Schedule - Bangalore Literature Festival 2019

Day 1 | Sat | 9 Nov

#blrlitfest Venues
TughlaqYayatiThe Red CouchAbracadabra
(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
TughlaqYayatiThe Red CouchAbracadabra
(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

Day 1
8:30 pm
Yayati

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)

Day 2
7:15 pm
Tughlaq

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.

Day 2
8:30 pm
Yayati

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

10:00 am onwards
C | L | F Bookstore and Lawns

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.

10:00 am onwards
The Grand Ballroom

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

10:00 am onwards
C | L | F Bookstore

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.

10:00 am onwards
The Grand Ballroom

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

10:00 am onwards
C | L | F and Lawns

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.