Literature Live! 360@ Campus collaborated with Sophia College (Kaleidoscope), Wilson College (Polaris), St. Andrew’s (Mosaic) and IIT (Flare) this year to judge their literary arts events at their intercollegiate festivals. All winning entries are given due visibility and winners are invited to join a few writers over tea during the festival. An invaluable conversation for all.
Below are the winners :
The Light by Ariana Somandi
Her eyes sparkled, his smile was bright,
Without complaints they slept hungry at night ;
Their innocence their parents failed to see,
They forced them to beg for charity,
The light was gone.
Her eyes sparkled, his smile was bright,
Everytime their parents were in their sight,
Those instances then grew extremely rare,
With their parents out partying without a care
The light was gone.
All these kids then grow up, have kids of their own,
How to love, how to care, they were never shown,
Her eyes are dull, his smile is weak,
Their future is seeming increasingly bleak
The light was gone.
But things can be different, the cycle broken,
If actions are taken along with words being spoken;
Children should be loved, nurtured, protected,
Only then in their futures will this love
—————————————————————————————————————-
A for Akka by Hridya Rajesh
It would take more than a moment
to pinpoint
When my sister lost her childhood,
And i gained mine.
It would take more than a moment
to understand
how a girl of twelve
turned a parent of mine
It would take more than a moment
to see, to realize
as she slowly shed her colours
to give way for mine
It would take more than a moment
to acknowledge and take sight,
the little girl
who hid her tears, her rage
the quiet pains as the
blows rained
It would take more than a moment
to face
the young woman
as she laughed, cried and rose
for all things mine
It would take more than a moment
to love
the woman
who loved all
yet lived so little
The very moment she turned
Into mother, father, brother –
Parent-
The very moment she turned, changed
from akka to ‘Akka’
—————————————————————————————————————-
Would you blame him? By Khyatee Shah
He is unlike most kids,
Uses words that do not quite sit well on his lips,his
tongue that has yet to learn to roll,
his voice heavy like he has already grown too
old,
Uses hands like defence shield,flashing claws,
Clawing other children like it yields, him pleasure
The kids his age are afraid of him,
You concur, from his behaviour,
label him as aggessive, self destructive, a
to-be failure, a present day disappointment,
An obvious cause of resentment to his parents,
And ‘advice’ his parents to teach him manners,
And wonder why his mannerisms dont change,
After intermittent complaints, time and again,
Until you stop justifying his violence as
parental negligence,
Until you stop concerning your conscious with him,
and maintain your distance,
Until you start expecting him to inevitably be
A cause of social hinderance,
And wonder why he doesn’t discern the difference,
between Right and Wrong
But how can you expect a color blind person
To differentiate between ‘red’ and ‘green’
How can you ignore the fact that he is simply
learning from what he has heard and seen
Because his life has always been,
This way,
His parents teaching him manners is a
series of events titled Deja-La instead of
Deja-Vu
A series of episodes he has seen enough
times to paint the exact shade of
crimson-red his mother’s skin changes to,
when his father’s green belt wraps itself,
around,
the arms that carried him,
the stomach that protected him,
the back that anchored him,
A series of episodes he has lived enough
times to know that they end with his
father chanting, over and over again,
‘I did it because i love you.’
RE VERSE WINNERS
Sameera Shaikh
Mallika Nayak
Anish Vilaramani