By Express News Service – BANGALORE

09th December 2012

Mahatma Gandhi would have embraced Twitter with open arms because of the medium’s brevity in communication, columnist Sudheendra Kulkarni said at a session on ‘Literature in Twitter Era’ at the Bangalore Literature Festival  (BLF) at Jayamahal Palace on Saturday.

Kulkarni, who has written a biography on Gandhi, likened the Twitter form of communication to Gandhi’s life and message.

“The beauty of it (Twitter) is its brevity of communication. Gandhi, too, was known for brevity in his thoughts, which were few in words but equally powerful. That is how the young generation must use Twitter,” Kulkarni said.

Joining him in the session, brand domain expert Harish Bijoor said there will be no contradiction between literature and technology.

According to him, ‘Twitterature’ is a new genre of literature that needs to be encouraged. “Twitterature is literature in 140 characters. There are some tweets that make us introspect and think when it was that we did something the last time,” he said as he read out a few tweets from @averyshortstory.

Bijoor said there are 146 million Indians who spend 8 minutes on the Internet everyday and this number would double by 2014.

“We know that you cannot write a love letter in 140 characters and it needs literature. But getting  prescriptive is not the right thing to do,” he said.