Three-day Bhopal Literature and Art Festival ends with a promise to return next year

Bhopal(Madhya Pradesh): The three-day Bhopal Literature Festival (BLF) which drew a good number of authors from across the country concluded on Sunday with a cultural event and organisers promising people to return the next year.

The cultural event was based on a Bharatanatyam performance on ‘Ram-Stuti’ followed by a prize distribution ceremony in the presence of BLF director Raghav Chandra, Meera Das, Abhilash Khandekar, Vikram Sampath, Dr Prof Sandeep Shastri and Brig Sanjay Agrawal.
A poem recitation competition was organised prior to this ceremony, and many a youth took part in it, as per organisers.

A series of interesting sessions were held on the last day. Some sessions were organised virtually while some were offline.
The first session of concluding day of the BLF was informative discourse on ‘Paradox of Love’ a book written by Pascal Bruckner, a French author, held in the presence of moderator Sadhna Shankar.

Sharing insights about his book, Pascal said he very much enjoyed adventure sports and so he would often climb mountains. He saw climbing a mountain as a whole circle of life.

The French author said a successful summit was not a victory over the mountain but over oneself. It was conversion of suffering into pleasure because one’s body ached but one saw oneself growing as one couldn’t recede and certainly couldn’t fail.

The session was followed by a discussion on ‘Master Pieces of Heritage Art’, authored by Reema Hooja and moderated by Pratap Verma.
The second session of the concluding day of ‘Mahabharat Unravelled’ was addressed by author Ami Ganatra and was moderated by senior IAS officer Pallavi Jain Govil.

Pallavi asked the author why she chose to write on the topic of ‘Mahabharat’. Ami replied that during the corona induced lockdown, Ramayana and Mahabharat were telecasted again on Indian Television. “When I saw the serial once again on the television it was somewhat different from what I had read in the book. From there I got the inspiration to write on this”, she said.

In the third session conducted at Vagarth gallery, a discussion was held on book ‘Sikhism Globally’, written by Maneev Singh Puri and was moderated by Vertul Singh.

The author shared his perspective and said the work of road development and installation of taps in Nepal was done by Indians and there was special cooperation of people of Sikh community.

Talking to Free Press senior journalist and author Brijesh Rajput said everyone had tales. They just needed to be able to tell or express them. Due to the time limit, the whole story could’t be told on TV. That’s why those stories had been presented in the form of a book.