The 8th edition of the Hyderabad Literary Festival kicked off to a great start. The audience were thrilled and excited to have talented speakers in the glorious city of Hyderabad. With over 2200 registrants and kids.
The festival began with a Panel: Supernatural Earthlings, Next-door Despots and Unsuspecting Objects: The Life of Characters in New Women's Writing from Spain— featuring Cristina Sánchez Andrade, Inma Lopez Silva, Mercedes Cebrian and moderated by Alejandro Palomas. Two other workshops began simultaneously at different venues - Art & Music Konfluens by Keertana Bhoopal and Sahana Ramprakash and Story Telling - Aarti Kodali at the Tree of life. Art & Music Konfluens - the participants were asked to draw or write anything about the 5 elements of nature and culminated into the art of making visual prints using objects and paint.
Arati Kodali's story focused on taking responsibility as a child and all her stories were original, with emphasis on human and animal rights, lessons learnt from history, science and philosophy.
The next few engaging sessions were Construe the Constitution-2018 by Tarun, Rockwalk Documentary, Rural India in a Flux: A Conversation—Himanshu and C. Rammanohar Reddy.
Toral Shah's exquisite talk on 3,999 cups and more… kept the audience interested with exhibits before the talk began. The session was a full house focusing on creativity and originality. The key point driven was "Read, write and imagine more".
Scavenger Hunt and Heritage Walk had a lot of enthusiastic participants from all age groups.
The Plenary sessions - Kannada Literature: Past Forward—featuring Prathibha Nandkumar and moderated by Rajendra Chenni talked about Kannada in detail and A Life in Dance. Sonal Mansingh—Chair: Alekhya Punjal, Sonal shared her life's experiences in the world of dance.
Featuring for the very time at HLF, Nanha Nukkad- was an instant hit with the kids and grownups too. Heidi (1881) a classic children’s fiction by the Swiss author Johanna Spyri, was read in Hindi (Avanti Deosthale) and in English by (Prakash and Vijay Marur). George Hull on the saxophone and Keith D'Rozario played music to make the readings more engaging. The kids were surprised to receive tiny Heidi books with little badges in them.
Post lunch literary sessions included Welsh-India Poetry Connections with Avneer Pariat, Mamta Sagar, Nia Davies and RhysTrimble. The readings were improvised on stage and were experimental. Prathap from the audience said, "It was like watching a Jazz show". It was a session on literature across frontiers. Readings (Multilingual) Alejandro Palomas (Catalan), Harkaitz Cano (Basque), Laltu (Hindi), Prathibha Nandkumar (Kannada), BS Ramulu (Telugu) was quite liked by everyone who attended this session.
A Tribute to Appaji byVidya Rao - a mesmerizing performed by Vidya Rao, a beautiful tribute paid to Vidushi Girija Devi, the undisputed queen of thumri gayaki. Affectionately known as ‘Appaji’.
How India Became a Republic—Aparna Rayaprol in conversation with Ornit Shani- a great conversation on researched India and its post Independence constitution.
Panel: The Health of the Indian Health System—Anindita Majumdar, Sujatha Rao Moderator: Amita Dhanda was another interactive session.
What’s the Deal with Gender?: Figuring it Out Together by Isabelle Hui Saldaña ,Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli and Satyasiri Atluri, the audience asked a lot of questions and the interaction with the panelists was well-appreciated.
Post lunch workshops - Photography Workshop by Aquin Mathews (Basics of Photography was taught in this workshop to aspirants of Photography.) Creating Visual Frames to tell Stories with a delegate from Spain Marcos Guardiola (Maguma) (In this practical session participants used distortion techniques to review and experiment with their own drawing conventions in order to build visual frames to convey stories and plot lines. This workshop aimed at youngsters from 13 years up as well as educators in visual arts, drama, and language areas interested in applying new classroom techniques.) The Transformative Magic of Gratitude: Complain Less by Prashant Jain (the participants discovered how to complain less, appreciate more, and live a joyful life) and Meditation and Creativity by Agnija Kazuša (participants were introduced to three meditation techniques and were able to try in a guided meditation session. Register today for the upcoming workshops.
Interlude: Sanntimmi Ramayana (Kannada) by Du Saraswathi was indeed a spectacular performance in Kannada that was quite insightful, humourous and poignant. A lot of people specifically came to watch this performance.
The first cultural event was Mizahiya Mushaira convened by Aslam Farshori made the Hyderabadis laugh out loud. The day 1 of the event ended with big laughs.
It was a day of fun and a great celebration of books, art, culture and literary events. Join us today as we gear up for another day of fantastic events and speakers.
Try the online Rubik's Cube simulator! Set up a random scramble then try to figure out the solution!
