Lit Fest Fantastic

Valley of Words in Dehradun was a memorable literary festival.

- Ashali Varma

The recent literary festival in Dehradun (17-19 November), was an exhilarating experience even for someone who has been to many. Valley of Words – held for the first time in Dehradun – brought together artists, poets and authors to discuss and debate ideas and get to know each other.

It was not too big and overwhelming and yet its panels and discussions brought together 200 professionals from different walks of life including art and poetry, bureaucracy and the environment. The participants came from all corners of India and the world.

For me personally it was about how a hero is remembered by other heroes; how a fiction writer comes up with a riveting story like The Taliban Cricket Club where a young girl disguises herself as a boy during the deadly reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan to teach boys to play cricket; what we can do to arrest terrorism and take care of internal security; what the carvings in our most famous temples mean; how we can reach young children through comics; what is life like for a bureaucrat; and, best of all, how India was one of the greatest maritime civilisations.

The last to me was an eye-opener. Sanjeev Sanyal, who wrote The Ocean of Churn, spoke about how the Indian Ocean shaped Indian history. It is tragic that we in India are just realising it. Sanyal is actually a finance whiz, but he got interested in the cultural reach of Indian civilisation when he found out very connected Singapore and East Asia were to India before the Arab invaders came.