The Times Litfest 2021

This year, the annual Times Litfest is being celebrated online in view of the pandemic restrictions. I registered for the festival. On the first day there was an interview with Anupam Kher. It seems, he has written a book titled 'Today is the day' or something like that. What I like about Anupam is his very clear voice and diction. Perhaps that is his major attribute that has brought him this far. His talk was very interesting, particularly the part about how he purchased a nine bedroom house for his mother near Shimla when she had only asked for a small house of her own there and got a scolding from her for buying such a big property.

Next was Anand Neelkantan who writes his own interpretation of various epics and mythologies. He has wriiten a book titled 'Valmiki and his women'. He has made Shurpankha and Manthara etc. more humane and palatable. It should be interesting. This seems to have become a trend now. I remembered so many years ago our own Iravati Karve has written 'Yugant' depicting her thoughts about various Mahabharata characters.

After this, there was an interesting session with Dutchman Rutger Bregman conducted by Shashi Tharoor. Rutger is a historian, a thinker, sociologist and writer of a book 'Utopia for realists' which is creating waves in Europe. He wrote this at the age of 24. In this book he advocates open borders, 15 hour workweeks, basic income for all and other such novel, pathbreaking ideas. I was impressed with the way Shashi Tharoor handled the show. It has to be admitted that Shashi is a well read intellectual with great skill of expression.

I missed Sunday's event though. Now looking forward to this weekend's interactions with the authors.

Ravindra Shenolikar