The eighth edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) will take place this weekend. It promises to have something for everyone with over 150 sessions and more than over 230 speakers from across the country, including Pankaj Kapoor, William Dalrymple, Mukul Kesavan, Ramachandra Guha, Devdutt Pattanaik and Niraja Gopal Jayal. The festival will open with Pankaj Kapoor’s dramatised reading of his acclaimed novel Dopehri .
Sessions and programmes will be held on six stages with three stages dedicated to children. Two stages have been named after Girish Karnad’s plays Yayati and Tughlaq . A session dedicated to the playwright, actor and Jnanpith awardee, who passed away this year, has been scheduled on the first day where B.J. ayashree, Jayanth Kaikini, K. Marulasiddappa and Preethi Nagaraj will talk about his life and body of work.
This year will see nine unique interactive installations, including one that will allow viewers to learn more about the periodic table. Another is a digital app, called ‘itihaasa’, that recounts the history of IT in India from the 1950s.
V. Ravichandar, one of the organisers of BLF, said that they are expecting around 20,000 visitors this year. “Already, 15,000 people have registered. Continuing with the tradition, even this year has a diverse, rich mix of sessions from climate change to fiction,” he said. He pointed out that there would be sessions in and on languages, including Kannada, Bengali and Malayalam.
BLF will be held on November 9 and 10 at The Lalit Ashok from 10 a.m. till 9 p.m. Entry is free and open to all.
