Name – Jigar Parekh Roll No. – 25

After the success of last year Bangalore hosts the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) - a paradise for scholars in the field of literature from India and around the world. The Garden City of India commemorates the literary diversity, bringing it in conversation with the best minds in the world for the second consecutive year. BLF bridges the gap between English literature and other regional languages also helping youth to clasp the idea in understanding the power of sound knowledge. The event was spread over for three days at Crowne Plaza, Velankani Park, Electronic City, Bangalore. The Festival was fusion of folk performances, celebrating 100 years of cinema in India, workshop from many renowned speakers and literates -talking about the blend of culture, Classical music and much more. BLF gave the opportunity to mingle with the finest minds of India from inspirational master like Gulzar, Prasoon Joshi to hearth throbbing Farhan Akthar.
The Festival endeavors to become an annual flagship event in the Indian and international literary circuit and would provide an ideal platform for urban young thinkers, writers, authors and lovers of literature to meet, discuss and exchange thoughts and views thereby enlarge the scope of literature.
DAY-1
A new track this year is one commemorating 100 years of Indian cinema with a discussion on the adaptation of biographies to bio-pics. This track features actor Farhan Akhtar, director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and lyricist-writer Prasoon Joshi. Film critics such as Baradwaj Rangan, M.K. Raghavendra and Bhawana Somaaya also participated.
Like last year, this time too a section of panel discussions are focussed on Kannada literature, with a “special focus” on oral literary languages of Karnataka including Beary, Tulu, Kodava and Konkani. An entire track is devoted to Mathoor and its success with making Sanskrit all pervasive there, a press release stated.

Childrens’ track
Many children’s sessions and activity corners have been organised at a tent that’s been called the ‘Makkala Koota’. It is an indication of how far mainstream Hindi cinema has come that it is now kosher to talk about film writing at high-brow literature festivals. Keeping with this tradition, the Bangalore Literature Festival, which kicked off at Electronics City on Friday, had roped in creative stars of one of the year's break-out hits, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, to talk about the art of writing a biopic.
Adman Prasoon Joshi, whose script for the film has won acclaim, talked about how the life of a legendary, living sportsman was dramatized to create a riveting sports film - and will, it can be hoped, hold forth on how he managed to do so without alienating the subject of the film, as has happened with many biopics (a recent example being Julian Assange's denouncement of the Wikileaks movie, The Fifth Estate ). Joining him was the film's star, the versatile Farhan Akhtar, and director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.

There were some devout moments too, with Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar talking about the nuances of writing about spirituality, while veteran Kannada author Chandrashekhara Kambara was in conversation with C Naganna. Later in the day, William Dalrymple was discussing princes and painters in Mughal Delhi.

At last year's fest, poet Gulzar was a huge draw for those who have grown up humming his songs from films like Ghar, Ijaazat, Aandhi and, more recently, Bunty Aur Babli, Omkara, and Ishqiya. The charismatic poet attended the fest this year too and was in conversation on the first day with Prasoon Joshi, who is also a lyricist.

William Dalrymple an award winning historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a prominent broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.
Dalrymple's interests include the history and art of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Muslim world, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Jains and early Eastern Christianity. All of his seven books have won major literary prizes, as have his radio and television documentaries.

William Dalrymple talked about the paintings and princes at the times of the Mughal rule in India. He depicted the lifestyle then and how it was different from the traditional life compared to Hindus who lived then.
Kishwar Desai, the author of Sea of Innocence, bases her crime fiction in places not usually considered dangerous, like Jalandhar and Goa. Her books explore themes unusual to crime writing: her first book was on female foeticide. She said her works are meant to jolt her readers into seeing their surroundings in a different light. “I want to make you, the reader, uncomfortable. I want to bring discomfort to an area you know very well.”
The discussion moved on to the things that made them tick. Anita said she could write anywhere, she didn’t need to be in a particular space to write about it. Kishwar claimed she wrote non-stop; sometimes writing for weeks at a stretch without remembering the world around her. The writers found simple ways to relax: watch a movie, take a walk.

DAY - 2
Is writing on Indian cinema limited to Bollywood, to the point of excluding regional cinema? And then again limited to biographies of stars? In the age of social media and blogging, is every blogger or tweeter a film critic?
These were some ideas and questions tossed around at the Bangalore Literature Festival’s panel on “From Screen to Page: Writing on Indian Cinema”.

The session held out much promise because it featured the likes of author-documentary filmmaker Nasreen Munni Kabir, two National Award winning film critics - The Hindu’s film columnist Baradwaj Rangan, film scholar M.K. Raghavendra, and Mumbai-based journalist and author Sidharth Bhatia. Moderating the panel was Sharmistha Gooptu, who has written on Bengali cinema and is a founder-trustee of the South Asia Research Foundation. But at the end of the session, one didn’t get a cohesive picture of the subject and panelists only got to skim the surface - the ideas getting scattered, and the moderator taking up too much time to get to the point - didn’t help.

Kabir set the tone of the discussion with her crisp admission on some of the challenges of film writing. “Cinema is an art, which belongs to everyone, and everyone has an opinion about it. Therefore it is difficult to write about it. What sells are biographies and books on film stars. Writing on Indian cinema, in English, has been uneven...”

Both Raghvendra and Bhatia underscored another challenge - the lack of any archival material and records whatsoever. Rangan pointed put that there haven’t even been enough books on Indian cinema yet; volumes are happening now. He also led the discussion to another idea: that writing about cinema and making films are mutually exclusive things. “Some may have found a middle ground but it takes someone from outside to harness their world. A film journalist plays a role in unlocking a filmmaker’s mind,” said Rangan.

Another reason for the lack of books on the craft of filmmaking - filmmakers don’t want to write! “They are only interested in making films, not having it written about. Even if they agree it becomes a vanity project,” said Bhatia from his experience.

When Gooptu steered the talk to social media and film critiquing, there was vociferous response. Both Raghavendra and Rangan observed how social media has made film reviewing hysterical, and limited commentary to saying it was wow, cool, or that it either sucks, or rocks! Kabir said “you can’t unlock minds with a medium like Twitter. Writing about cinema for the here and now is different from writing about someone’s body of work.”
On books being Bollywood-centric, Rangan said it was plain market dynamics - publishers commission books on Bollywood because they know there is an audience for it. Raghavendra brought in the dilemma of language. “When I write about Kannada cinema in English, people here ask me to write in the local language. But when you write in their language, they won’t read it!”
Saturday morning saw a fairly decent crowd, spurred on no doubt by the launch of Gulzar’s new book I Swallowed the Moon, which was done in the presence of the poet himself and filmmaker Prasoon Joshi. Are language and the art of writing inalienable?
Gulzar believes that language is what one makes of it. “There are times when I find an English word is more suited to a sentence written in Hindi,” he said. “Thought and language flow together,” said Prasoon Joshi. “An idea is born in a particular language,” he added. The session was devotedlargely to reading excerpts from Gulzar’s book.

Historian and writer Ramachandra Guha discussed history as a social science and a branch of literature and Bengaluru writer Shashi Deshpande launched her book, Shadow Play, in the presence of writers Ashwin Sanghi, Ian Jack and Shobhaa De.

“Writers are now expected to be performing fleas,” said De. “Amish Tripathy asked me if I know all bookstore managers by name, meet them regularly and maintain spreadsheets to track sales,” said De, who had the audience in splits by this time.

Dalrymple, author of City of Djinns, The White Mughals and most recently Return of a King, which traces the history of the Taliban and Afghanistan. That earned him an invite to the White House in May this year, where he held a briefing for National Security, the CIA and Defence. “I talked to them about how the British marched on Kabul to depose Dost Mohammad Khan in favour of Shah Shuja,” he explained.
Of late, Dalrymple has been talking about India and Pakistan. That’s where the real war is, he wrote, in The Guardian. “I’ve been looking for something to write about,” he said. So why not India and Pakistan? “That will mean losing just about every friend I have,” he laughed.
“Afghanistan, Pakistan and India form a very uneasy triangle,” he said. “Afghanistan seeing India as a friend has only made Pakistan very nervous.”
The war between the two countries has always been very covert, for Pakistan and India aren’t equals in anyway. “Pakistan knows it doesn’t stand a chance against its neighbour and has, from the beginning, resorted to warfare that can easily be denied.”
Even so, Pakistan’s underhand warfare had “tied down a million in troops in Kashmir,” believes Dalrymple. “Pakistan has so many different factions, it is a very fractured nation. I would like to find out how much Kayani actually knows.”
He came close once. The chief of the Pakistan army did agree to see him as a historian, but changed his mind when he realised Dalrymple is also a journalist.
Meanwhile, the Jaipur Literary Festival, of which Dalrymple is the founder, has come to be associated with scandal. In 2012, Jeet Thayil read an excerpt from Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, which is banned in India. In 2013, the media created an uproar over Ashish Nandy’s alleged anti-Dalit remarks.
The general opinion is that these controversies are all planted. “Absolutely not,” he says at once. “If anything, they’re hugely irritating. There is so much more to the Festival than the distotred picture journalists like to paint.”

Book launch – What’s wrong with Pakistan

Ayaz told the participants his book highlighted numerous problems faced by Pakistan that had arisen as a result of the country’s foundation being based on religion. He attributed this state of affairs to “Islamisation of Pakistani laws” which, he said, were in conflict with the 21st century system.
Responding to questions, Ayaz revealed he had pinpointed in his book how Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had failed to recognise the ethno-linguistic diversity of the Pakistan that had needed proper distribution of power between the centre and states in the then West and East Pakistan.
He further said the book also analysed the “unwritten national security policy” of the country as well as relations with the US, China, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan.
He said without a secular system Pakistan would remain at war with itself as it was torn between the 21st century and medieval religious systems. Himal’s editors have used the term ‘Bollywood’ consciously suggesting that “it may even be time to introduce it as an adjective or verb in the Southasian lexicon. Indeed, Southasians know exactly what is meant when movie-goers emerge from a cinema hall, claiming that “it was too Bollywood!” says Himal editor Kanak Mani Dixit. (Much like people talk about something being so ‘Aman ki Asha’.) The 25-year old Himal Southasian broke new ground in January this year by starting the region’s first ‘bookazine’, literally a combination of ‘book’ and ‘magazine’. This hybrid model combines the magazine’s editorial strengths with sustainability. Himal Southasian also partnered with the Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange to organise a unique Southasian panel “The Southasian Voice: Writing For Ourselves” featuring participants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India. Since the early 1980s, the phenomenon of “Indians writing in English” has broadened to include writers from other parts of the region. Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, Nepalis and Bhutanese have been widely acclaimed on the global literary scene. The panel addressed the question of whether there has been a performative aspect to writing, a targeting of the West and the Southasian diaspora as the intended audience and whether regional writers have now begun to write for ourselves. The panelists included the Nepali journalist Kanak Mani Dixit, Himal Southasian’s publisher and editor and writer, Pakistani film studies teacher Mira Hashmi from Lahore; Ashok Ferry the Colombo-based author of Colpetty People (2002) and The Good Little Ceylonese Girl (2006), both shortlisted for the Gratiaen Awards; Bangladeshi writer and development worker Farah Ghuznavi, and Pakistani journalist Babar Ayaz whose recent book What’s wrong with Pakistan? (Hay House India 2013) was launched at the literary festival.

Topic – Is Corruption a way of life in Indian Sport?
Do we really love cricket? The answer is "No" , said Boria Majumdar, sports commentator. "We Indians love spectacles more than cricket. Otherwise, despite the IPL fixing saga, there wouldn't have been 70,000 people watching the IPL final in the stadiums - and millions in front of the TV."

When Boria made this statement, there was a good round of applause from the packed audience. He was moderating a discussion, "Is Corruption a Way of Life in Indian Sport?" Debating the issue at the Bangalore Literature Festival on Saturday were Vikas Singh (TOI-Delhi resident editor), Hakimuddin Habibulla (Oly swimmer) and Reeth Abraham (Arjuna awardee).
All panelists agreed that sportspersons should come together and fight for good governance in sports; great players should speak out when bad things were happening around. Else, sports had a lot to lose.
Vikas said media coverage on corruption-related issues is largely driven by public interest. "Public should participate through social media and other forums to keep the discussions (alive) on bad things in sports. We should not let these things fade away as time passes on. There's also need for 'good' corporates to chip in to clean the system," he said.
Reeth said it hurts her that many athletes have to go in second-class transportation to big events and have to contend with lastminute reservations. "I don't want my child to suffer this. People withpassion have to take over sports. In the last few years of struggle, we have learnt that it is possible for the athletic community to take on people like Suresh Kalmadi and others ," she said.
Hakim said corruption is never one-sided and there have been compromises done by athletes as well. "The complex web of the corporate-political world has systematically employed methods to divide and rule the athletic community. We should empower the public with the right to information with the help of technology , about the sporting world," he said.Even as the panellists were batting, the audience was keen to bowl too. A member of the audience asked the panel what a cricket fan should do when bad things were happening all around. Reeth had a piece of advice for the fan: "Stop watching cricket for some time. Take a break," she retorted

Topic - Is economic development a garb for hard Right politics?: The Gujarat Model.
In a first-hand demonstration of how any debate revolving around Gujarat, its development model and its deeply polarizing chief minister Narendra Modi can get shrill and divisive, a panel discussion at the Bangalore Literature Festival turned into a verbal free-for-all on Saturday night.
Defying stereotypes that the Bangalore audience is a polite, tame beast, the large crowd thronging BLF's Lawn Bagh turned the venue into an arena, speaking over the panelists and the moderators, heckling and booing, and cheering and clapping loudly as their opinions were echoed on stage.

The debate itself revolved around questions that are voiced almost every day on social media. Is Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi the poster boy of Hindutva? Is the country moving away from being a socialist democratic republic and heading towards creating a Hindutva government ? Which was worse - 1984 or 2002? Has the fake encounter case involving Ishrat Jahan and others been played up as a ploy to detract from the Gujarat government?

The panel, which consisted of Madhu Kishwar, editor of Manushi ; Kingshuk Nag, resident editor, TOI-Hyderabad ; journalist Sidharth Bhatia, and Hartosh Singh Bal, an editor with Open magazine, was moderated by political analyst Veeraraghav TM, and was mandated to cover the question "Is economic development a garb for hard-right politics? The Gujarat model."
One can say that with a topic like that, the debate could hardly have gone any other way than it did, but several interesting points were raised by the panelists.
"India wants change, that much is certain. And whoever portrays himself as the change gets to the limelight. A few years ago, it was Anna Hazare, but he was not adequate. People are disturbed with the current scenario, and now that Modi has succeeded in representing himself as the change, people are ready to embrace him," said Kingshuk Nag. "But it must be remembered that Modi is Hindutva's poster boy, and his agenda is to set up Hindu Rashtra in India."

Disagreeing with this, Kishwar stated that during Modi's rule, Gujarat has been largely riot-free and has seen "unprecedented development" and that Modi has paid much-needed attention to the "social sector , agriculture, small scale industries and the corporate sector" . She said Muslims in Gujarat were in favour of Modi, and that he represented , in fact, "a depolarization of political thought" .

Refuting this, Hartosh Singh Bal pointed out that while urban poverty on the whole is lower than the national average in Gujarat , poverty among urban Muslims in Gujarat is higher than the average across India. "Muslims vote for the BJP for much the same reasons that Sikhs vote for the Congress, although they detest it. Because of lack of choice," he added.

Sticking to the stated agenda of the debate, Bhatia pointed out that "right-wing politics and performance are always linked" . "These messages of development are going out to a particular section of society that operate around a certain sphere who consume media voraciously , who form about 10% to 15% of society. They are socially conservative and they are in this constant echo chamber of 'development' . They think they have found their messiah."

This section had a large representation on the grounds of Velankani Park - but contrary to what might have been expected , the cheers and boos were reserved almost equally for both sides of the most intense debate of the day. Music has always been part of the Bangalore Literature Festival, with the 2012 edition devoted entirely to the culture of Karnataka.
This year, however, world-renowned flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia took the stage on Saturday evening, accompanied by Shabnam Virmani. Like the rest of BLF programmes, Pt. Chaurasia's concert was a non-ticketed event and was open to everybody. Showcasing local culture has been a constant endeavour, especially as there are people coming from across the country and from abroad as well..

DAY-3
A languid and sunny Sunday, an ostensibly picnic mood, some flashes of brilliance here and there, and a seamier look at literature brought the three-day Bangalore Literature Festival langurously to a close here today.

Biographer Rajmohan Gandhi during a session on Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten. - Anantha Subramanyam K/DNA
The highlight of the closing day was a tête-à-tête – Mera kuchh saman, tumhare paas pada hai – between lyricist-filmmaker Gulzar and film writer Bhawana Somaaya. Dressed in his resplendent, trademark white kurta pajama, Gulzar started off from the point that he himself had in the film industry – his accidental tryst with Bandini.

He harked back in time, and elaborated on how an apparent tiff between director Bimal Roy and songwriter Shailendra had paved the way for him to enter the industry.

Gulzar reiterated that, till this point, he had never harboured any intention or desire of writing songs for Hindi films. But he was sucked in, and he delivered a hit in the form of Mora gora ang layi. Yet, it was not this song that Gulzar decided to elaborate upon, but the creative rapport that existed between the two legends of Indian cinema – filmmaker Bimal Roy and composer Sachin Dev Burman.

The conversation soon veered away from Gulzar’s impressions about writing towards what he thought of working with the superstar-of-the-day Rajesh Khanna and the superstar-in-the-making Amitabh Bachchan in Anand. Thereafter, it was more of Bollywood and less of writing. Gulzar, nevertheless, kept the crowd regaled with his now-sardonic, then-impish sense of humour.

The stage for poetry, in fact, had already been set by the previous session that was moderated by city poet Mamta Sagar. It was indeed a ‘Thoughts that breathe, words that burn: A morning of poetry’ with K Satchidanandan, Ashok Vajpeyi and Nabanita Dev Sen keeping the audience in thrall with their verses.

Topic – India from outside
The conversation with Scottish journalist Ian Jack that looked at ‘India from the outside’ was another session that could not, sadly, become a stimulating one with the other person, columnist and TV presenter Sunil Sethi, holding on to the mike for the better part of the hour.

Jack, nevertheless, did get a chance to speak, and described his posting in India in December 1976 as a fluke of a beginning. He recollected the “ridiculous” precautions that foreigners would take after landing in India, and went on to assert that describing Delhi as a “hardship posting” (as was thought by many diplomats and foreign journalists posted in India) as “absurd”. Jack’s flow during the session was broken a number of times as Sethi repeatedly interrupted to speak more about his own experiences.

And, there were anecdotes – from how he could not make himself ask then prime minister Morarji Desai as to whether he indeed drank his own urine, to how his piece on the stranglehold that Sanjay Gandhi had over his mother Indira ended up with him being withdrawn from India by The Times newspaper.

The Scottish journalist did have much more to share – including his frequent brushes with industrialist GD Birla who thought Gandhi would be “an interfering old man” had he lived longer, that Morarji’s son Kanti Desai was “stupid”, and that Sanjay was both “wicked and stupid”. Till, of course, KK Birla nudged his father.

When asked about industrialists who have come to dominate in recent years, Jack said he hadn’t met (Mukesh) Ambani, and quickly added that GB Birla would have never built himself a 35-storied-house.

Topic - ‘69 shades of grey: Scripting erotica’
It that was deftly handled by branding guru Harish Bijoor. The more the sun showed signs of disappearing from the horizon (all sessions at the litfest were held outdoors), the more the conversation turned steamy. And funny, too.

Bijoor, who knew his subject well, spoke of the oral tradition of erotica being handed down generations in ancient India, and went on to say how these later found themselves translated on to stone. But later, India, he remarked, had moved a long way from the Lalita (of the detergent ads) to Savita (the toon porn that was banned in the country). The participants at the session – Sheba Karim, Minal Hajratwala and Ashok Ferry – were hardly allowed by Bijoor to leave anything out. Right from reading out their select erotic extracts, and describing where smut ends and erotica begins, they did it all.
A languorous and steamy end to a litfest, one might say. And few complained.

Topic - Playwrights at Work

Evan Hastings integrates Theatre of the Oppressed, Drama Therapy and elements of Hip Hop culture into his approach to artistic social healing. Grass Rooted in community organizing, he acts in, directs and produces original performance pieces that grapple with pressing issues while innovative aesthetics invite audience engagement.
Evan facilitates in correctional facilities, community theatres, schools and colleges. He also works with therapists, social workers, artists and educators by consulting and providing professional development.

The literary fest ended with a bang with dinner and cocktail for our guest and volunteers. Artisitc people around the city joined in, in spite the venue being shifted to the outskirts of the city. As many as 2000 people attended the event.
Highlights include commemorating 100 years of Indian cinema with a discussion on the adaptation of biographies to bio-pics featuring one of India’ smost critically acclaimed actors FarhanAkhtar, director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and lyricist-writer Prasoon Joshi, whose ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’ was a stellar success this year; discussions on cinema writing featuring veterans in the field like Baradwaj Rangan, Sidharth Bhatia, Sharmishta Gooptu, M K Raghavendra, Kishwar Desai, Bhawana Somaaya, Jayant Kaikiniand others. Poet Gulzar who wowed audiences at BLF 2012, and loved being there himself, participated this year too in a discussion on film lyrics with Prasoon Joshi.
Other key attractions that audiences witnessed at BLF this year include a session on Spirituality and Writing by renowned Guru, Sri Sri Ravishankar; interesting presentations and lectures by eminent historians Ramachandra Guha and William Dalrymple; nuances of fashion writing with Wendell Rodricksand much more.
This year’s edition of BLF was bigger and better for children and young adults too. In association with Pratham Books, Bookalore and Amar Chitra Katha, several children’s sessions and activity corners had been organised at the ‘MakkalaKoota’ tent at the event venue.