Sights and sounds from day 1 of Bangalore literature festival

Somebody who had wandered into the Crowne Plaza at Electronic City around 3 pm on Friday would be excused for thinking it was the venue for a premiere of Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. After all, that was the only time during the day when the place was abuzz with crowds of people craning their necks for a glimpse of Farhan Akhtar.

But for those few who did arrive in the morning, stuck around and wandered about, there were some interesting literary discussions they could partake in on the first day of the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF). At the opening ceremony, the talk centred around the plurality of Bangalore, and how its literature festival reflects that inclusive nature of the city.

“I am a Tamilian from Bangalore, which is like being a Gujarati in Mumbai. A lot of people will say you don’t belong here even if you feel you do,” said historian and cricket writer Ramachandra Guha.

“The special thing about Bangalore is that, here there are only some Kannadigas who tell me that I am not a Bangalorean. There are not too many chauvinists in this city,” Guha said.

He also credited this relative tolerance of Bangalore to its status as a migrant city, its geographical location and the heritage of erstwhile Mysore State, which encouraged a plural culture.

He said this was perhaps the only city where both Hindustani and Carnatic music have equally strong following.

Nabaneeta Dev Sen, award-winning Bengali poet, novelist and academic, pointed out how the word bhasha was used as an umbrella to club together all regional language literature.

“It is demeaning. Bhasha means language. Say antarik bhasha if you want to talk about regional language,” she said, in reference to an afternoon session by Ashok Vajpeyi, Gulzar and Ramakant Rath, titled ‘Is Bhasha being subsumed by English?’

There were discussions on ‘Vision for India’ by Baijayant Panda, Lt Gen Ramesh Halagali, Veeraraghav TM and TV Mohandas Pai, ‘Partners in Crime and Fantasy’ by Anita Nair, Madhulika Liddle, Nilanjana Roy and Sumeet Shetty, ‘Co-existence of Commercial and Literary Writing in India’ by David Davidar, Nilanjana Roy and Kapish Mehra and ‘Traversing Geographical Boundaries with Poetry’ by Athena Kashyap, Vibha Rani and Aurelia Lassaque. The crowd-puller among the morning sessions was a talk on spirituality writing by Sri Sri Ravishankar, founder of Art of Living.

Later in the day, Kishwar Desai’s book, The Sea of Innocence, was released by Shobhaa De and Gita Aravamudan. The literary events of the day concluded with a talk by William Dalrymple on Princes and Painters of Mughal Delhi.

What’s on today
10 – 11pm: ‘Aao phir nazm kahein’: Gulzar and Prasoon Joshi in conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir

12 noon – 1pm: ‘Screen to Page: writing on Indian Cinema’: Baradwaj Rangan, Sidharth Bhatia, MK Raghavendra and Nasreen Munni Kabir moderated by Sharmistha Gooptu

2 – 3pm: ‘Solla sobagu: Aadu nudiya sahithya sogadu’: Oral literary languages of Karnataka- Tulu, Kodava, Konkani and Beary: BM Hanif , Chinnappa Gowda , Rekha Vasanth and Edwin JF D’souza moderated by B Viveka Rai.

4- 5pm:  Launch of Shashi Deshpande’s ‘Shadow Play’ followed by a panel discussion on ‘Are we becoming a Bestseller generation?’: Shobhaa De, Ashwin Sanghi, Shashi Deshpande and Ian Jack moderated by Karthika VK.

5:00 – 6:00 P.M:  “Is Economic Development a garb for hard Right politics?--the Gujarat Model: Madhu Kishwar, Kingshuk Nag, Hartosh Singh Bal  moderated by Veeraraghav

7.30-8.45: A Hindustani Bansuri Recital by Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia