Jaipur Literature Festival celebrated ten successful years of organisation in 2017. The event was organised from the 19th to the 23rd of January at Diggi Palace, Jaipur. The 2017 edition of the festival featured writers, poets, speakers and artists from a variety of genres of literature.
The event began on the first day with an enthralling musical performance by the Shillong Chamber Choir, followed by the keynote address by Gulzar and Anne Waldman. The five day event went on to witness a huge crowd from India and abroad, acknowledging international authors and artists like Emma Sky, David Park, Roberto Calasso, Hyeonseo Lee and Rachel Dwyer. Indian authors who added to the festivity of the event were Devdutt Pattanaik, Ashwin Sanghi and Dhrubajyoti Borah. Other artists who spoke of their field at the festival were Javed Akhtar, Shashi Tharoor, Sudhir Mishra, Imtiaz Ali, Rishi Kapoor and Neel Madhav. After a long day of sessions and interactions, the organisation held a Music Stage: Cultural Night of Jaipur Literature Festival at Hotel Clarks, Amer from 19th to 22nd January, 2017. These cultural nights saw splendid performances by some of the best greatest performers in the international and Indian music industries. The musical genres ranged from indie and electro to folk and sufi, ensuring that there was something for everyone. Artists like Rajasthan Josh, Band Kabir Cafe, Raghu Dixit, Inna Modja, Lisa Hannigan and others put up breathtaking shows on all four days.
Apart from literature and music, Ojas Art, has been an annual fixture of JLF, instrumenting and incorporating visual arts into programming, and providing a platform for artists to showcase their work and also awarding the best to encourage them. Since 2008, JLF has seen growth in numbers of both speakers and spectators. Appreciating the grand tenth anniversary celebrations, a spectator was overheard saying, “India is very rich in literature and the growth of partisans in these literary events in the recent past is highly appreciable.”
Radhika Boruah
