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Turaj Ahmad visits (A)maze at the Kozmo Lounge, hosted by Monsoon Letters, an evening that had literature, art and music
After a hard days work, a correlation of dining and listening to writers reciting a few of their pieces in the evening can prove to be a surprisingly fitting and eloquent combination for the stressed out mind. Together with the ambience created by the lighting, seating arrangements and a small stage in the middle, Kozmo Lounge certainly provides an apt backdrop for such a light, refreshing event. After the initial success of their first attempt at hosting such an event on October 23, the Kozmo Monsoon initiative
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(monsoonletters.com) was officially launched on November 6 hoping to provide a suitable platform for aspiring young writers to showcase their abilities through the event called (A)maze, together with Javed Jalil, also adding his input through some of his sketches with ideas he extracted from each recitation.
The show started with a young 21 year old student of IUB, Shezar Doja, who recited a couple of his poems, one written when he was back in high-school while the second one is more recent although in his own words, ‘needs to be polished yet’. The themes along with the diction expressed in his poems certainly indicates a good amount of potential and it would indeed be a good stepping stone for him if he is to pursue and unravel other facets of his imagination.
Next up on stage was Shihab Ansari Azhar, a writer, musician and economist working for the World Bank, who read out excerpts from a short story he wrote -that was published in the New Age Eid magazine - called ‘Acid’. The story presented itself with certain elements of magical realism in its vivid descriptions of a soul session in a psychologist’s chamber through the intimacy shared and developed by a young man and an acid victim. In the end, there was a twist in the tail, subtly read out but had a spine tingling effect on the listeners as it is revealed that the male protagonist was diagnosed with cancer.
The next two pieces were non fictional works written and read out by Tahmina Shafique, whose efforts were more than commendable to say the least. A few anecdotal extracts were read out from either piece which did raise a few eyebrows, one regarding the disappointing state of women in prison and the other on autistic children, both of which were published in New Age.
Up next was Shabnam Nadiya who read out a story of her own, published a couple of years back. The story describes the suppressed anger of a housewife, with several flashbacks of past incidents, which when the story reverts back to the present setting, justifies her course of actions against her in laws, that certainly kept the listeners engaged.
Following up on her pieces was Kaiser Haq, who kept the listeners enthralled by his pitch in his recitations of a few of his own pieces, portraying themes of satire, romance as well as on the lifestyles of the indigenous communities, that made for a tough act to follow.
Although the next couple of recitations namely, a poem by Khadimul Islam, literature editor of the Daily Star and guest speaker Neeman Sobhan’s piece on her experiences in Rome did little to dampen the atmosphere. All the while, Javed Jalil took some of the elements off the recitations and represented them through a few paintings which he later presented on stage, each with its own unique elements, further enhancing the atmosphere. The curtains to the evening were drawn by a couple of songs sang by Shahana Bajpai. Overall, events such as these do make for a breath of fresh air and are certainly worth marking out in one’s calendar.
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