BENGALURU : The tenth edition of the Bengaluru Literature Festival (BLF) kicked off on Saturday. The special focus of the event was on the languages of Karnataka. It was also author Chetan Bhagat’s first offline public appearance since the lockdown.
“This year, we thought it would be a good idea to showcase the diversity within Karnataka itself, since previously we’ve had many India- and region-specific sessions. What struck a chord with us was a recent report that said there are 107 languages spoken in Bengaluru alone,” said BLF co-founder Srikrishna Ramamoorthy. “We thought that since there are so many people who speak so many languages, how do we bring attention to that?” he said.
The Karnataka language sessions, titled ‘The Many Languages Worlds of Karnataka’, were curated by Prateeti Ballal, a member involved with the festival. Apart from focusing on multi-lingualism in Karnataka as well as India, multiple sessions focused on several languages like Daccani Urdu, Konkani, Koraga and Halakki Kannada and their variations and diversions from more mainstream languages.
Over 160 authors and personalities are expected to speak at the two-day festival, with day one featuring the likes of Chetan Bhagat, Sania Mirza and Aakar Patel among others, who attended the festival either in person or online. ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) sessions were also held, with patrons having a chance to speak to authors like Preeti Shenoy, Samanth Subramanian and Pranay Lal, as well as virologist Dr Gagandeep Kang. A session on playwright Girish Karnad, with translator Arshia Sattar and journalist Anmol Tikoo, also featured voice recordings of the late playwright on many issues currently prevalent in India.
“As a literature festival, our objective is to be a platform to showcase a wide range of literature to a wide range of audiences who come here for specific reasons. Languages of Karnataka might not be very familiar, so we take it as an opportunity to bring in different authors and draw those audiences towards the diversity that exists in Karnataka,” said Srikrishna.
People need to be willing guinea pigs for clinical trials: Dr Kang
With the announcement of clinical trials having started for Covaxin booster shots, renowned virologist and microbiologist Dr Gagandeep Kang spoke about the process of conducting clinical trials in India. “This is not the way things should be,” she said, on the stigmatisation of healthcare. Speaking at Bengaluru Literature Festival, she stressed on the importance of clinical trials, saying, “People need to be willing to be guinea pigs and doctors need to make patients guinea pigs without therapeutic misconception.”
She went on to explain that proper training needs to be given on participating in clinical trials and doctors need to understand that they are not God. With very few people coming forward for clinical trials, she gave an open invitation to people to participate in the trials if they have gotten both their shots. She also expressed the need for India to move from aggregate data to case-based data when it comes to data reporting. “It’s partially the fault of WHO, which first taught us to do data reporting, but now, as they move on to case-based data, we should realise that it’s the only way to make sense of what we’re seeing in a country as large as India,” she said.