Jaipur, Marsh 10.‘The greatest literary show on Earth’ began with a bright sunny morning at its new home, Hotel Clarks, Amer in Jaipur. Early risers flocked to grab seats to savour the calming strains of the Morning Music at the Front Lawn. Morning Music led the way to the inaugural session with a scintillating performance of Raag Miya Ki Todi by Ujwal Nagar, maestro of Hindustani classical music and lead classical singer of the Indian fusion band Advaita.
Nagar began the performance by expressing that
it was his pleasure to be performing at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2022. It
was an astounding start to the 15th edition of the celebration of ideas. After an
exhilarating rendition by Nagar, the event proceeded with inaugural addresses
by Keynote Speakers – writer and academicHarish
Trivedi and UN Resident Coordinator for India since 2021,Shombi Sharp - along with Festival Directors and the Festival
Producer.
In his welcome speech, Festival Producer and Managing Director of
Teamwork Arts, Sanjoy K. Roy
said, “We welcome you all to the ongoing
Jaipur Literature Festival. Last year, we were able to pivot online and through
our digital series JLF Brave New World, JLF WORDS ARE BRIDGES, and the 2021
Jaipur Literature Festival, which was entirely digital – reached over 27.5
million people across the world. It's the first year that we have taken the Festival
hybrid; we started on the 5th of March and will be on till the 14th of March.
So, it's a ten-day programme of incredible riches! This year, it's not just new
additions to the Festival but a new home too. We are extremely delighted to be
celebrating the 15th edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival at Hotel Clarks,
Amer.”
Addressing the audience, Festival Co-director, Namita Gokhale said,
“Though I am deeply honoured to be
receiving the Sahitya Akademi Award, yet I am here for the Festival in Jaipur
and not in Delhi to receive it because my award is you and this prestigious Festival.”
She also added, “Coming back again to the Festival makes me emotional as I
remember previous editions of the literary extravaganza featuring various writers
and their stories.”
Author, historian&Festival
Co-director William Dalrymple said,
“I think the pandemic has been hard for everyone but the performing arts, in
particular, have found it an existential threat… with music, dance& theatre
- have had their lives very very severely threatened by the economics of the
lockdown. But now we are back and in this wonderful new venue and as Namita
said, with four Nobel Prize winners!”
Talking about the Festival,
Keynote Speaker Harish Trivedi said,
"The body sheds all clothes and puts on new ones. The spirit sheds all
bodies and puts on new ones. I'll also say this Festival sheds an old venue and
begins to inhabit a new one."
Concluding the inaugural
address, UN Resident Coordinator for India since 2021, Shombi Sharp said, “I am the luckiest to be here in the
original Jaipur version of this amazing Festival…Since arriving in India, I
have been deeply impressed by the deeply rooted philosophy and values of
sustainability that I see everywhere in Indian culture. India’s ambitious
targets demonstrate to the world that climate action does not and cannot mean
sacrificing equitable development.”
Today’s highlights:
At the 15th edition of the Festival,
a session featured Portuguese politician and author Bruno Maçães, talking about
his book Geopolitics for the End Time:
From the Pandemic to the Climate Crisis, a sharp study of an emerging world
order that is competitive and driven by the need to adapt and survive in
increasingly hostile natural environments. In conversation with former diplomat
and author Navtej Sarna, Maçães discussed the future of the world’s political
landscape.
Before the session, Mr.
Purushottam from the Bank of Baroda said,
“Bank of Baroda extends a hearty welcome to one and all present here to witness
the confluence of ideas, books, music, art, culture.”
At a session, award-winning
independent data journalist Rukmini S, former Assistant Secretary-general at the United Nations, former Deputy Executive Director of UN Women& a former diplomat, Ambassador
Lakshmi puri and President of MICA, Shailendra Raj Mehta discussed Rukmini's
book Whole Numbers and Half-Truths: What
Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India. In her book, Rukmini
presents nearly two decades of on-ground reporting to challenge some of the
most deeply-held notions of politics and society in India, the half-truths that
data and numbers tell, and signal the need for increased and improved
qualitative research. "This isn't
because I believe statistics is a lie but it is because I believe that
sometimes statistics and data are held to different standards, both in terms of
what they can and can't do. So just as you can lie with words, lie with video,
lie with audio, all of which we see around us, you can lie with statistics as
well,” said Rukmini during the session.
At another session, renowned
writerand Co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, winner of the
prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for 2021, Namita Gokhale discussed the
paradoxes of returning a work of fiction to the language of its geographical
and emotional location. Two of Gokhale’s recent, acclaimed novels, Jaipur Journals and The Blind Matriarch, have been translated into Hindi by
distinguished literary figures. In conversation with acclaimed writer,
translator, and literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil, they discussed the
intimacies and distances of translation. While talking about her thoughts on
reading her books in translation, Gokhale said, “Different feelings, I felt the blind matriarch…she sounded credible
in English, she sounded like many old women with their wisdom and their
foolishness. But in Hindi, she owned the novel in a different way…Hindi was
where she belonged more than English…and Raag Pahadi belonged in Hindi more
than in English, Shakuntala belonged more in Hindi than in English.”
At the Front Lawn, a session
featured Hans Jacob Frydenlund, Norwegian Ambassador to India, Chandrakant
Singh, recipient of the Vir Chakra, Shaheen Anam, Executive Director of
Manusher Jonno Foundation, and Walter J Linder, German Ambassador to India.
Together they discussed the possibility of peace in a world that is torn.
They were in conversation with Hannah
Ellis-Peterson, correspondent at The
Guardian. Anam began her address by stating that war is not paradoxical. “I really don’t think war is paradoxical, I
think it’s pure evil. It is designed and planned by some people sitting at the
top to annihilate, to take control over resources, to oppress and to kill
thousands of people and make people refugees, just to take power,” said
Anam. During the session, Singh
quoted Plato “Only the dead have seen the
end of the war.”
From
distributing home-produced albums on a scooter in the 80s to becoming a
national sensation, Remo: The
Autobiography of Remo Fernandes offers a window to the musician’s
exhilarating life and compelling story. At a
session today, Fernandes
along with Festival Producer and Managing Director of Teamwork Arts,
Sanjoy K. Roy,
discussed his life in pursuit of his greatest loves: music, art, writing and
his homeland, Goa. “I’ve always wanted to
attend a literary festival and this is the very first one I am attending and I
never thought that I would attend my first festival as an author but here I
am!” said Fernandes.