READING BETWEEN THE LIT FESTS

Cities and towns across India are hosting literature festivals, bridging the gap between the reader and the writer and giving a platform to regional writers and their work

- SHUBHANGI SHAH

My mother would often say how, as a college student in the 1980s, she aspired to travel from Jaipur to Nainital just to meet her favourite author Shivani, a pioneer in Hindi women-centric fiction, and whose books have had a sizeable presence at our home. A simple wish, yet reflecting a palpable distance that existed between a writer and a reader; only if she had wished the same years later when the stars of the literary world descend each year in the same city from where she had wished to travel to meet her favourite author.

In 2025, Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, who has written the cookbook Chhaunk: On Food, Economics and Society, stands ahead of me, holding a plate, in a queue for a heritage evening dinner buffet held at Amer Fort in the backdrop of the Jaipur Literature Festival in February. There were several award-winning writers in the queue-all here to attend the JLF. At the centre of the venue, writer-filmmaker Imtiaz Ali is seen surrounded by fans, while Venki Ramakrishnan, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and author of Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and The Quest for Immortality, interacts with a young fan before obliging for a selfie.

"This is such an equaliser," says a person standing in the queue, as one cannot help but acknowledge how literature festivals across India have bridged the gap that existed between writers and readers.

A PLACE CALLED NEEMRANA

The JLF, which began in 2006 with around 18 speakers and some 100 attendees, has grown to become the Mahakumbh of literature and has inspired many lit fests across India.

However, it all started not in Jaipur, but 150km away in a small historical town called Neemrana, when in 2002, the then BJP government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee geared to celebrate the 2001 Nobel Prize win of writer V.S. Naipaul.