Stickers for literature

A sticklit sticker put up in Delhi. (Telegraph picture) 

Vivek Chhetri, TT Dec 25, 2017, Darjeeling: Two young writers from Kalimpong and Kerala have started an initiative to make literature more accessible to the people through a campaign they say is endorsed by the likes of Shashi Tharoor and Canadian writer Margaret E. Atwood.

The three-month-old initiative, christened Sticklit, involves putting up literary stickers in public places, sometimes even at roadside food stalls like puchka carts.

It all started when Manoj Pandey, 33, and Nidhin Kundathil, 31 were once having a casual conversation on how a London publishing house rejected a work because the author "didn't have a substantial following on social media".

"Think of this intervention in public spaces (with the stickers) as the world's largest public library. Think of the possibilities of a rickshaw-puller reading Shakespeare," said Kalimpong's Pandey.

The idea has caught the fancy of over 100 writers, some established and the others novices, from across the world with the stickers put up in London, Amsterdam and Philadelphia. In India, the stickers have popped up in Delhi and Mumbai and in smaller towns such as Kalimpong.

The group is now putting up a question: "Why has the dialogue between a writer and a reader become a function of money? Literature is not a bottle of cola." These posters will hit the streets later this week.

Manoj and Nidhin, who is from Kerala's Kannur, are now turning their attention to works in Indian regional languages. "In the next phase, we will put up rejection letters on aesthetically pleasing stickers. We intent to illustrate the beauty that lies even in our failed pursuits," said Pandey.

At the core of their initiative is the idea that "elitism must be taken out of literature", a thought shared by Kazuo Ishiguro, this year's Nobel prize winner for literature. "We must widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite First World cultures," Ishiguro had said.