Books, Music, And More: Pune Book Festival Begins Dec 13 At Fergusson College

The third edition of the Pune Book Festival will be held from Dec 13 to 21 at the Fergusson College ground. The festival will celebrate words, stories and ideas, apart from a vibrant music event starting from 6 pm at the venue. It will showcase 800 book stalls of all Indian languages and an additional 100 with food and refreshment.

President of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, Vishwas Patil, will be the chief guest at the inauguration, along with Maharashtra's higher and technical education minister Chandrakant Patil, Union minister of state for civil aviation Murlidhar Mohol and others. The event will be inaugurated at 5 pm on Dec 13.

The book festival will feature guests, including astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla. Grammy Award winner Ricky Kej, Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq, and documentary filmmaker Siddhartha Kak, among other prominent people.

A book parade, Gyan Sarita Granth Dindi, is being scheduled as part of the Indian Knowledge System. It will start from Modern College at 2.30 pm and reach Fergusson College around 5 pm on the inaugural day.

Bhagwan Birsa Munda pavilion will also be erected to mark his 150th birth anniversary. It will display over 1,00,000 tribal words and their meanings. The musical line-up starts on Dec 13 with Delhi's Parashara Band, followed by Kerala's Thaikkudam Bridge on Dec 14, and others, with the grand finale featuring a special performance by Ricky Kej on Dec 20. And the Lit Fest within the book fest will be held from Dec 19 to 21.

Moreover, a dedicated Children's Corner has been created for young readers this year. It will have competitions such as essay writing, drawing, singing, oration, and workshops on writing books.

The Book Fest will also feature a photography exhibition themed on ‘Joy of Reading’, and a prize of Rs 1 lakh has been committed for the winners. Thousands of e-books will be open for download using a scanner at the festival.

The nine-day event is being organised by NBT, a body under the Union Ministry of Education, in collaboration with Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), and other local organisations. Additionally, similar book fests are being planned in Nashik and Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar from next year.