FINDING JLF IN THE CHAOS

The Jaipur Literature Festival wrapped up its 16th edition earlier this week. Where can it go from here?

- Vangmayi Parakala

The 2023 edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) ended on Monday. It was the 16th successful edition, including its all-online 2021 version and 2022 extended hybrid format during the pandemic.

Its origin story has been told multiple times, and, over the years, the JLF expanded to the US, Canada, UK and the Maldives. In an interview to Lounge in 2017, William Dalrymple, one of the two festival directors, noted that the JLF had "grown like a monster in a Puranic myth, rising from the deep, with tentacles reaching out" beyond Jaipur. In keeping with this, they announced a JLF in Spain, too, this year.

When it started in the mid-2000s at the now 163-year-old Diggi Palace in Jaipur, the JLF was a little spot of joy, waiting to be discovered. In the early 2010s, it had started making serious waves. Despite courting its share of critique and controversy about speakers and sponsors, the JLF remained that bright kid in class even the strictest teacher would grudgingly admire, the well-read, cool kid with whom everyone wanted to spend time.

And they all could. For close to 14 years, it was free. All anyone had to do was register. For a whole host of people, especially millennials in high school or college from the late 2000s to the early 2010s, this was a big calendar event. Whatever your background and educational obligations, the JLF felt like the most heady crash course in liberal arts.