At the Hyd Lit Fest

For the second year running I’ve managed to attend the HLF that seems to be moving further away from the city. The first year the venue was the OU, last year it was Taramati Baradari almost on the outskirts and this year it was MANUU which is miles away from anywhere. This must have been one of the reasons why there were thin crowds at the HLF on the two days I went. Due to work and a major function that I had to attend I missed the first day of HLF and thereby missed Hari in conversation with Anita Nair.

In a session on Saturday in the morning Narendra Luther, the grand old chronicler of Deccan regaled the audience with some interesting anecdotes about the erstwhile rulers of Hyderabad. In another event that followed I got to learn about some fascinating tales about and from the Ramayana from Paula Richman. After lunch I was in a session where Mridula Koshy read from her latest novel ‘Not Only The Things That Have Happened’ that I planned to buy and get it signed by her. However, I couldn’t gather the nerve to approach her so I gave up the idea. Sometime soon I will buy the book and read it since I have liked the stories in her collection ‘If It is Sweet.’ Next event I sat through was about movies and the media where Krishna Devulapally (Ice Boys in Bell Bottoms) was on the panel. His second book ’Rally Days and Disco Nights’ would be out soon and I am looking forward to it since I enjoyed the humor in IBBB.

On Sunday morning giving my Abids trip a miss I went by bus to MANUU and by the time I reached Anvar Ali Khan had already started his conversation with Vinod Mehta. The editor held forth on the media, politicians and others in his inimitable style that drew a lot of chuckles and also applause. Then there was the discussion on media after lunch where Dinesh D’Souza, Gunjan Veda and Aarthi Ramchandran talked about Bharat/India and whether there really was any such differentiation. They were all creative people, articulate and very inspiring except for two writers that I won’t name here who were very pushy and sort of off-putting with their screechy and shrill talk.


On the whole it was an enjoyable event and made me think of going to Chennai for the Lit for Life event sometime in the third week of February.