The ‘litfest season’ that takes place across South Asia during the cooler winter months is winding to a close. From the Dhaka Literary Festival in November to the Lahore Literary Festival at the end of February, dozens of such events take place across the region during this time.

The trend of annual events arguably began with the Jaipur Literature Festival in India launched in January 2006. This past weekend saw the Galle Literary Festival, started in the south of Sri Lanka in 2007, and the Karachi Literature Festival in the south of Pakistan, started in 2010. Some of these festivals even have overseas versions held in cities like London and New York.

Having attended the Jaipur Lit Fest and other festivals in north India, I found the Kerala Literature Festival, which I attended for the first time this year, 23-26 January, to be rather different. Unlike the other festivals, I found it to be very rooted in the local flavours, with several sessions in the Malayalam language.

Held in a state that boasts the highest literacy rate in India, 96.2%, the Kerala Lit Fest, launched in 2016, calls itself “Asia’s largest litfest”. This, however, is a claim also staked by the Jaipur Lit Fest.

The Kerala event takes place annually in January the week after Jaipur, in the coastal city of Kozhikode, recognized last year as India's first UNESCO City of Literature.

'Children are the best readers'

Even in January, the air is warm and humid in Kozhikode. Tents spread across a serene beachfront – an area that used to be a dumpyard – make for a charming setting far removed from the city.

A Children’s Kerala Literature Festival with storytelling sessions and workshops by various writers runs parallel to the main Festival. But children featured in several sessions at the main Festival too.

Nobel Prize winning economist Esther Duflo spoke about Poor Economics for Kids, her book about life in a village. The book emerged from the stories of people she met during her fieldwork over the years. She felt that there was something missing in the area of telling stories about poverty to children.

“Unless there is an element of shared humanity, a book will become a lecture. We wanted to consciously avoid that,” she explained to her audience.

With colourful illustrations and short stories highlighting issues ranging from migration, education, health, and employment, to entrepreneurship and women in politics, it is targeted at young people.

Duflo was among the two Nobel laureates at the event, the other one being Venki Ramakrishnan who received the award for his work in chemistry.

“Children are really the best readers in the world. I can’t write for children without being optimistic,” commented French author and playwright Timothée de Fombelle in another session titled ‘Children’s Books and the Hard Talk’.

The Kerala Festival draws inspiration from the state’s rich literary and historical tradition. This year it hosted more than 500 speakers from 15 countries - although there were few participants from neighbouring countries. With an eclectic mix of literary discussions and cultural performances, the landmark event had a footfall of more than 600,000 visitors over the course of four days, according to the organizer’s estimates.

As many six Booker Prize winners were at the event – Jenny Erpenbeck, Paul Lynch, Michael Hofmann, GauZ’, Sophie Mackintosh, and Georgi Gospodinov. Other celebrities included the politician-writer Shashi Tharoor, historian Ramachandra Guha, violin maestro L. Subramaniam, actors Naseeruddin Shah and Prakash Raj, and Indian authors like Ira Mukhoty, Manu S. Pillai, Benyamin, Amit Chaudhuri and Abraham Verghese.

“It’s great to see so many Booker Prize winners as well as regional writers,” Atul Marewad, a research student and film critic from Pune who regularly attends lit fests across the country, told Sapan News. This was his first time at the Kerala event.

The festival aims to embody “the spirit of global dialogue and cultural exchange,” as Ravi Deecee, Chief Facilitator, Kerala Literature Festival, put it at the opening ceremony.

An interesting touch is the concept of featuring a “guest nation” each year. This year, it was France, which meant a stellar representation of French authors and artists. “There are many French authors at the festival this year, which is very interesting,” commented Claire Le Michel, a writer and performing artist from Paris, attending the Festival for the second time.

“I am interested in politics because it frames the world,” she told Sapan News.

'Fiction is a mirror to truth'

Irish Nobel Prize winning author Paul Lynch’s dystopian novel Prophet Song, about authoritarianism creeping in Dublin, feels relevant elsewhere too. Told through the story of one family, the book's protagonist, Eilish Stack, is a mother of four who tries to save her family as Ireland slips into totalitarianism.

“Fiction is a mirror that allows us to see the truth about ourselves and our lives,” said Lynch during his talk, at a panel with author Defne Suman and journalist Anjana Sankar.

“The question we need to ask is how we, as humans, can reduce the amount of harm or negative impact that we are doing to the earth,” said Francesc Miralles, author of ‘Ikigai: Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life’. At his session he talked among other things about ‘kaizen’, the Japanese word for improvement.

Celebrated film director, producer and screenwriter Mani Ratnam was welcomed to thundering applause in his session about whether stories shape society or society shapes stories.

“Society and the world that we live in is the basic source for a piece of art,” he concluded in his session.

Actor, producer and author Huma Qureshi’s session on the last day, Sunday – which also happened to be India’s Republic Day – drew a huge crowd. Qureshi shared her incredible journey as a girl from Delhi who didn’t know anyone in Mumbai to become a well-known actor 12 years later.

Politician, writer and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor amused the audience at his session ‘A Wonderland of Words’, talking among other things about Indian English or ‘Indianisms’, with examples of English words invented by Indians. He also talked about many new-age millennial words, such as “woke,” “phishing,” “binge-watching” and “FOMO.”

'Men can't handle women's empowerment'

One of India’s most prominent communist leaders, Brinda Karat, in her session, ‘Faith and Fury: Women under Siege’, talked about the challenges of ending sexism in public life, particularly in India, where a reported 65,000 women have been burned for dowry in the last ten years.

“If we want equal rights, we should be prepared to take equal responsibility,” she told the audience.

In her session, ‘Such a Long Journey: Women in New India’, social activist Sunitha Krishnan reiterated that there is a long journey ahead before we are recognised for what we have accomplished as women.

“Women themselves are continuous carriers of gender stereotypes that are the result of a centuries old patriarchal society,” she said.

“Something needs to be done to enable men to handle women’s empowerment,” echoed her co-speaker journalist Neha Dixit. Award winning musician and writer Vidya Shah shared several songs and stories from the subcontinent’s gramophone era, focusing on courtesans at the time, whom she referred to as “unsung heroines.”

“With the first recording in 1899, technology forever transformed the listening experience,” she told the gathering. The gradual transition to talkies brought playback singing to Indian movies. The first woman music director was Saraswati Devi. “By 1936, 730 songs had been recorded for cinema.”

The book selling area housed over a million books from more than 350 publishers around the world. Additional features included a music stage, a flea market and a food court.

Overall, a vibrant celebration of literature, art, cinema and culture in India, particularly Kerala, leaving me with much food for thought, and wanting more.

(The author is a freelance writer and editor based in New Delhi  who writes mostly on books, music, theatre, travel, art and culture. www.nehakirpal.wordpress.com. Views expressed are personal. By special arrangement with Sapan)