The debate and dialogue continues – jaipur literature festival 2015
Day Two of the literature festival’s lineup included literary heavyweight Alberto Manguel, popular novelist Ashwin Sanghi, renowned Urdu poet SR Faruqi and debut writer Bilal Tanweer.
Despite some light rain, all the sessions took place as scheduled with the crowds huddling together inside the Diggi Palace venue. Vetern festival goers were heard reminiscing about the morning took them back to the initial editions, before it became the world’s largest free literary festival it is today.
Acclaimed actress Waheeda Rehman enthralled the gathering at the Google Mughal tent as she reflected on her illustrious career. Joined on stage by Nasreen Munni Kabir and Arshia Sattar, the actress discussed her work including the classic film Mujhe Jeene Do.
Pulitzer Prize winning poet and one of Day One’s keynote speakers, Vijay Seshadri spoke on the subject ‘Passage to America’ while looking back on his time in both India and America, while British writer Kate Summerscale spoke of her genre breaking work The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.
Day Two also saw the launch of a collector’s book – Curtain Call: Celebrating Indian Theatre, which celebrated 10 years of the META Awards (India’s prestigious awards for excellence in theatre and stage craft, supported by the Mahindra Group).
Meanwhile, at the Festival’s b2b platform for the publishing industry – Jaipur BookMark, insightful discussions on translation, not just of language but across multi-media and digital borders from e-books, audio books, graphic texts and cross-media conversions dominated. Namita Gokhale, author and festival co-director announced a new award – the Oxford Book Store Prize for Best Book Cover – which will be awarded for the first time next year at Jaipur BookMark 2016.
The talking point from Day One however was the breath taking performance by Naseeruddin Shah, who read from the writings of Manto, and the Sonam Kalra & The Sufi Gospel Project which provided the infectious soundtrack for the evening. Held in partnership with Rajasthan Tourism, the event saw hundreds of people fill the historic Amer fort where was room just to stand.
The Festival will go one step further tonight and will host yet another event fusing together the arts and heritage with Shabana Azmi reading poetry at Hawa Mahal
Over at Clarks Amer, the previous night’s Music Stage played host to some of Rajasthan’s leading musicians and performers, including Queen Harish, Chugge Khan and the Jaisalmer Boys, as well as The Alim Qasimov Ensemble, who brought the spiritual sounds of Azerbaijan to music lovers, supported by the Aga Khan Foundation.
Jaipur Literature Festival 2015 day 1
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