Poetic whispers, enchanting prose, enlightening talks, at this lit fest
Headto the Pink City to be part of Jaipur Literary Festival 2020in the coming weekend
This January, as you listen to a pleasing konnakal performance from BC Manjunath and the calming sitar of Purbayan Chatterjee on a breezy Jaipur morning, get ready for an explosion of languages at the Jaipur Literary Festival (JLF). Poetic narratives from Bengal, Kerala, Rajasthan, the exotic Northeast and other regions of India will reign supreme at the 13th edition of the event.
As with any edition of ‘the greatest literary show on earth’, there’s plenty of diversity this time, too. From Nobel Prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee, food writer Madhur Jaffrey, actor-authorphilanthropist Lisa Ray, designer Manish Malhotra, and novelists Howard Jacobson, Annie Zaidi, Arunava Sinha, Jeet Thayil and others, there’s a lot waiting for you in Pink City.
Malayalam novelist KR Meera, who will read from her work as part of a session Many Languages, One Literature, says, “It was in 2014 that I attended Jaipur Literature Festival for the first time. I was awestruck. The number of sessions, the magnitude of participants and the quality of discussions were amazing. Ever since I’ve attended many festivals, but the impact of JLF remains the same.”
Talking of speakers, among the draws this year are international authors such as Jokha AlHarthi, who recently won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel, Celestial Bodies; City of Girls author Elizabeth Gilbert; Ikigai writer Francesc Miralles; Shakespearean and literary historian Stephen Greenblatt, and broadcaster-writer Bettany Hughes, among others. Filmmakers Nandita Das and Vishal Bhardwaj, and mystic Om Swami are part of the lineup of speakers, too.
If you stopped thinking Sanskrit has any role or application in the modern day, one of the sessions will have you rethink. Oscar Pujol, writer of a Sanskrit-Catalan dictionary will talk with poet Makarand R Paranjape and Rachel Dwyer from University of London about Sanskrit’s accessibility and role.
In a session, Rajasthani poet Chandra Prakash Deval, known for translating Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, will talk about the rich literary tradition of Rajasthan and poets Esther Syiem, Mridul Haloi will delve into Northeast narratives with novelist Easterine Kire. For lovers of Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, the central theme of JLF this year is climate change, says codirector William Dalrymple.
The evening of the 26th promises to be cultural treat. While Rajendra Gangani of the Jaipur Kathak gharana is set to entrall one and all, a musical tribute to Pandit Ravi Shankar by sitarist Shubendra Rao and his wife cellist Saskia Rao-de Haas is not to be missed either.