From Sanjay Borkar
Daijiworld Media Network—Panaji (CN)

Panaji, Jan 24: The Institute of Menezes Braganza, located in the city, on Friday 23 January, organized a multilingual poets’ meet to mark the upcoming Republic Day.

Noted poet Ramesh Veluskar presided over the function and said that we Indians should speak and understand a common language—Hindi, so that people from any state can exchange their views, thoughts, culture, and tradition.

He urged people to learn Hindi and to understand it and said that in doing this, we should not sideline our mother tongue.

At the meet, poetry lovers got the opportunity to listen to various poems in different languages.

Poet Laxminarayan Agrawal, in his Hindi poems, depicted a picture of today’s politics and various other topics. Most poets also touched upon terrorism.

Aasman se tuta tara
Kuch bhi kar lo
Nahnm chamak sakta dobhara,
Zameen se nikla patthar,
Tarashane par ban sakta hai hira bhi,
Mujhse zamin ki baat karo,
Akash ki nahi…

This poem by Agarwal drew tremendous applause. As the programme was held in Goa, all were eager to listen to a Konkani poem. Andrew D’Cunha, who hails from Mangalore, fulfilled this wish of the audience.

Pravin Bandokar (Sawantwadi-Marathi), Philomena Fransisco (Mumbai-Konkani-Hindi), Usha Upadhyay (Ahmedabad), Pramod Joshi (Devgad-Marathi), Laxminarayan Agarwal (Hyderabad-Hindi),  Dr N Gopi (Hyderabad-Hindi-Telugu), Andrew D’Cunha (Mangalore-Konkani), Dr Rushabdev Sharma, Savitri Rajeevan (Thiruvananthapuram-English-Malyalam), were among those who presented their poems.

The book ‘Samundra Mai Aur Goa’ by Dr Gopi was released by Veluskar.

President of Goa Konkani Academi N Shivdas, noted writer Damodar Mauzo, freedom fighter Nagesh Karmali, stalwart of Konkani literature Pundalik Naik, and other noted writers and poets were present at the meet.