an artist to work alongside.Salman was already incredibly successful and had a one-man exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York.
This is almost unheard of for an artist his age.The pandemic struck and the Whitney show was cancelled.This made it possible for Salman to embark on this project.He was a great collaborator, creating some truly amazing images for the book,” says Ghosh.
He is the winner of the 54th Jnanpith award in India, India’s highest literary honor.
Ali Sethi is someone the author knows even more about – he took a class in Ghosh’s class back in 2003 when he was a Harvard student.
Ghosh recalls that Sethi was more of a writer back then than a musician.But he has become a star with millions of fans on Youtube and sold-out concerts all across the country.
He is still a very cerebral and thoughtful person which allowed him to fully embrace the spirit of “Jungle Nama”.He has written songs for the audiobook that are both catchy and musically fascinating.
Ali Sethi and his team were responsible for the audiobook, as well as the HarperCollins technology team that worked with Audible.
“Thankfully, I didn’t have the need to get into that section of it.However, I believe that books will be heard more in the years ahead.This has already been a major part the book market, I think this will continue,” says Ghosh, whose latest book, “The Nutmeg’s Curse” (Penguin Random House India), was released in October.
The author, who has written extensively on the topic of climate crisis in his works and even pointed out in “The Great Derangement” that not enough contemporary novels addressed climate change as a central problem of our time, feels that the main reason why there isn’t much media coverage of the crisis around the globe is the fact that mainstream media is largely controlled and controlled by billionaires and big corporations, who have a vested desire to minimize the severity of the crisis.He adds that there are “honorable exceptions” to the climate crisis.
Ghosh claims that even though the Corona Pandemic continues to be a problem, the recent COP 26 meeting in Glasgow showed that governments are still not waking up to the seriousness and urgency of the global crisis.”This meeting seems like it got even less done than the ones before, if that is possible.”
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