For the first time, ZeeJLF – which prides itself on being the world's largest free literature festival — charged a fee for entering, a "token" of Rs100 for each visitor who walked in. Of course, those who had registered earlier had free entry.
The ninth edition of Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (ZeeJLF) ended in Jaipur on Monday with over 360 speakers and musicians who took part in over 200 events in 10 venues across the Pink City.
For the first time, ZeeJLF – which prides itself on being the world's largest free literature festival — charged a fee for entering, a "token" of Rs100 for each visitor who walked in. Of course, those who had registered earlier had free entry.
But it didn't seem to dampen the spirits as the 2016 edition notched footfalls of nearly 3,30,000, significantly higher than last year's 2,20,000 visitors. Of these, two-thirds were non-locals, and as much as 10% or 33,000 people, had come in from 33 countries across the world. As many as 18,000 hot meals were cooked over the five days; a team of 325 volunteers and a crew of 600 made sure the event ran smoothly. Over 15,000 were books sold at the ZeJLF.
Like other years, it hasn't been an easy ride – there were two PILs, one that'll come up in court later this week, and a police complaint against star invitee Marlon James for his angry post on Delhi airport. But it hasn't been a major controversy of the kind that saw dharnas at the venue.
The festival is also taking steps to not just expand – Boulder and Southbank – but also to deepen and widen the momentum built up during the four days of ZeeJLF and extend it with year-long initiatives to further the cause of literature in India.
To this end, Jaipur Bookmark (JBM), the publishing trade's platform of the festival started three years ago, launched a "Global Translations Rights Catalogue" which offers a selected list of books in six Indian languages for translation in foreign and other Indian languages. Under the JBM platform, the festival has also commissioned eight translations of works of literary fiction and non-fiction.
While the prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian Literature has parted ways with ZeeJLF this year, other prizes in regional literature — which has been hogging a larger and larger part of ZeeJLF's programming over the years — were given out in its place.
Among these are the first-ever Shri Dwarka Prasad Agarwal Award for an upcoming Hindi writer given to Prabhat Ranjan, and the first-ever Kanhiya Lal Sethia Award for Poetry to Rituraj, a Rajasthan's celebrated poet. This year also saw the institution of the Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize, and its first winner was Bena Sareen, who won it for Leila Seth's Talking of Justice, published by Aleph.
Next year will be the festival's 10th year, an important milestone for the festival. What are the plans to celebrate it? The organizers would reveal anything, except to say they've planned something "really special".
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