Current affairs and larger societal shifts with conversations on politics, economy, food, sports, fashion, comedy, and how to hold the audience’s attention formed the core of the 12th edition of The Hindu Lit Fest that took place at Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall in Chetpet in Chennai on 26 and 27 January 2024. The literary festival provided a platform for an exchange of ideas, allowing participants and the audience to engage with the important questions of the day.
The Hindu Lit Fest 2024 saw a footfall of over 6,000, almost double than last year. The theme of this year’s literature festival was beyond books as the media house believes literature is not just books, but also found in movies, architecture, and art forms.
The two-day literary event went beyond the festival and engaged with people in the city with innovative engagement ideas.
A mobile library went to key hotspots in Chennai, with visitors using the initiative for reading, donating books, and sharing their literary experiences with participants and school students. Two literary walks were also organized to understand the rich cultural heritage of the city. The first walk at Fort St George (now the Tamil Nadu secretariat) was conducted by author and historian V Sriram, who took the participants on a tour. He explained the intriguing backstory of the historic colonial buildings and informed the participants of the tour about the books from which he expertly sourced his information.
The other walk at U Ve Sa Library (UV Swaminatha Iyer Library) in Besant Nagar, was conducted by biographer, author, and historian Pradeep Chakravarty, who narrated anecdotes and stories from the library’s vast collection of rare books.
In the lead-up to the festival, The Hindu Group along with ACEnovation organized a storytelling workshop for the school students to take literature to underprivileged sections of the society, who have minimum to no exposure to literary events. The initiative saw an unprecedented response from students who were excited to be a part of the workshop.
Book donation drives were conducted in several parts of the city, where residents donated books that would be utilized at Chennai school libraries.
A moonlight cinema was organized by The Hindu Group where parts I and II of Mani Ratnam’s magnum opus Ponniyin Selvan were screened for an eager audience on the Besant Nagar beach. The movie has been adapted from a book by the same name by author Kalki Krishnamurthy.
Many online contests invited participants to post selfies with their favorite books with riddles and crosswords. All these activities in the lead-up to The Hindu Lit Fest helped generate curiosity about the event in the general public, which translated into increased registrations and footfalls.
Highlights from The Hindu Lit Fest
Speakers at The Hindu Lit Fest included Ramachandra Guha, Devdutt Pattanaik, Perumal Murugan, T M Krishna, Kanan Gill, Tarun Tahiliani, Anuja Chauhan, Manu Chandra, Amish Tripathi, Sreenivasan Jain, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, among others.
ISRO chief S Somanath talked about transformative leadership at ISRO and spoke about Vikram Sarabhai, ABJ Abdul Kalam, Madhavan Nair, and Satish Dhawan, who revolutionized leadership in the organization, The Hindu reported. He also educated the audience about the 1960s space race between the US and the then USSR, and the game-changing SLV program.
Ramachandra Guha spoke on his relationship with his editor. The prolific writer’s letters to his editor Rukun Advani form the basis of his literary memoir, The Cooking of Books.
The historian spoke to Nirmala Lakshman, chairperson of The Hindu Group about his “self-effacing” editor and described the book as an “eccentric, idiosyncratic personal memoir of a relationship of more than 40 years.” Guha shared that the idea of the book surfaced during the Covid-19 pandemic when he was unable to visit historic archives due to pandemic restrictions.
Another session on countering fake news involved journalists Sreenivasan Jain, N Ram, and Pratik Sinha, with Ziya Us Salam as the moderator. Reported by The Hindu, the session analyzed the challenges faced by the media in tackling misinformation. Jain’s book Love Jihad and Other Fictions, co-authored with Supriya Sharma and Mariyam Alavi delves deeper into examples of fake propaganda such as love jihad and population jihad, and contradicts the theories with data, on-ground investigation, and research. Sinha, co-founder of Alt News, who had co-authored a book India Misinformed, The True Story before the pandemic, shared that the issue of disinformation is both “political and cultural.” The panel agreed that it is important to maintain stringent standards of reporting and research while “documenting our times.”
The Hindu Lit Fest had another session on crime fiction which had Anuja Chauhan, Harini Nagendra, Kiran Manral, and Tarun Mehrishi on the panel. KC Vijayakumar, sports editor at The Hindu, moderated the panel. The session delved into the popularity of the crime fiction genre and what goes on in the minds of authors who write murder mysteries. Chauhan said that the motive and character play an important role in crime stories and added that readers enjoy the psychological tropes and slippery slopes that accompany these mysteries. Nagendra shared her experience of growing up reading Agatha Christie’s mysteries and how they influenced her love for historical crime fiction, The Hindu reported.
Daisy Rockwell, translator of Geetanjali Shree‘s Booker prize-winning novel Tomb of Sand interacted with K Srilata at The Hindu Lit Fest. The session talked about how creating translated literature as delightful and evocative poses a challenge to translators. Rockwell shared, “Translation is a process and I analyze it like a scientist.”
Suresh Balakrishna, chief revenue officer of the Hindu Group, said, “We are thrilled to host a literary festival that goes beyond books. Our goal is to champion knowledge inclusivity by sharing diverse stories and experiences and fostering meaningful conversations. This event aims to bring together some of the greatest minds to a city that takes pride in its rich literary heritage and the diverse art it has inspired.”
The Hindu Lit Fest actively made room for an experience that both fosters and champions, above all, “free speech, the highest ideals of democracy, and a pluralism in the arts and literature,” a press note by The Hindu stated.
The Hindu Group chairperson Nirmala Lakshman said these are the “underlying core values that reflect the newspaper’s ethics.”
