Lit fest opens with debate on patriotism

On the first day of the Bangalore Literature Festival, cricket legend Anil Kumble dazzled children with stories of how he had gone into the wild and shot animal pictures.

Speaking at the Lalit Ashok hotel, he showed his young audience photographs he had taken of tigers, sambars and birds.

"Don't you get scared when you go near a tiger to take a picture?" a child asked with wonder.

Kumble explained how pictures could be taken with the help of a long lens, and without having to go too close to an animal.

Another session took literature lovers from the present age, where women journalists battle trolls online, to the past, with a story of how the Kannada script and language came to be.

The inaugural session, with historian Ramachandra Guha talking about 'Jingoism vs Patriotism', was a big hit. He said Constitutional patriotism was in tatters and blamed the Left, Right and Centre for the rise of jingoism. The perils of leaving the 1984 riots against Sikhs unresolved were discussed by Hardeep Singh Puri, minister of state for housing, Kanwaljit Deol, IPS officer, and N S Madhavan, IAS officer.