5-day Jaipur Literture Festival kickstarts

Jaipur: The Jaipur Literary Festival (JLF) which kickstarted here on Friday proved to be an inspiration for a whole generation of readers as Gilbert took the audience through her story of discovering herself through her travels. The audience listened to her with rapt attention.

One of the reasons the festival continues to be the best in the world and has over half a million people attending every year is this impressive line up of authors talking in various sessions spread across five days.

William Dalrymple says, "Most of the foreign authors find it possible to come to India in the month of January, the weather is beautiful in Jaipur, we have a beautiful venue and yes luck has been on our side."

In addition, of course, are the trio - William, who handles the foreign authors; Namita, who curates in Indian panel and Sanjoy, who is faultless in his organising the festival of this size with precision.

Eminent author Marcus Du Sautoy said during his inaugural speech, "I like what Srinivasa Ramanujan used to say about numbers: that every number has its own particular character in the story of mathematics. For me it is thirteen; thirteen is a prime number, an indivisible number and the JLF is certainly a festival in its prime."

And true to the words, JLF has reached its prime in the way its curated, organised, attracts authors and book readers from all over the world and has inspired several other such small and big book fests across the country.

Some of the international authors, who enjoyed packed house during their sessions include Leila Slimani, the French author, whose book Lullaby translated into English stood one of the best sellers last season with its dystopian story of a 'perfect' nanny.

She also spoke about her new book 'Adele' that yet again explores the concept of female sexuality. Tom Holland on his book on Christianity 'Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind', Katie Hickman on her book that explores the lives of English women who chose to come to India and she shared a few fascinating stories from 'She Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British Women in India'.

The Indian authors that made an impact at the fest during the first two days were Manoranjan Bajpai, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Haveree Bamzai, Shobhaa De, KR Meera, Anuradha Bhagwati, Rakajanda Jalil, Namita Gokhale, who spoke of her book 'Jaipur Journals', Ashwin Sanghi who announced his book, 'Vault of Vishnu', the crowd puller Shashi Tharoor, who even has a session titled Shashi on Shashi and third one in three days, yet one of the most well attended sessions-and the list is going to get bigger and better.