Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (ZeeJLF) is going places. It's latest destinations are New York's Museum of Modern Art and later this month, Colorado says Gargi Gupta
At New York's prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) today, ZeeJLF will try, in the space of one evening, to give the audience a whiff of the Jaipur magic with a key element of the festival's attraction – a provocatively-titled, free-wheeling discussion on a subject of topical interest by a carefully curated panel from across countries, cultures, academic disciplines, professions and languages. This evening's debate at MoMA is titled 'Patriot Games: contextualising Nationalism' – an issue that resonates today all the way from the US to India – with a panel of disputants that is as diverse as it is distinguished. Some of them include Israeli art historian Eyal Weizman, Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili, Columbia University-humanities professor Bruce Robbins, journalist Maria Brenner and Indian publisher Urvashi Butalia.
It's a "pop-up" of the festival, in the words of festival producer Sanjoy K Roy, to spread awareness about ZeeJLF at Boulder, the American extension of the festival held in Boulder, Colorado. Now into its third year, the three-day festival will be held from September 15 to 17, and will see the participation of acclaimed authors, poets, academicians, journalists, activists, artists, etc. Among them are Anne Waldman, one of America's most acclaimed poets; Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Rezendes and finalist Nicholas Carr; writers Anne Hillerman and Margaret Coel; science writer David Baron; politician and author Shashi Tharoor; author and Indian ambassador to US Navtej Sarna; and Senator Larry Pressler, to name a few. "Ours is not a publisher driven festival like most other American literature festivals," says Roy.
Then there's music, always an integral part of the programme at Jaipur, with performances of sacred chanting by Buddhist monks, chamber music, a unique poetic/musical project by Lisa Marie Simmons and Meera bhajans.
This year onwards, the Zee Group, which has been the sponsoring the festival in Jaipur for over four years, has extended its association to Boulder as well, as it has to the British edition that was held earlier this year. According to Sunil Buch, CEO – Zee Live and Zee Talent, and head, corporate brand and communications, ZEE Entertainment – an online contest was held through September asking participants to guess the novel from their illustrations, and win delegate passes to ZeeJLF at Boulder.
"Boulder has a unique buzz around it, and we have been fortunate to have a deep sense of involvement from writers and readers in the local community," says festival co-director Namita Gokhale. One of them, Laird Hunt, author of popular novel Neverhome, has been a regular at the festival. "I've been impressed by how quickly word has spread. Boulder's public library, where the festival is held, is buzzing during the scheduled days of the festival, but it seems pretty clear that the buzz lasts well beyond," says Hunt.
"It's become a destination festival – with audiences coming in from nearby cities like Denver and Colorado Springs; some are even flying in from Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York," says Roy. And it's not just the NRI crowd that's heading to Boulder. "The composition of the audience is about 85:15 – 85 being Americans and 15 people of Asian origin," he adds. Last year, the festival drew a crowd of 7,000 people. "This year, we are expecting more than 10,000," Buch says.
Anita Anand, co-author of Kohinoor, who has been to the Jaipur festival four times, says the the secret of ZeeJLF's success is "the genius of its programming". That genius will be well in evidence with a range of issues under discussion — LGBTQ, climate change, migration, feminism, besides core literary subjects such as poetry and Native American and African American writing. And though there'll be a few sessions with an Indian connection – such as the 70th anniversary of Indian independence and the Kohinoor –the focus is very much on issues that have local connect. Boulder, as Gokhale says, "is an American festival with an Indian connection".
Sneak Peek
ZeeJLF at Boulder is a three-day festival to be held from Sept 15-17. It will see the participation of acclaimed authors, poets, academicians, journalists and activists such as Michael Rezendes, David Baron, Shashi Tharoor to name a few
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