BENGALURU: The tenth edition of Bengaluru Literature Festival (BLF) kicked off on Saturday, with a special focus on the languages of Karnataka and author Chetan Bhagat’s first offline public appearance since Covid 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 were a 107 languages spoken in Bengaluru alone," said BLF co-founder Srikrishna Ramamoorthy on the focus on Karnataka languages. "We thought there are so many people that speak so many languages, how do we bring attention to that?" he said.
The language sessions, titled 'the Many Languages Worlds of Karnataka' were curated by Prateeti Ballal, one of the members involved with the festival. Apart from focusing on multilingualism in both Karnataka and India, multiple sessions focused on several languages like Dakhni Urdu, Konkani, Koraga and Halakki Kannada and their variations and diversions from more mainstream languages.
Over 160 authors and personalities are set to speak at the two-day festival, with day one featuring the likes of Chetan Bhagat, Sania Mirza and Aakar Patel among many others, who either attended the festival in person and on-line. 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 and journalist Aakar Patel.
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.
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