It's not nice to open the papers in the morning and find you no longer have a job. But that's exactly what happened to Malayalam poet Satchidanandan, who's been serving as the Akademi's chief executive for nine years. Like his predecessors, Satchidanandan was hoping for a one or two-year extension when he turns 60 in May. A respected figure in the world of letters and the Akademi, he's credited with having turned the Akademi from a sarkari outfit to a semi-literary one. At least the 250 programmes and seminars he organised had real writers! The change was evident in the books the Akademi produced in the last decade: sales went up from Rs 40 lakh to Rs 2 crore.
Bibliofile
What is this about politics and Sahitya Akademi? Or Gopichand Narang and K. Satchidanandan? And how do you take the soul out of Sufism?
And we thought Sufism was all about singing and dancing. Punjabi writer Ajeet Cour's Foundation has decided to take all the fun out of it by holding a conference on its deep aspects like 'Pluralism, Secularism and Sufism' with delegates from 14 countries. But despair not: there will be some singing by Pakistan's Iqbal Bahu, Baul and Gurbani singers and trips to Sufi shrines.
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