In the media
Pen Storming
Indian Express, Kolkata
Piyasree Dasgupta
Writers, who don’t get to flex the quill often with likeminded counterparts, find hope in sites which cater to varied cultural interests
Long long ago, when writers were not suave bankers, Gucci and Armani wrapped fashion designers and kitchen wizards; there was the aspiring writer, or closet writer to be precise. He couldn’t walk around with sheaves of his poetry trussed into dirty jholas, he probably didn’t have to trudge from one publisher to another to get his work in print. The might of his pen first filled up, and then maybe rotted away in a personal journal. That changed with blogs until the latter turned into networking channels with friendship/girlfriend/attention seekers turning into virtual writers overnight. Sreyoshi Mukherjee, an US-based HR professional finds blog-hopping a disappointing exercise. “Now that blogging has caught up, quality has gone for a toss. You get people with loud profile pics and obnoxious usernames publicizing their blogs to garner comments on their page.”
That’s where sites like Culturazzi steps in. Ankur Sharma, a 26-year-old engineer from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago and the marketing head for the Gurgaon-based IT company Drishti, decided to step out of the writer’s closet and get similar-quilled people together for a serious pen-storming on both the usual and unusual markers of culture. “When I was in college in the US, I had taken up a course on Latin American cinema. Since then I wanted to create a platform where people with a penchant for world cinema could interact and publish their articles,” says Sharma. Culturazzi, therefore, started as a blog and then turned into a full-fledged website this March. From literature, and music, to photography, theatre and cinema, Cultarazzi has its contributors bring alive a virtual world of reviews, opinionated articles and interviews. And Culturazzi’s and contributors undoubtedly take the cake for the interesting lowdown on the contemporary denominators of culture. “We have a strict screening process. It is important that the quality of writing meets our standards. If we come across a promising writer through personal networking, we invite them to join us,” says Sharma. Culturazzi has put together a team of five people to screen five articles submitted by an aspiring contributor to test his writing skills.
The site, which is funded entirely by Sharma, finds the writer-hunting exercise as keeping with the spirit of its content. “In sometime, I want Culturazzi to go global. I want to provide promising musicians, photographers, fashion designers, in fact people involved with any aspect of culture, a global audience/viewer,” says Sharma, who wants to plan ‘culturazzo meets’ and road shows to popularize his site as it expands. Though he still earns no revenue from this endeavour, the decision to involve promising young writers, who might not take up writing professionally, as contributors fits Sharma’s scheme of things to a T. So if you have a final year mass communication student from Bangalore as a co-founder, you have a techie based in Kolkata as a contributor. Subhajit Lahiri, a techie working with an IT giant, joined Culturazzi just recently. “Apart from the fact that most people associated with the site are passionate about cinema, literature etc, it is the quality control practice that confirmed me that I was a part of a talented team,” says Lahiri.
Apart from Culturazzi, sites like Caferati which calls itself a ‘collaboration over too much coffee’ partly maintains the blog format and has coordinators spread across the world. Mostly about poetry, the site allows writers to share their attempts at poetry with readers across the world. The site lists coordinators based in several Indian cities and abroad to could be contacted to become a contributor. The forum, therefore, come as a boon for people like Kolkata based Ravi Bagaria who is into catering and Feng Shui business who is listed as the site’s city coordinator.
Writer Rumjhum Biswas, who has been associated with Caferati for quite sometime now finds it interesting how Caferati works as a mentor, critic and an inspiration for people with ‘even a remote interest in writing’. “We have read meets across cities which have Caferati members and writers read out their works to an audience. The feedback you thus get is invaluable,” says Biswas. Caferati, which was involved with the renowned Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai this year, acted as a conduit between writers and publishers. “The process was electronically organized. A synopsis of a writer’s work was presented to publishing agents from houses like Penguin and Harper Collins. I believe 136 such works were picked up for publishing,” says Biswas.
A Click to Culture
Indian Express, New Delhi
Vandana Kalra
The spotlight is on culture, as this club provides reviews, previews and a platform for amateurs to display their talent.
Art connoisseurs head to tony galleries to discuss Hussain’s horses and Raza’s acclaimed bindu while booklovers have had to nudge their way into book reading sessions. Theatre aficionados, meanwhile, meet in dark auditoriums to ponder over Shakespeare’s productions. For culture-savvy Delhiites, the distinction between the varied fields of art has always been explicit. However, now, Ankur Sharma is all set to blur these boundaries. His medium is Culturazzi, a club. “Through this we will bring together culture enthusiasts from all fields,” he explains, while introducing his brainchild that had a soft launch through a blog in April.
Barely three months later, the forum already attracts more than 150 readers every day, 50 of whom are regular visitors. “The response has been amazing,” smiles Sharma, 26, as he goes on to introduce different aspects of the society. The mechanism is simple: Gurgaon-based Sharma and his team of associates scan through millions of international titles to select “most off-beat and unique” films, music albums, books and theatre productions and pen a review which is posted on the culturazzi blog. The readers are free to post comments and offer suggestions. “We aren’t specialists but there is a lot of research that goes into the writing of these reviews,” notes Sharma, who is a marketing manager at Drishti-Soft Solutions. He adds, “At a later stage we will allow people to write reviews, but a panel will screen them.”
Eventually, he plans to organise meetings in cities across India, beginning with Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune, where culturazzi already has a growing member base. “We hope to invite experts to provide a detailed insight,” notes Ritambhara Sharma (above with Ankur), a culturazzi member and student at Symbiosis, Pune. Sharma, adds, “Amateurs will be provided with a platform to showcase their talent. For instance, budding authors will be allowed to discuss their manuscripts and artists can upload pictures of their work on our website.”
Meanwhile, interaction between culturazzi members will also take place in the virtual world through a chat engine on its website. “After all, the aim is to get people who share similar interests together,” states Sharma, as he picks a poster advertising an upcoming Jazz performance at Epicentre. “A review will be put on our blog soon,” he smiles. For more details log onto http://culturazzi.org
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