City all set to host two-day VLF from today

 

 

  

The city is all set to host two-day Vidarbha Literary Festival (VLF) from Saturday. Nagpurians will get an oppotunity to listen to and interact with a galaxy of authors dealing

with a variety of subjects, literature enthusiasts, experts from the publishing industry.

The festival will get off to a glittering start with inaugural ceremony at 10 am on Saturday in the Central Lawns of Chitnavis Centre, Civil Lines. Santosh Desai, who has written the book ‘Mother Pious Lady’, will deliver the keynote address.

The inaugural ceremony will be followed by several simultaneous sessions in Banyan Hall, Tamarind Hall, Mimosa Hall, and Laburnum Hall in Chitnavis Centre.

The Day One of VLF will have 24 sessions, with each of the above-mentioned four halls being venue to six sessions each. The sessions will be held from 11 am to 12 noon, 12 noon to 1 pm, 1 pm to 2 pm, 2 pm to 3 pm, 3 pm to 4 pm, and 4 pm to 5 pm. The first day proceedings will close with the Vid Lit Musical programme in Central Lawns of Chitnavis Centre at 5 pm.

The hall-wise sessions with topic, names of participating author and moderator will be as follows: Banyan Hall -- Dealing with Digitization Disruptions (11 am to 12 noon) author Abhijit Bhaduri, moderator Shashikant Chaudhary; Non-fiction Literature in The Time of Fake News (12 noon to 1 pm) author Santosh Desai, moderator Amit Varma; The Making of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan (1 pm to 2 pm) author Akshaya Mukul, moderator Narayani Basu; Story of a Bureaucrat Who United India (2 pm to 3 pm) autor Narayani Basu, moderator Sachin Jahagirdar; Tracing Indian Ancestry (3 pm to 4 pm) author Tony Joseph, moderator Chinmay Tumbe; and The New Ethical Toolkit for the Future (4 pm to 5 pm) author Arun Maira, moderator Rajeev Aggarwal.

Tamarind Hall -- Making and Breaking of Indian Elections (11 am to 12 noon) author Farhat Basir Khan, moderator Dilip Kamdar; Hinduism and India’s Road to Modernity (12 noon to 1 pm) author Prof Makarand Paranjpe, moderator Shantanu (Contd)

Gupta; The Stories of Urban Trees (1 pm to 2 pm) author Seema Mundoli, moderator Tanisha Dutta; 10000 Kms of Trucking Through India (2 pm to 3 pm) author Rajat Ubhaykar, moderator Medha Dixit; The Politics of Technology (3 pm to 4 pm) author Arun Sukumar, moderator Supantha Bhattacharya; Story of Gauhar Jaan: India’s First Pop Star (4 pm to 5 pm) author Vikram Sampath, moderator Nimish Sutaria.

Mimosa Hall -- Learning Finance from Bollywood Films (11 am to 12 noon) author Amit Trivedi, moderator Ranjit Dani; The Solution to Pollution (12 noon to 1 pm) author Siddharth Singh, moderator Kaustav Chatterjee; Collateral Damage: Rural Vidarbha in Distress (1 pm to 2 pm) author Kota Neelima, moderator Jaideep Hardikar; Understanding the Misunderstood Jehangir (2 pm to 3 pm) author Parvati Sharma, moderator Akshay Zadgaonkar; An Insight into the BJP Juggernaut (3 pm to 4 pm) author Shantanu Gupta, moderator Aniruddh Hazra. At 4 pm, there will be panel discussion on ‘Can Writing Save the Planet?’ in which Siddharth Singh, Seema Mundoli, and Jhelum Bose will participate. Supantha Bhattacharya will moderate the discussion.

Laburnum Hall -- Screening of ‘Peering Soul’ and ‘Peering Warrior’ documentaries on the spiritual and martial remnants of Sikh legacy in Pakistan, from 11 am to 12 noon. The participating author will be Amardeep Singh, and Jeetendra Nayak will moderate. The session will continue from 12 noon to 1 pm and there will be discussion on ‘The Lost Sikh Heritage of Pakistan’. The other sessions include Is Retirement Only About Money? (1 pm to 2 pm) author Kiran Telang, moderator Divya Wasvani; Translation Techniques for All (2 pm to 3 pm) authors and moderators Vikrant and Subha Pandey; Romance, Sexuality and Fidelity (3 pm to 4 pm) author Raksha Bharadia, moderator Nandita Rambhia; The Beauty and Glory of Mahakavi Bhushan (4 pm to 5 pm) author Kedar Phalake, moderator Dr Vivek Nanoti.

The detailed schedule of the events can be accessed at https://vidlitfest.com/schedule. The entry is free to all. People from all over Vidarbha are expected to participate in this first ever mega Literature Festival.

The event is sponsored by MOIL, Coal India Limited, SMS Envocare and Kingsway Hospitals. VLF is supported by ‘The Hitavada’, Crossword, Shadows, HelpLink, Dygn Media, Billboards, The Refuge, V24 Taas, AD Photography and Thinkin Birds, informed Sachin Jahagirdar, Festival Secretary of VLF.