Formula 1 saved the city’s image in 2011; in 2012 F1 shares space with Charles Dickens on the event calendar.
Delhi may have embarrassed itself with the Commonwealth Games in 2010, but it slightly redeemed its reputation with Formula 1 this year. About 100,000 people turned up to watch Sebastian Vettel win the race and put all doubts to rest.
Car capital
The success of the maiden F1 race has made the second edition one of the most awaited events not only in Delhi but the country. The Buddh International Circuit won the Motorsport Facility of the Year award at the Motorsport World Expo in Germany. People are already making plans to watch the race in 2012 — dates are not yet announced.
For automobile lovers, in the second week of 2012 all roads lead to Pragati Maidan and the 11th Auto Expo. Sports cars, concept cars, superbikes and electric cars will be on display at Asia’s largest auto show. You can see 50 launches including the Mercedes SLS AMG Roadster, BMW M5, Audi’s new Q3 and the entire range of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, at Pragati Maidan, January 7-11. Tickets are available at the venue and at www.bookmyshow.com.
Art and music
The fourth India Art Fair will be at a new location, the NSIC Exhibition grounds, from January 26-29. It will feature 91 exhibitors from 20 countries, with over 1,000 artists. Presentations of European modern art will include works by Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. The organisers expect more than 100,000 visitors.
Grammy award-winning music producer and DJ David Guetta will perform at the second edition of the Eristoff Invasion Festival in Delhi on March 9. Originally a nightclub DJ during the 1980s and 1990s, this Frenchman co-founded a production company and released his first album in 2002. Since then he has sold over 5 million albums. His latest album is nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance/Electronica Album at the 54th Grammy Awards.
The National School of Drama’s annual festival, the 14th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, January 8-22, will begin with a production of Rabindranath Tagore’s play The King of Dark Chamber. It is directed by Ratan Thiyam and performed by the Chorus Repertory Theatre of Manipur that he founded. As a tribute to Tagore on his 150th birth anniversary, the festival will have 14 productions of his work. The festival will host interactive sessions with directors, a seminar on “The Multi-disciplinary Approach of Tagore’s Performance Language” and five photographic exhibitions. Initiated a decade and a half ago by NSD, the festival is now the largest theatre festival in Asia.
The fifth Jaipur Literature Festival, January 20-24, will feature star writers from around the world speaking on issues of local and global concern — such as Bhakti and Sufi tradition, the Arab Spring, Gandhi and the Anna Hazare agitation, as well as vegetarianism, censorship, writing from conflict zones, and theatre. Writers attending for the first time include playwrights Tom Stoppard and David Hare, Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri, Sri Lankan writer Michael Ondaatje and
To commemorate the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’s birth anniversary on February 7, the British Council will organise activities in partnership with publisher Penguin India. The events, at literary festivals, will explore Dickens’s popularity and relevance in the 21st century. There will also be writing and film projects for young people, designed to help them reflect on their own cities the way Dickens did on 19th-century London. Other highlights include Picturing Dickens, a travelling festival and a Travelling Dickens Bookshelf which will put his books on wide display.
The year will also see three major music and theatre collaborations: Babur in London, an opera by Jeet Thayil and Edward Rushton, Naciketa, an opera by Nigel Osborne and Ariel Dorfman with likely theatrical input from Indian director Rattan Thiyam, and the full version of the musical collaboration between the English contemporary folk band Bellowhead and an Indian band, the Raghu Dixit Project.
