Amidst an ambience that recreated the grandeur of Jaipur's Diggi palace with earthen lamps and qawwali music, the curtains were raised on the much awaited Zee Jaipur Literature Festival here, which brings with it 222 speakers from across the world.
The event late last evening at the Taj Mahal hotel here gave a peek into what has been called as the world's "largest free literary festival," that began over a decade ago.
This year in its 9th edition, the literary jamboree has lined up headline names such as Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, author Ruskin Bond, American photographic Steve McCurry, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Stephen Fry from Britain.
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The 2016 edition explores globally vital issues such as migration, privacy and navigating change and attempts to bring together a range of expertise and perspectives on stage.
"It has become the biggest literary festival in the world from very humble beginnings where we had only 11 people and now it has become this monster. This year everything is new. We have got a completely different set of authors and the authors are the festival. It is the best range we have ever had," William Dalrymple, who co-organised the five-day-long festival with Namita Gokhale said.
Pointing that the line up is filled with winners of awards such as the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Samuel Johnson among others he said, "We try and get a clean sweep of all the big prizes plus an entirely subjective personal pick of our favourite classics."
Caribbean writers including Marlon James (Man Booker Prize) and Kei Miller (Forward Prize) from Jamaica and several other authors from Central America are also included.
The edition seeks to serve as a platform that promotes development of thoughts and idea and respects different points of view.
"In today's world where everything seems to be divided into tolerance and intolerance, this is a platform that celebrates equity and different points of view. Authors write not necessarily to entertain or please. They write because they have volition to write.
"They present to us different perspectives and allow us to explore different cultures, their histories, their traditions and their philosophies. You may agree or disagree with an author or his or her writing, but that's what JLF is. It allows you that position to accept or debate," Sanjoy Roy, producer of the festival said.
Politician and writer Shashi Tharoor who participated in a discussion at the curtainraiser with Shazia Ilmi, Pawan Varma, Syed Salman Chisti and Sudheendra Kulkarni, said, "India is like a thali - each in different bowls, not necessarily flowing into each other but together on a platter we create a robust meal.
"Respect for different points of view is lacking and that must change. It is important to have a consensus on the basic notion that we don't need to agree all the time," Tharoor said.
For Gokhale, it was all about the audience, which she said
had been instrumental in the evolution of the festival and making it what it is today.
"It has evolved through the intensity of audience participation and the quality of audience impacts the speakers. They are the major stakeholders in the festival," she said.
Like previous years when Gokhale had compared the festival to metaphors like "Woodstock year", "Sahitya ka Kumbh Mela" and even a banyan tree, this year she has chosen to call it "Katha Sarit Sagar" or the sea of stories.
"An entire cultural ecosystem has evolved around the festival, of shared stories, of ideas, of dialogue and debate," she said.
"At a time when our nation and indeed the world is taking up fixed and rigid positions, when we are in danger of forgetting our shared humanity, the Jaipur Festival is steadfast in upholding the value of dialogue, of responsible debate, of the free exploration of ideas, of listening in as well as speaking out," she said.
Privacy will be one of the key themes for the festival where it will explore the deeper issues of a changing social and technological consciousness and move beyond the principles of "when I withhold information, it is privacy; when you withhold information, it is secrecy."
The festival has also scheduled an extravagant showcase of Indian languages with acclaimed Adivasi publisher Ruby Hembrom to Hindi writers like Alka Saraogi, Mridula Sinha, Anu Singh Choudhary, Uday Prakash and Ashok Vajpeyi, Prabhat Ranjan among others.
Regional authors like Vivek Shanbhag (Kannada), Anita Agnihtori (Bangla), Bant Singh and Desraj Kali (Punjabi) will also be a part of the festival.
"This year we decided that we needed to allow access to much more writing in the Indian languages because of which every year now we will commission translations of at least 8 to 10 best fiction and non-fiction in different languages to be available for rights both international and into Indian languages and that's one of our major initiatives," Roy said.
The third edition of the festival's publishing segment, the Jaipur Book Mark will run parallel to the main festival to facilitate translations from, into and amongst the Indian languages and connect publishers from around the world with their Indian counterparts.
The key note address for the event will be delivered by Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso, with popular children's writer Ruskin Bond chairing one of the opening sessions.
Special deliberations on William Shakespeare and Marcel Proust by expert authorities will also be held.
Besides a dedicated discussion on the world's forgotten Armenian genocide, the festival will attempt to weave a strand of ideas around the theme of "Negotiating Modernity," by focusing on how to sustain a continuum of ideas and identities in the course of evolution.
"This includes a serious look at ancient Indian knowledge systems within a sound empirical framework as well as a critical evaluation of 'Swachh Bharat' and 'Make in India'," Gokhale said.
The festival is set to conclude on January 25.
