At the Jaipur Lit Fest

I attended the Jaipur Literature Festival for the first time in January 2020. Not for all the five days, just for a day or so. It was exactly what I had been told it would be. Crowded, energising, exciting, festive...

I was there on a Sunday and the Diggi Palace venue was packed. The previous day I had been at JBM (Jaipur BookMark) at the same venue but hadn't attended any JLF sessions.

The discourses on politics like one where Rajdeep Sardesai and Sachin Pilot were spewing forth their contradictory opinions were the most crowded with deafening cheers for nothing in particular. The Front Lawn venue had

At the Jaipur BookMark Literary Festival

I spent a day at Jaipur BookMark (JBM) on the 25th of January. The organisers offered me a free delegate badge because I participated in the iwrite competition. I am not sure why they did because I had not been shortlisted. In any case, I had submitted a short story not a synopsis of a novel. Mostly the iwrite competitions are all about getting a book deal so I wasn't really expecting any response from them. Maybe from their point of view, offering a free delegate badge was nothing but for me, someone who was mulling over going to JLF for weeks, this was the nudge I needed. The free delegate badge I mean.

Festival Directors discussing literary trends

I had no idea what JBM was

Book Launch at PILF19 with Javed Akhtar

My thriller "The Hawa Mahal Murders" was launched at PILF19 with Javed Akhtar. Here he is holding my book! An honour I was lucky to receive because The Hawa Mahal Murders was a PILF contest winner!

So, the prize winner (The Hawa Mahal Murders) was launched at the inauguration of PILF. A surreal experience for me. Other eminent people were present on the stage with me including Manjiri Prabhu, a popular mystery writer, Sidharth Jain the ceo of StoryInk, Mr Vishal Soni, ceo of Vishwakarma Publications and Mrs Agarwal, from the founding family of Vishwakarma.

An extra-large poster of my book can be seen below.

Sales of my book at the venue were brisk. Looking forward to some reviews now!

It was an exhilarating moment! More about my experiences at the PILF later!

PILF 2018 - Pune International Literature Festival

This was a wonderfully organised lit fest (by Vishwakarma Publications, MIT and Manjiri Prabhu and other partners) which was held at Yashada, in Pune. As a Punekar, it made me proud. This is the sixth one, but the first one which I attended as I was not in Pune when the previous festivals were held.

Listening to authors like Shobha De, Gurcharan Das, Isak Bagvan and a myriad of other authors and poets was invigorating.

It was also quite interesting to hear owners of bookshops speak out on the shrinking shelf space, which according to them is not really shrinking! According to them running a bookshop is all about the passion. If it is run like a business the chances are that it will fail. Today,