Long Live Literature!

Finally Mumbai has her own Literature Festival! When I had attended the Jaipur Literary Fest in January this year, I kinda cribbed while booking my tickets wondering why couldn’t the event be in Mumbai. (though later I was glad it was Jaipur, owing to the oh-so-charming Diggi Palace). Someone listened to me up there J and the Literature Live festival is happening this weekend at Mumbai’s south corner landmark of NCPA.

We are going to see the who’s who of the Litterati anchoring interesting sessions – my favourite ones seem to be ‘New India, New Writing’ on 12^th Nov at 1.30 pm, E-literature on 13^th Nov at about 11 am (yes, need to be up early this Saturday!), the Kite Runner presentation by Sorab Wadia which begins at about 7pm, Poetry of the City on 14^th November 4 pm (seems to be tentative) and the day-long session at Lavasa the next day – 15^th November. Literally cool! There are a dozen more sessions which you can choose and register for at http://literaturelive.in/programs.html so take your pick.

What’s quite strange though that amidst several Mumbai-based literary maestros like Gulzarsaab or Javed Akhtar, celeb writers like De and Kashyap, new young writers like Reema Moudgil and Anna Zaidi, award winning writers like Adiga etc, they only thought of Chetan Bhagat to be worth the city salt. Maybe the others are all unavailable. Weep! Hope the next year would see better guest speakers and dynamic personalities who shape the literary world. More updates coming up on my blog about the festival as it happens. Long Live Literature!