The recent Bharat Ratna awardee Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya had said that we should fully understand
our literature, culture and arts in order to know ourselves. The literature from
not only our region or country but the world literature also shapes our
thinking and worldview. We should always keep a good quality literary book with
us of any kind, be it fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry etc, on any
subject of our interest e.g. philosophy, history, science, arts, environment or
any other subject. We can start with the popular novels of Chetan Bhagat,
Ravinder Singh but we also should read other Indian and foreign authors whose
works are popular and/or awarded by the prestigious literary awards like the
Nobel Prize in literature, Man Booker Prize, Sahitya Akademi Award etc. We are
lucky that our own city hosts the world’s largest free literary festival,
Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).
This year’s JLF
would take place from 21-25 January, 2015 at Diggi Palace, Jaipur. Many famous
personalities like Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, Man Booker nominee Neel
Mukherjee, best-selling novelist Amish Tripathi, prominent Hindi poet Kedarnath
Singh, the philosophical essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb and many others from the fields of journalism,
cinema and theatre.
Namita Gokhale,
writer and co-Director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, said about JLF, “Come
January, a cloud of creative energies gathers around Jaipur. Writers and
thinkers from South Asia and around the world will once again debate and
attempt to make sense of our changing worlds through the prism of literature. The
2015 edition will continue to nurture books, ideas and dialogue, and showcase
the range and diversity of South Asian literature as well as the best in
international writing.”
Literature
should and must find its place in our daily life. Young minds of this country
should develop the habit of debate, dialogue and discussion which make them
independent and original thinkers. It is the privilege of Jaipur, an already
historic city, to hold this historic event.
