Prathibha Nandakumar

Bangalore-based Prathibha Nandakumar is an acclaimed Kannada writer, poet and translator. She has been interested in the emergence of coffee shops – urban watering holes, as she calls them – in Bangalore and the changing coffee culture over the years. From being the centres of intellectual, political and cultural debates, the coffee shops in Bangalore have evolved a new linguistic ethos, Prathibha notes. Therefore she calls this project, ‘Ondu lessu, ondu plussu’ (meaning, in the language of the café, one sugarless coffee and another with sugar). The space she has chosen is an old coffee shop called Kumara Bhavana in N. R colony in south Bangalore. This sixty year old coffee shop has now been sold and is going to be demolished in about a month’s time.

Prathibha envisages a performance on the Kumara Bhavana site, which by the time the Project 560 Festival happens in December, will be reduced to debris. Prathibha plans to do a poetry performance on this site, reading from her coffee house poems and facilitating the audience to create new poems. Collaborating with her will be acclaimed visual artist Badal Nanjundaswamy, who will create an installation in that space. Prathibha will also create an exhibition of old and new photographs of Kumara Bhavana on that site. 

This grant is part of Project 560, 2015, which was made possible with support from Citi India.