Pushkar lit fest to light up mela

The one-day event will bring authors like Namita Gokhale, Prasoon Joshi, Meghnad Desai, Sheen Kaaf Nizam, Pavan Varma, Tarun Tejpal, Aruna Roy, Veddan Sudhir and Aman Nath to meet and interact with visitors during the weeklong Pushkar Fair starting October 25.

The Pushkar Literature Festival, that will begin from October 31, will help explore and discover the meeting points between contemporary literature and folklore, oral traditions, legends, myths and languages, which precisely define the spirit of Pushkar. Writer-diplomat, Pavan K Varma’s inagural session on ‘Sanskriti aur Asmita: Bharat ki Khoj — India’s Unfinished Revolution,’; writer Namita Gokhale’s ‘Questions from the Mahabharata’; Lyriscit and adman Prasoon Joshi and Urdu poet Sheen Kaaf Nizam’s ‘Kavya aur Shayari’ among a host of other sessions, including a reading from his new novel, ‘Dead on Time’ by Lord Meghnad Desai, promises to make the literature festival an event to look out for.

With the backdrop of the Aravali Hills on one side and sand dunes on the other, the annual Pushkar Fair is synonymous with seven days of exotic sojourn through the royal luxuries blended with rustic beauty, spiritual solace, vivid colours of folk life, live performances, desert sports, and unique competitions.

Voices from NE
Voices from the North East will bring authors, poets, storytellers and performers together to engage in a cultural dialogue and understand the North Eastern literature in all its myriad forms and dimensions.

The event starts on October 13 at the Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, with ‘Rhythm of Words and Voices’, a book reading session with poet and writer Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih. A musical concert by the East India Company will be an apt conclusion to the evening.

‘New Writings from the North Eastern Writers’, a session with Temsula Ao, Mamang Dai and Bijoya Sawian will be moderated by Namita Gokhale. The programming for Voices from the North East has been directed by Gokhale. The event is created and executed by Siyahi, a literary consultancy based in Jaipur. “The new writing from the North East is so fluent, engaged and rooted that its time to recognise the major literary flowering that is coming to the forefront,” says Gokhale.