Jaipur Literature Festival kicked off in London

The Jaipur Literature Festival was today inaugurated in London to present a sumptuous showcase of South Asia's literary heritage, oral and performing arts, books and ideas, dialogue and debate.
The British Library, the second largest library in the world by number of items catalogued, played host to the annual festival as part of the wider UK-India Year of Culture celebrations and included a wide array of authors and artists from India, the UK and beyond.
The inaugural event saw sessions on the experience of the Beatles rock band in India in the 1960s. Filmmaker Karan Johar urged Bollywood to bring the "abandon" back.

Indian High Commissioner to the UK Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha opened the two-day event's proceedings at the world- famous library, where he said his army officer father had conducted a research.
"Indian culture has always transcended borders, and the festival keeps that tradition alive, both in and outside India," he said.
At one of the popular sessions, Johar spoke about his recently released autobiography 'An Unsuitable Boy' and the need for Indian cinema to remain larger than life.

"We need to go back to larger than life cinema. We need to go back to the era where filmmakers took big risks. We have got to bring abandon back.

"We celebrate every emotion with a song, we heighten emotion, we are melodramatic, but the soul that we represent is rare, and it is rare worldwide. The moment that we are apologetic about it, it is going to bite us," he said.
Celebrating 70 years of India-UK ties, Philip Norman, the biographer of the iconic pop group the Beatles and Indian journalist Ajoy Bose, researcher of the Beatles' years in India, discussed the magic and mystery of the band's experience in India.
"Literature festivals have replaced fashion shows and polo matches as a default weekend filler," said author William Dalrymple, the co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).

Other sessions include a conversation between Oscar- winning director Stephen Frears and Shrabani Basu, the author of 'Victoria and Abdul', as they explored the relationship between Queen Victoria and her Indian servant and confidant Abdul Karim.
Frears has translated this story for the screen in a film to be released later this year.
"Authors help us divine the future, they are very much part of our world," said Sanjoy K Roy, director of Teamwork Arts, the organisers behind the festival.
JLF@The British Library, sponsored by Zee TV, is the first of five cultural strands which form part of the UK-India Year of Culture in 2017.

The year-long programme also includes India@Edinburgh in August, the Independence Gala@Southbank Centre in London in October, a UK-wide season of dance and theatre and the UK premiere of the Bharat Symphony by Dr L Subramaniam and the London Symphony Orchestra in November.
The year 2017 marks the fourth London edition of the festival, which has its roots in the Pink City of Jaipur where it marked its 10th anniversary in January this year.
The JLF is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts which produces over 25 major performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally.