About
What We Do
We are a group of kindred souls in Kalaburagi seeking to cultivate a creative space in our city. We invite writers, do book reviews, poetry recitals, discussions, and encourage all kinds of literary and creative ventures. We are students and professionals from diverse backgrounds including medicine, engineering, science, social science, law, arts, and activism.
Our programs are predominantly in English, but we remain open to books and literature in other languages such as Kannada/Urdu/Hindi etc.
We meet on the second/third Sunday of every month, in varying locations of the city. Presently, due to the Corona situation, we have taken to meeting online via Google Meet.
Our Vision
We firmly believe that reading becomes more fun when we get to share and discuss it with other likeminded souls. We believe that Kalaburagi is already home to a thriving literary crowd, as is evidenced by booming book centres in the city such as Sapna Book Centre and the much older and beloved Navakarnataka book store. It is our aim to connect the city’s readers and booklovers, to provide a common platform where they may share their literary passions and get to meet others with similar passions.
We want to collaborate with libraries, bookstores, colleges, universities, etc, conduct creative writing and poetry workshops, arrange discussions with accomplished authors and poets, and eventually, soon, be able to organize Kalaburagi’s very own Literature Festival.
A Brief History of Kalaburagi Book Club
“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading!”
Rainer Maria Rilke
How It All Began
It was during one of those melancholic monsoon evenings of mid July, that Syeda Shagufta posted a Whatsapp status lamenting the absence of any literary or cultural scene in the city.
Reminiscing the bookish buzz she had recently witnessed in Bangalore Literary Festival, and recalling her previous encounters with seasoned writers like Ramachandra Guha as well as young Indian authors such as Gurmehar Kaur and Andalabeeb Wajid, she was thirsting for some semblance of a literary life in the city of Kalaburagi.
Enter Kalaburagi Book Club.
Saad Ismail, who was one of the first to respond to Syeda’s status, deeply shared her discontent as well as her desire to have a more vibrant literary space. His own memories from Jaipur Literature Festival, India’s largest of the kind, and his experiences across libraries, universities and cultural centers in the country’s various metro cities, had left him longing. Not long afterwards, a Whatsapp group was formed, pooling contacts of friends, who would in turn gather their friends, and by sheer word-of-mouth, over 50 book lovers quickly became a part of the group.
Within a few days, our first live meet was conducted in the first floor veranda of Saad’s residence in MSK Mills on the 9th of August, 2019, where our reviews ranged from philosophy to pharmaceuticals, from war memoirs to practical books for living, from the Kannada novels of Poornachandra Tejaswi to the popular novels of Dan Brown. Around 15 book lovers had gathered under a rooftop to avoid the monsoon downpour. Despite hailing from across professional, linguistic, religious, and gender divides, they quickly bonded around books, and their discussion continued through the fading dusk.
As for the rest? Well, that’s history!
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