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Jaipur Literature Festival 2022: Literature, Discourse & Camaraderie
Jaipur Literature Festival, defined as the "greatest literary show on Earth", is a splendid feast of ideas. Every year, the festival invites and brings together a diversity of the world's greatest writers, thinkers, humanitarians, politicians, business leaders, sportspeople and entertainers on one stage to stand up for the lib to express and engage in thoughtful debate and dialogue.
After the covid persuaded break, the iconic Jaipur Literature Festival is returning to the pink city or its traditional home, Jaipur, for its 15th edition. It will be held for ten days - from 5th to 14th March 2022. The festival is set to return in a hybrid avatar with both its on-ground literary extravaganza as well as its effective virtual presence. It will be in a virtual model from March 5 to March 9, and the next five days will be on-ground. The hybrid version will facilitate a larger audience to way in the Festival offerings, reaching out to book-lovers worldwide. It would be the mighty feast of literature, discourse & camaraderie.
Assembly of Man-of-the-Words
In the past decade, the famed festival has transformed into a global literary phenomenon and hosted about 5000 speakers and artists, as well as over a million book lovers from India and around the world. The pink city will be endued with its infectious literary energy once more, as it celebrates art, culture, and heritage.
Jaipur Literature Festival will once again reverberate with intense discussions among people from all walks of life. Some of the notable speakers come together to grace the dias at the event include Indian poet and LGBTQ rights activist Akhil Katyal, Bangladeshi journalist Mahfuz Anam; critically acclaimed historian and writer Manu S. Pillai, author of internationally bestselling and award-winning books Robert Macfarlane, Mumbai-based writer and journalist Anindita Ghose, PEN Open Book Award-nominated Jamaican poet, writer and essayist Kei Miller to name a few. The notable speakers include Nobel Prize winner Abdurazak Gurnah, Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut, Indian writers Vikram Sampath, Shashi Tharoor, Saket Suman and Gurmehar Kaur.
For this year, Sanjoy Roy, the man behind the festival and Managing Director of the Teamwork Arts, has made three changes, including the hybrid form. Another two changes are it will be ticketed for in-person visitors, and the venue has been shifted from Diggi Palace to Clark's Amer, an old five-star hotel. For an event that accumulates an annual footfall of nearly 400,000 and has been described as the 'Maha Kumbh of Literature', these are dramatic transformations. Diggi Palace, the venue since JLF's birth, becomes too crowded, with even speakers finding it hard to make their way to the dais in various halls and tents. But Roy has been refusing to make it a ticketed event. Once, Roy spotted a guard at the venue restricting the access of an older man who seemed underprivileged. Upon paramount, he found that the older man was willing to take his grandson to the festival. At that moment, Roy had concluded that he would never make JLF a ticketed event. Though, Covid put paid to those plans. With the requirement to restrict numbers at the venue, the charge for spending a day at JLF will be Rs 200.
"Like a normal year edition, we will still have 500 speakers, including four Nobel laureates. But close to half of them will be participating in online sessions while the rest will join in-person," said Roy. Considering the themes of the sessions, the event this year gives a platform to the local writers. "We want to promote local writers. Besides, the festival will bring in specific sessions focused on Rajasthani heritage and culture this year," added Roy. He also said this year's programme celebrates the diversity of literature and provides a wide range of topics, including on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, climate change, new world order, art of fiction, poetic imagination, travel, science, history etc. (Source- The Times of India)
Odyssey of JLF
The festival was founded in 2006 as the world's largest free literary festival. The writers Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple are the directors, and Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Arts is a producer of the festival.
The Jaipur Virasat Foundation (JVF), founded by Faith Singh, has initiated the Jaipur Literature Festival as a part of the Jaipur Heritage International Festival in 2006. It developed into a free-standing literature festival standing on its own feet in 2008.
JLF- 2006 inaugurated with just 18 writers, including Hari Kunzru, William Dalrymple, Shobhaa De and Namita Gokhale and 14 others. Over the years, the fest grew its size. It featured iconic writers, journalists and many people from all other walks of life such as Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta, Shashi Deshpande, Chetan Bhagat, V.S. Naipaul, Amish Tripathi, Shashi Tharoor, Anuradha Roy, Chitra Banerjee, Mithali raj (Indian women cricket team captain), to name a few.
An exclusive Friends of the Festival is a different experience for this year. Through this, one can get access to an exclusive Friends of the Festival (FOF) Lounge with specially curated snacks, tea or coffee every time; lunch and dinner on Festival days (March10-14); priority seating for special sessions; exclusive Book Signing and Book Deliveries to the FOF lounge; free entry to the Jaipur Music Stage at Clarks Amer (March 10-12); sundowner evenings at the Friends of the Festival lounge with specially curated cocktails (March 10-13); a grand closing night - Writers' Ball on March 14 (valid only for 5-day package buyers) and so many other things.
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