Green Letter Days

Every year,the festival focuses on a pressing issue,and the present edition is highlighting environment degradation. Hence,the list of awardees included not only Pakistani media person Hamid Mir (who won the SAARC Lifetime Achievement Award),Indian writer and journalist MarkTully and Subedi (who won the SAARC Literary Awards),but also environmentalists Sant Balbir Singh Seechewal and Baba Sewa Singh from Punjab and archaeologist KK Muhammad. Each day is divided into two parts — academic discussions followed by reading sessions.

Ajeet Cour,president of Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature,which is organizing the event in association with ICCR,points out that the festival was started to fill in the cultural gap in the SAARC charter. It remains the only literary event held under the SAARC banner. “I was also opposed to nations like Burma and Afghanistan being left out of SAARC. In 2000,seven years before Afghanistan was made a part of SAARC,we had invited writers from Afghanistan ,among them poet AK Rashid,for the festival,” she says. Rashid,now a cultural counsellor,is back this year to read from his verses.

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