Should I stay here or should I go there? That was the dilemma for thousands of visitors at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF) as multiple sessions unfolded at the same time on the second day. There was Bahar Dutt speaking about her new book India’s Experiments in Saving Nature, Paromita Vohra talking about dating, sexting and modern love, Harini Nagendra sharing her views on trees and human interaction, and Arun Mohan sharing his story about the ghost solar cooker from the 1950s.
Spread through the day with workshops, story-telling sessions, book launches and conversations, the HLF was a packed affair.
“India is urbanising but not at a rapid pace. Bihar and Kerala have the highest migration rates but they are at two different ends of spectrum. There are districts in Maharashtra and Bihar where the sex ratio of men and women is loaded in favour of women,” said Chinmay Tumbe, talking about his findings in his book, India Moving: A history of migration .
“If children don’t climb trees how will they love trees? People should see seeds grow into plants and a bonding will develop,” said Harini Nagendra, author of Cities and Canopies, as author-illustrator Nirupa Rao spoke about how children can now identify 10 brands of cars but would be hard-pressed to name 10 plant species.
The big draw of the day was Ashutosh, who spoke about how the label of gaddar (anti-national) is being thrown around to discredit legitimate protests in the country. But it was Banaras ka Thug , the short story written by K.A. Abbas and turned into a play by Anuradha Kapur and Vidya Rao, that showed the connection between citizens, cities and confusion and had the audience in a thrall.
