The DSC Jaipur Literature Festival 2010 brought together writers and artists from across continents, cultures, forms and genres including: Vikram Chandra, Alexander McCall Smith, Hanif Kureishi, O P Valmiki, Wole Soyinka, Stephen Frears, Roberto Calasso, Tina Brown, Shashi Tharoor, Gulzar, Tarun Tejpal, Arvind K Mehrotra, Girish Karnad, Roddy Doyle, Lawrence Wright and  Niall Ferguson. The festival also hosted writers from Pakistan, including Salima Hashmi, Ali Sethi, Asma Jahangir and Shoukat Shoro. There were more than 170 authors attending the festival with a healthy mix of the east with the west.

 

KEY FEATURES

• Wole Soyinka – In Conversation with Jasbir Jain.

• French and Italian Dinners.

• The Intelligence Square debate with leading luminaries from the social and political sector.

• In Conversation with Vikram Chandra, Alexander McCall Smith, Hanif Kureishi.

• In Conversation with Shobhaa De.

• In a Tough Neighbourhood featuring Ali Sethi, Asma Jahangir, Romesh Gunasekera, Shazia Omar, Shyam Saran & Siddharth Varadarajan

• In Conversation – Gulzar and Pavan Varma.

 

The festival also had a host of evening concerts. Over the 5 days, we had Titi Robin (World Music) from France; Shah Jo Raag: The Sufi Qawalls from Sindh, Pakistan; from India: Mrigya– World Music,  Paban Das Baul, a master of the dubki (a small tambourine) and a hypnotic vocalist, Rajasthan Roots – a collective of folk musicians which promotes the performing arts of Rajasthan, by bringing folk to a multicultural platform, creating contemporary folk music, appealing to varied musical tastes. Susheela Raman and Sam Mills from the UK  performed exclusively for the festival. There were also poetry readings by Javed Akhtar and Prasoon Joshi.

 

ATTENDEES

Over 30000 people attended the many sessions and workshops during the course of the festival.  These included High Commissioners and Ambassadors and Cultural heads of International missions, delegates from Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi who travelled down especially for the festival, publishers, students, University professors and guests of sponsors and supporters of the festival. 30% are international guests, 30% from the metro cities and 40% from Jaipur.

The USP of the festival is that it is accessible to the general public at no cost.Capacity press attendance has generated  over Rs 40 crores of publicity in India alone.