On Saturday, 3rd December, we the English Literature students of MAHE made a trip to the annual Bangalore Literature festival. It was an incredible experience as it was the first time visiting an event with such notable names in the literary field. There was not even an hour to waste as the schedule was quite tight with sessions one after the other, some even happening simultaneously and all of them were equally exciting. The first session we attended was Pico Iyer’s ‘Why We Travel’ in which he talked about his experiences of travel and how no matter how ‘international’ the media we consume or how far away we are from home, we connect those experiences to our own culture and upbringing. Soon after, we rushed to the ballroom where the book signing was held, to get a signed copy of his books, particularly, The Man Within My Head.

The next session was of Booker Prize winner Geetanjali Shree discussing her book Tomb of Sand and the difficulties she faced during the process of its translation. One of our students got her copy of Tomb of Sand, signed by Geetanjali Shree herself.

All of us scattered in different directions, trying to attend sessions of the authors that captured our interests. This included a wonderful session on publishing with David Davidar, a talk on mafias and the underworld of India by the writer of Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra, a gripping session on True Crime with V.Sudarshan, and a light-hearted conversation on puns with Vaidehi Murthy.

In the afternoon we attended K.R Meera’s session on Magic Realism and Mythology. She talked in depth about how she incorporated the myths that she had heard throughout her childhood into the works she has written as an adult. This was the last session of the day we attended after which we proceeded to get our copies of K.R Meera’s novels signed by her.

Soon after, we had a brief conversation with Jerry Pinto at the book exhibition where some of us got our books signed by him and our photographs taken.