Kolkata college makes hay as book fair shines literary sun on city

New Alipore College in Kolkata fosters cultural competence through poetry, connecting students to diverse perspectives and traditions.

The New Alipore College in Kolkata is making hay as the literary sun shines over the city because of the ongoing book fair, getting distinguished participants from the event to the campus so that its students get connected to cultures beyond their home.

On Tuesday (February 4, 2025) afternoon, the college’s departments of Bengali, Philosophy, History and Sanskrit organised a special lecture and poetry reading session by the Malayalam poet Gopikrishnan Kottoor, who spoke on ‘Writing Poetry in Keralascapes’.

“The Kerala-Kolkata connection is well-known and it was reinforced to me today while travelling from the airport to Alipore — the landscape, the coconut trees, the nature. The connection was precisely what I conveyed to the students at the college — how nature affects you and makes you write all that you want to say from your heart. Poetry is that momentary trance that makes it possible for the excursion of the soul into the depths of emotional and creative being,” Mr. Kottoor said.

College principal Jaydeep Sarangi, a poet himself, said it was important to build cultural competence at a time when there was loss of faith in universality and humanity, and that there was nothing better than poetry to do that. On Thursday (February 6, 2025), his students will go beyond the landscape of Kerala to listen to the celebrated poet Nathalie Handal, who is a Palestinian-American and who is a professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the New York University.

“She is a singular voice in contemporary poetry, often described as a ‘contemporary Orpheus’. She has lived in four continents, is the author of 10 award-winning books, translated in over 15 languages. Noted poet Subodh Sarkar is the key link between the college and her. Students are eager to listen to her trendsetting poems,” Dr. Sarangi said.

He added: “New Alipore College promises to build cultural bridges, bridges between hearts. We are privileged to be born in India where confluence of different cultures and traditions is the key. Colleges normally have a ‘Cultural Committee’ but what we have instead is a ‘Cultural Competence Building Committee’.”

Somdatta Banerjee, joint convener of that cultural competence-building cell, said the idea of the college was to acknowledge, comprehend, and efficiently respond to cultural variances and develop compliance within the college campus.