Day 1 | Sat | 9 Nov
#blrlitfest Venues | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tughlaq | Yayati | The Red Couch | Abracadabra (Ages 4+) | Khul Ja Sim Sim (Ages 8+) | Shazam (Ages 12+) |
10:00 am दोपहरी Pankaj Kapur | 10:00 am Mind Without Fear Rajat Gupta with Narayan Ramachandran | 10:00 am Happiness Express Dinesh Ghodke and Khurshed Batliwala | 10:00 am Art in a Topsy Turvy World Savio Mascarenhas | 10:00 am Heartfelt Story Encounters Geeta Ramanujam | 10:00 am Tickle Me, Don’t Tickle Me Jerry Pinto |
10:30 am Life and Death of Sunanda Pushkar Sunanda Mehta in conversation with Ravi Subramanian | 10:30 am Colour Matters Anuranjita Kumar with Subodh Sankar | 10:30 am What Do I Draw? Tanvi Bhat | |||
10:45 am Making sense of Trump Ed Luce with Keshava Guha | 10:45 am Digging up the Past - Clues to Ancient Stories Devika Cariapa | 10:45 am How Now, Brown Cloud? Bijal Vachharajani | |||
11:00 am Forbidden Love Ekarat, Nandita Bose, Paramita Satpathy with Anukrti Upadhyay | 11:00 am Verse Interruption | What I Fed The Cat Prathibha Nandakumar | 11:00 am Gadagoom! Gudduguddu! Roaaar! Lavanya Karthik | |||
11:15 am Writer, Playwright, Humanist: The Life and Work of Girish Karnad B Jayashree, Jayant Kaikini, K Marulasiddappa with Preethi Nagaraj | 11:15 am Verse Interruption | कुछ अधूरी बातें मन की Manish Mundra | 11:15 am Lost and Found Vinitha | 11:15 am How to Write a Book in a Year Balaji Venkataramanan | ||
11:30 am The Ailing Economy: Passing Flu or ICU? Indira Rajaraman, R. Jagannathan, Vivek Kaul and Narayan Ramachandran | 11:30 am Body Sutra Alka Pande with Lucy Nelson | 11:30 am Fun with Sringeri Srinivas Rohini Nilekani | |||
11:45 am Looking for Miss Sargam Shubha Mudgal with Deepak Unnikrishnan | 11:45 am Lola and Chacko Bhagirathy | 11:45 am Embody & Imagine Akhshay Gandhi | |||
12 noon 99 Not Out! Your Guide to a Long and Healthy Life Sujata Kelkar Shetty with Namu Kini | |||||
12:15 pm The Indian Conservative Jerry Rao with Sanjay Anandaram | 12:15 pm A Life Told Through The Body Shanta Gokhale with Jerry Pinto | 12:15 pm Dance with Gappu Menaka Raman | 12:15 pm Mix and Match Nafisa Nandini Crishna | ||
12:30 pm Putting the ‘Science’ in Science Fiction Navin Weeraratne and Thomas Manuel | 12:30 pm Born to Teach Kamala Mukunda | ||||
12:45 pm The Remains of Liberalism Ed Luce, Mukul Kesavan with Manish Sabharwal | 12:45 pm The End Game Kunal Basu with Teesta Guha Sarkar | 12:45 pm Perform with Poetry Jayalakshmi Vaidyanathan | |||
1:00 pm ಪತ್ತೇದಾರಿ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ - Why Crime Attracts Readers D V Guruprasad | 1:00 pm Adventures of Tutu and Kaalu Prashant Sankaran, Ramya Srinidhi | 1:00 pm The Lizard of Oz Khyrunnisa A | |||
1:15 pm Savarkar: Misunderstood Messiah? Vikram Sampath with R Jagannathan | 1:15 pm Mishti, the Mirzapuri Labrador Gillian Wright | ||||
1:30 pm The Story of an Acid-Attack Survivor Reshma Qureshi, Tania Singh with Preeti Gill | 1:30 pm A Death in The Himalayas Udayan Mukherjee with Aruna Nambiar | 1:30 pm Hum Drum: Interactive Drum Circle Rudy David | 1:30 pm Who Changed the Game? Devika Cariapa | ||
1:45 pm Namdu K Kannad Gothilla Ki Ki A Comic Take on the Language of Bangalore | 1:45 pm History Minus the Boring Bits Kavitha Mandana | ||||
2:00 pm The Gangster’s Gita Agni Sreedhar, Prathibha Nandakumar with Karthik Venkatesh | 2:00 pm India Automated Pranjal Sharma with Shekhar Sanyal | ||||
2:15 pm The Runaway Peacock Niyatee Sharma | 2:15 pm Illustrate A Real Picture Book Tanvi Bhat | 2:15 pm The Never Ending Story - Writing Workshop Andaleeb Wajid | |||
2:30 pm Surviving a Terror Attack Nidhi Chaphekar | 2:30 pm Upcountry Tales: Once Upon A Time In The Heart Of India Mark Tully with Tony Joseph | 2:30 pm Book Bunk - Restoring Public Libraries Wanjiru Koinange with Vani Mahesh | |||
2:45 pm Forest Murmurs Jurga Vilė and Lina Itagaki | 2:45 pm Who's Yo' Granny? Lavanya Karthik | ||||
3:00 pm No Nation for Women - Narratives of Violence Ashok Alexander, Manjari Chaturvedi, Priyanka Dubey with Tania Singh | 3:00 pm കേവലം ഒരു പിടി മണ്ണ് അല്ല - Putting Kerala on the Literary Map Johny Miranda, Unni R with CK Meena | 3:00 pm The Making of Islamic Womanhood Hem Borker with Abdullah Khan | |||
3:15 pm Fun with Folk Tales Anitha Murthy | 3:15 pm The Lies We Tell - Tackling Anxiety Issues Himanjali Sankar | ||||
3:30 pm Rudiments of Music Rzhude David and Lucky Ali accompanied by Flute Butto | 3:30 pm Writing Presence - Reading and Conversation Lata Mani with Deepa Dhanraj | 3:30 pm Tickle Monster Ramya Srinidhi | |||
3:45 pm बार बार देखो - Unraveling a Hit Bhawana Somaaya, Manish Mundra, Supriya Pathak with Sultan Ahmed | 3:45 pm The Butterfingers Effect Khyrunnisa A | 3:45 pm Tinkle - Make Your Own SuperHero Savio Mascarenhas | |||
4:00 pm Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize Manish Sabharwal, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Ramachandra Guha, Srinath Raghavan | 4:00 pm This is How it Took Place Shinie Antony, Shubha Mudgal, Udayan Mitra with Sohini Basak | 4:00 pm Tadaahahaha Vinitha | |||
4:15 pm We are Family - Ink and Kin Aruna Nambiar, Julia Prendergast, Udayan Mukherjee with Tanuj Solanki | 4:15 pm Indian Elections Srinath Raghavan | 4:15 pm Mudras, Meaning and Magic Kumudha BharathRam | |||
4:30 pm The Book of Love Ekarat with Apurva Chamaria | 4:30 pm Once Upon a Clown Time Monica Santos | 4:30 pm Ramayana Vs. Mahabharata Devdutt Pattanaik | |||
4:45 pm Early Indians Tony Joseph with Chandrahas Choudhury | 4:45 pm Sangeet Aur Katha-Duniya Saskia Rao de Haas | ||||
5:00 pm Bestsellers - Wake Up, Life is Calling Preeti Shenoy with Vani Mahesh | 5:00 pm Verse Interruption | Lakshmi Unbound Sanjukta Dasgupta | 5:00 pm The Dragon Rock Aarti Kathpalia | 5:00 pm So Who Wants to be a Space Scientist? Minnie Vaid | ||
5:15 pm Bestsellers - Thrillers to Bank On Ravi Subramanian with Bilal Siddiqi | 5:15 pm Verse Interruption | Sing to Me Mani Rao | ||||
5:30 pm The Inheritance of Loss - Jallianwala and After Amandeep Sandhu, Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, Navdeep Suri with Preeti Gill | 5:30 pm Majoritarianism and the Indian Democracy Mukul Kesavan and Srinath Raghavan | 5:30 pm Merry the Elephant goes to School Bhagirathy | 5:30 pm The World of Turtles Sneha Dharwadkar | 5:30 pm Feeling 'Trapped'? Let's rap to break free! Kavitha Mandana | |
5:45 pm The Courtesan Project Manjari Chaturvedi | |||||
6:00 pm The 3 Worlds of Indian Citizenship Niraja Gopal Jayal | Introduced by Ramachandra Guha | |||||
6:15 pm Big Little Stories Deepak Unnikrishnan, Shubha Mudgal, Julia Prendergast with Premanka Goswami | 6:15 pm Small Town, Big Dreams Abdullah Khan, Gillian Wright, Parimal Bhattacharya, Tanuj Solanki with Andaleeb Wajid | ||||
6:30 pm People Are The New Media Karthik Srinivasan with Ranjani Krishnakumar | |||||
6:45 pm Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella: The Indo-Pak Narrative Christine Fair, Lt. Gen. Ata Hasnain with Varghese K George | |||||
7:00 pm Masala Shakespeare Jonathan Gil Harris | 7:00 pm Misadventures of the Urban Woman Khyrunnisa and Sudha Menon | ||||
7:15 pm Speaking of the Sacred H S Shivaprakash, Lata Mani, Mani Rao and Shabnam Virmani | |||||
7:30 pm Trends and Technologies Shaping our Tomorrows Ian McDonald with Yudhanjaya Wijeratne | 7:30 pm India-US Ties in the Age of Modi and Trump Varghese K George with Pranjal Sharma | ||||
8:00 pm Yoga Vs. Bhoga Devdutt Pattanaik | |||||
8:30 pm CONCERT | From Shakespeare to Shishunala: A Poetic Journey Manasi and Friends | |||||
*All sessions will start and end on time. Schedule subject to change. Please check back periodically for updates. |
Day 2 | Sun | 10 Nov
#blrlitfest Venues | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tughlaq | Yayati | The Red Couch | Abracadabra (Ages 4+) | Khul Ja Sim Sim (Ages 8+) | Shazam (Ages 12+) |
10:00 am Line of Sight Simon Taufel with Vaibhav Purandare | 10:00 am Fried Rice and Fellowship - Days of My China Dragon Chandrahas Choudhury with Rupesh Pai | 10:00 am The Jungle Storytelling Festival Janaki Sabesh | 10:00 am Who Dunnit?! Sowmya Rajan Srinivasan | 10:00 am Tune In to Kabir Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy | |
10:30 am India 2047 - Many Indias possible Ian McDonald with TG Shenoy | 10:30 am Discovering Bengaluru Meera Iyer with Harini Nagendra | 10:30 am Once upon a Clown Time Monica Santos | 10:30 am Let's get sleuthing! Archit Taneja | ||
10:45 am The 6th String of Vilayat Khan Namita Devidayal with Nandita Bose | 10:45 am Mystery Games Pika Nani | ||||
11:00 am Telling Stories, Erasing Them Arundhathi Subramaniam and Jerry Pinto | 11:00 am The Untold Flipkart Story Mihir Dalal with Pankaj Mishra | 11:00 am Sangeet Aur Katha - Raga & Tala Saskia Rao de Haas | |||
11:15 am ಎಲ್ಲಿಗೆ ಬಂತು ನೆಟ್ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ? Unveiling the Kannada Netizen's World Rajendra Prasad and Tina Shashikanth | 11:15 am Girls to the Rescue Sowmya Rajendran | ||||
11:30 am Keshava - A Magnificent Obsession Bhawana Somaaya with Janaki Sabesh | 11:30 am Veera Abhimanyu Yakshadegula | 11:30 am Creative Writing and Writers Abhishek Talwar | |||
11:45 am Bad Man Gulshan Grover with Roshini Dadlani | 11:45 am Until The Lions Karthika Nair | ||||
12 noon Jill of all Trades Milan Vohra, Minnie Vaid, Piya Bahadur with Sudha Menon | 12 noon Tales from Rajasthan Anukrti Upadhyay with Udayan Mitra | 12 noon Of Tails & Tales Museum of Art and Photography | 12 noon Writing for Media in the Digital Age Basav Biradar, Bengaluru Review | ||
12:15 pm Poems-Voems Harshikaa Udasi | |||||
12:30 pm Lessons in Leadership and Love from India’s Sex Workers Ashok Alexander with Vijayendra Rao | 12:30 pm The Havoc of Choice Wanjiru Koinange with Sanjukta Dasgupta | 12:30 pm Belonging and Unbelonging in North-East India Jahnavi Barua, Paramjit Bakhshi and Preeti Gill | |||
12:45 pm Our Own Mahatma Arthy Muthanna Singh | |||||
1:00 pm Typeset, Ready, Go! Chiki Sarkar, Himanjali Sankar, Teesta Guha Sarkar, Udayan Mitra with Ravinder Singh | 1:00 pm Moola Ramayana Prasanna | 1:00 pm Bells of Shangri-la Parimal Bhattacharya | 1:00 pm Be Safe With Rainbow Sowmya Rajan Srinivasan and Muktha Foundation | 1:00 pm How I Make My Passion Work Archit Taneja and Balaji Venkataramanan | |
1:15 pm Nosey Parkers Ruchika Chanana | |||||
1:30 pm ਖੂਨੀ ਵੈਸਾਖੀ - Khooni Vaisakhi Navdeep Suri with Harpreet Singh | 1:30 pm Nari Shakti - Women in Bengali and Oriya Literature Paramita Satpathy with Sanjukta Dasgupta | 1:30 pm Forest Murmurs Jurga Vilė and Lina Itagaki | |||
1:45 pm Mayil's World Sowmya Rajendran | |||||
2:00 pm Verse Interruption | कुछ अधूरी बातें मन की Manish Mundra | 2:00 pm AG-BLF Book Prize | 2:00 pm Inside the LeT Christine Fair | 2:00 pm What Happened to The Reptiles Janaki Sabesh | ||
2:15 pm Verse Interruption | Hindustani Mussalman Hussain Haidry | 2:15 pm ये रिश्ता क्या कहलाता है - Relationships in Contemporary Hindi Writing Anukrti Upadhyay, Mridula Garg, Purushottam Agrawal with Sourav Roy | 2:15 pm Ode to Grandpas Around The World Arthy Muthanna Singh | |||
2:30 pm Jane Austen - The Lass With the Delicate Air A Jagriti Theatre Presentation | 2:30 pm One Hell of a Lover Unni R with Balu Nair | 2:30 pm The Grass is Red on The Other Side Gautam Benegal | |||
2:45 pm Writing Sport Mayank Agarwal, Sharda Ugra, Simon Taufel with Nandan Kamath | 2:45 pm Master-Stroke Makers Flow India | 2:45 pm Kittu is lost!! Harshikaa Udasi | |||
3:00 pm A Life in the World: UR Ananthamurthy Chandan Gowda with Nikhil Govind | |||||
3:15 pm Bestsellers - Smart Women Have Hearts Too Anuja Chauhan with Samhita Arni | 3:15 pm Mythical Creatures: Visual Stories From Out of This World Ina Kaur | 3:15 pm Advanced Paper Planes Airytails | |||
3:30 pm Bestsellers - The Belated Bachelor Party Ravinder Singh with Milan Vohra | 3:30 pm Can Seaweed Save the Climate? Tim Flannery | 3:30 pm Cupcake Decoration Workshop Megna Jain | |||
3:45 pm I'm OK, You're OK - Exploring Mental Landscapes Anna Chandy, Gayathri Prabhu, Himanjali Sankar, Jerry Pinto, Roshan Ali, Dr. Shyam Bhat with Amandeep Sandhu | |||||
4:00 pm Bard of Blood and The Family Man Bilal Siddiqi, Suman Kumar with Sunanda Mehta | 4:00 pm Oral Democracy Vijayendra Rao with Uma Mahadevan | 4:00 pm Adventures of Biplob The Bumblebee Abhishek Talwar | 4:00 pm A Twist In The Tale Bookosmia | 4:00 pm Talking Objects - The Museum as a Storyteller Museum of Art and Photography | |
4:30 pm Hindustani Mussalman Andaleeb Wajid, Hem Borker, Hussain Haidry with Abdullah Khan | 4:30 pm Wasted Ankur Bisen with Manreet Sodhi Someshwar | 4:30 pm Make and Fly Airytails | |||
4:45 pm Imagining (an)other - Men Writing Women Amitabha Bagchi, Chandrahas Choudhury, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Mahesh Rao with Karthika Nair | 4:45 pm The Great Indian Quiz Pika Nani | 4:45 pm Wonders & Visions - Why Science Fiction? Vinayak Varma and Gautham Shenoy | |||
5:00 pm First Novels and Nation Building Shivarama Padikkal and Vanamala Viswanatha | 5:00 pm Beyond Asanas: Changing Perceptions About Yoga Pragya Bhatt and Joel Koechelin | ||||
5:15 pm A Touch of Folk Art Raju Dyapur | 5:15 pm A Nature Journal - To Sketch & Wonder Sangeeta Kadur | ||||
5:30 pm Art and Soul of the City Jagdish Raja, Kamini Sawhney, Lucy Nelson, Namita Devidayal with Sadhana Rao | 5:30 pm Accidental Magic Keshava Guha with Shrabonti Bagchi | 5:30 pm Savarkar - The True Story of the Father of Hindutva Vaibhav Purandare with Varghese K George | 5:30 pm Old Curiosity Shop Flow India | ||
6:00 pm Retold Gayathri Prabhu, Karthika Nair, Samhita Arni with Jonathan Gil Harris | 6:00 pm Verse Interruption | Love Without a Story Arundhathi Subramaniam | ||||
6:15 pm Nehru Lives On Purushottam Agrawal | Introduced by Ramachandra Guha | 6:15 pm The Radiance of a Thousand Suns Manreet Sodhi Someshwar with Amandeep Sandhu | ||||
6:30 pm Today in Indian SF Indrapramit Das, Sadhna Shanker, Sukanya Venkatraghavan with Gautham Shenoy | |||||
6:45 pm The Secret Lives of Trees Harini Nagendra, Nirupa Rao and TR Shankar Raman | 6:45 pm Translating Rahi Masoom Reza and Bhisham Sahni Gillian Wright with Nikhil Govind | ||||
7:00 pm Art and the Raj Alka Pande with Somak Ghoshal | |||||
7:15 pm From Cosmic Dance to Climate Change Revanta Sarabhai | 7:15 pm Of WhatsApp and Unsafeness of Bank Deposits Vivek Kaul | ||||
7:30 pm Close To The Bone Lisa Ray with Mahesh Rao | |||||
7:45 pm Blue About Green - Beyond Climate Change Chitrangada Choudhury, Madhav Gadgil, Navroz Dubash, Tim Flannery with Kartik Shanker | |||||
8:30 pm CONCERT Thayir Sadam Project | |||||
*All sessions will start and end on time. Schedule subject to change. Please check back periodically for updates. |
Performances
From Shakespeare to Shishunala: A Poetic Journey
Manasi and Friends
A contemporary classical presentation that draws on diverse musical and lyrical influences, strung together in a narrative that brings music and poetry together in a seamless blend.
Manasi Prasad (vocals)
Shadrach Solomon (keys)
Vishnu Ramprasad (Navtar)
Shivling (Flute)
Manjunath NS (Drums)
Karthik Bhat (Tabla)
From Cosmic Dance to Climate Change
A performance by Revanta Sarabhai
Revanta’s contemporary approach to the traditional pandanallur-style margam breathes fresh life into an ancient tradition. Telling stories of long-distance relationships, the environment and its destruction, and globalisation through Bharatanatyam, the artist shares his creative journey while showcasing some of his newest work that has enthralled audiences in India and abroad.
Revanta Sarabhai

Bio
Revanta Sarabhai is a dancer, choreographer and actor from Ahmedabad and forms the third generation of the legendary dancer family after his grandmother Mrinalini Sarabhai and mother Mallika Sarabhai, both world renowned artistes. Having made his solo classical-dance debut at age 8, Revanta’s work has been showcased at prestigious festivals and venues across India, Europe, UK and USA. Combining his classical dance training with a contemporary practice, Revanta creates cutting-edge work that is honest, immersive, and relevant to the society and times we live in. Revanta made his film debut in 2017 and has played the lead in four Gujarati feature films and hosted a popular dance reality show on television. He is also an experienced workshop trainer specialising in using aspects of movement and theatre for training corporate employees and people from fields other than the arts to develop right-brain capacity and creativity.
Thayir Sadam Project
Ambi Subramaniam, Bindu Subramaniam, Mahesh Raghvan and Akshay Anantapadmanabhan
Formed in 2018 by Bindu Subramaniam, Ambi Subramaniam, Mahesh Raghvan and Akshay Anantapadmanabhan, the Thayir Sadam Project is a blend of Indian classical and digital music.known for their engaging performances, and their ability to seamlessly weave elements of traditional and modern music styles.
Digital #blrlitfest
Between.Today
Bengaluru Fantastic, Bengaluru’s first tech-art festival in public space pops up at digital #blrlitfest, with an engaging interactive piece, titled “Between.Today”.
This piece pays homage to our past and our future, just as it brings together eloquently the creativity embedded in the technology and the art worlds. Using Deep Learning AI, it reminds us of our creative fore-bearers who have laid the foundations upon which we have launched ourselves into this brave new world.
itihaasa
itihaasa, a first-of-its-kind digital app that recounts the history of Indian IT since the 1950s through 600 short videos with over 37 hours of footage and 350 archived photographs and articles. Find answers to questions like – When was programming first taught in India? How did education in computer science evolve? How did India embark on a journey to manufacture computers and software? Who were the earliest IT entrepreneurs and much more through stories in six dimensions -Time, People, Organization, Policy, Technical Terms and Place.
“itihaasa is more than an homage to the past or a nostalgia tinged walk. It is a narrative of triumph that has brought us to the present and a missive of optimism for the future.”
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder of Infosys
The Periodic Table Is In Us
Interact with the periodic table through games, word search and other fun activities to celebrate 150 years of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. Organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry to commemorate the International Year of Periodic Table.
Kafka In Virtual Reality
Have you always wanted to be the main protagonist in one of the classics of world literature?
Yes?
Then you have the opportunity! Experience the world as Kafka’s Gregor Samsa
The VR adaptation of Franz Kafkas “The Metamorphosis” gives people the chance to discover the live of Gregor Samsa and to feel the transformation into a bug on their own body.
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug…
The metamorphosisVR was developed by the Goethe-Institut Prague together with a Czech start up coordinated by a film director of Prague Film School Mika Johnson and is presented at Bangalore Literature Festival by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore.
LitMart
Sat | 9 Nov | Grand Ball Room |
---|
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Build YOUR brand before you write that book! You are a brand, besides your book as a brand. Hear from communications and brand maven Karthik Srinivasan a.k.a @beastoftraal on personal branding on social media for aspiring authors. |
5:30 pm The ‘Write’ Moves - How to Go from Aspiring Author to Author Want to get published? Hear from Divya Anand (@divya_anand), author of ‘Dare Eat That’ (Penguin Randomhouse) about how she juggled a full-time job, a passion for travel and became a Penguin author. |
Sun | 10 Nov | Grand Ball Room |
---|
10:30 am – 11:30 am LitMart Final Pitches – Session 1/3 |
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm LitMart Final Pitches – Session 2/3 |
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm LitMart Final Pitches – Session 3/3 |
Workshops
BlrBusking
BlrBusking is a group of people that sit in public places and write poems or make artwork for strangers. Fueled by the zeal to meet with new and interesting people, and peek into their lives through refreshing conversations, we have busked around the globe now and interacted with countless strangers. We look forward to doing more of the same with new and interesting people at the Bangalore Literature Festival.
- Arjun Baburajan
- Cipun Mishra
- Dhruvika Solanki
- Nisshtha Khattar
- Richa Pandey
- Shashwat Arora
- Srinidhi Guruanth
- Tulika Pattnaik
You must be logged in to post a comment.