A literary evening held as part of the Rivière New Year celebrations has been described as a distinctive moment in Mahe’s cultural history, as writers gathered not for public performance but for sustained dialogue, reflection, and shared creative experience.
Jointly organised by the Puducherry Department of Art and Culture, the Mahe Administration, and the Mahe Municipality, the event was hosted at the Mahe Government House with the support of the Arabiyude Amma novel reading collective, and it marked a deliberate departure from conventional literary programmes shaped by formal speeches and large audiences.
Leading figures of Malayalam literature, including M. Mukundan, Zakaria, Benyamin, Shihabuddin Poythumkadavu, S. Harish, Sheila Tomy, Lijesh Kumar, K. V. Sajay, V. K. Suresh, Jinsha Ganga, Taha Madaiy, and Biju Puthuppanam, took part in the gathering, while journalists Sreekanth Kottakkal, T. Ajeesh, and Shibu Muhammad were also present, adding to the intellectual breadth of the evening.
Mahe MLA Ramesh Parambath and Administrator D. Mohankumar jointly honoured the writers by presenting mementoes, and the programme was coordinated by Mansoor Palloor, author of the novel Arabiyude Amma, with organisational leadership provided by Administration Superintendent A. Praveen, along with Soman Pantakkal and Shinoj Sain.
The programme began with a welcome meeting at the Central Hall of the Mahe Government House, where the MLA and the Administrator received the writers, and it later moved to the courtyard of Muppan Saipp’s mansion, a space immortalised in M. Mukundan’s On the Banks of the Mayyazhi River, which, lit by silver lamps, offered an atmosphere that many participants described as rare and evocative.
As dusk settled over Mayyazhi, the gathering continued at the hilltop of Muppan Saipp’s residence, where writer Zakaria read aloud his celebrated short story Atmakatha, an act that lent emotional depth and intensity to the evening, while Benyamin, S. Harish, and Sheila Tomy followed by sharing reflections on their literary journeys and creative processes.
Held without spectators and insulated from the pressures of performance, the literary evening remained focused on exchange and mutual listening, and participants later noted that the absence of crowds allowed for an intimacy rarely possible in public literary events.