Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 9- The Freedom of Expression

To Freely Express

Why Every Individual can Write with Effort

Two days at the festival. So much had happened already. So many discussions and thoughts moving around. It was beyond exciting. 

Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 8 – Nobel Prize Winner and Vikram Chandra's Work

Harold Vamus 

A nobel prize winning medical researcher delivered a talk on the art and politics of Science at the Charbagh hall then. He presented scenarios on global health. But he also mentioned how his curiosity for life and his prolonged adolescence led to his research work. He described how several non – practical things had to be done to make progress in Science.

Vikram Chandra's Love for Coding

Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 6 – Jhumpha Lahiri, Non Fiction Writers, Learning from Everyone

Jhumpha Lahiri, the Pulitzer prize winning short story and fiction writer, then delivered a session titled, ‘The Interpreter of Stories’ where she described her method of writing.

Celebrating Literature. What a great idea!

Jaipur Literature Festival - Part 5 - Who Will Rule the World?

The second session I got to attend on Day 2 of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2014, had panelists from several different countries. They were all authors who had written fiction and non-fiction books about countries like India, China and other places in Europe and Latin America.

The panelists were Sunil Khilnani, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Xiaolu Guo, Meghnad Desai, and Rana Mitter moderated by Dipankar Gupta

Thoughts

The discussion was about which country will emerge a superpower in the 21^st century, with claims that India and China are fore-runner for that coveted place.

Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 4 - Jerry Pinto on Writing

By consuming quality Literature you are actually creating more quality Literature

After the morning music performance I attend a  session of Mr Jerry Pinto, a Mumbai based indian writer of 14 books  as of January 2014. I had attended a workshop of Mr Jerry in Mumbai and was rather excited to meet him here again. He wrote in subjects as diverse as poetry, prose and children’s fiction.

Jerry thought me a lot about the craft of writing. I do not know him personally. But I cannot thank him enough for what he has done for me. His story and some learnings here:-

Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 3 - Franzen (Writing) and Steinam (Activism)

Jonathan Franzen Notes

He spoke about his journey as a writer and his thoughts on the modern literature. He mentioned how earlier before the rise of novels, people had to travel or go to different places to understand them. But now you could learn about life in a prison or in Australia, by reading a novel about it. He described how his upbringing had a role in the development of the characters of his book.

A festival like no other indeed

He spoke about his favorite novel, ‘The Man Who Loved Children’ by Christina Stead and how this book had three fully developed characters, while most books have just one developed character.

He also spoke about the books he liked to read and why it was important to keep the page clean, avoid clichés and not waste the reader’s time. All this was information directly from one of the best contemporary novelists of our time. It was like I was in a classroom and he was individually speaking to me.

Gloria Steinam Notes

I then attended a session by Gloria Steinem, a writer, journalist, feminist and key figure of the women’s liberation movement of the 1960’s.  She described how there was no subject in the world of which women were not a part. I saw lots of parallels with the women’s liberation movement and the learning revolution movement I write about in this blog. The homeschooling, unschooling, passion learning schools, project based schools have lit a spark. We need to re-define the idea of schooling and learning. We need more people to speak out about how we can make Learning Beautiful again.

The audience focused on the stage

Why I Write this Blog?

We live in a period of drastic change and the way education and learning is done, is going to change completely very soon. We need more examples of people that have taken an alternate path and done something valuable with that the learning they received on that path. When people get examples of several other successful ways to educate themselves, they will be more open to taking risks and taking control of their own learning.

We need to write about our experiences as auto-didacts. When more literature and culture through books, films, blogs come out more people will get access to information on how they can control their own learning.

Let us Learn Together

Tweet @AbhishekShetty_

Sat-chit-ananda 

Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 2 -The Greatest Writing Classroom in the World

Writers at the Festival

100+ Writers in one Event

The reason I came back to the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2014, was because of the amount of quality learning about writing, I could do in such an environment. This year writers like Antony Beevor, Jhumpha Lahir, Jonathan Frazen, William Darylmple were at the festival. By attending their sessions I got glimpse into their worlds and the way they worked and wrote.

After the morning keynote on Day one of the festival, I decided to attend the session of Jonathan Franzen. There were five separate sessions happening simultaneously at five different venues. It was very hard choosing between sessions at the festival. Sometimes I would attend half of one session and then run to the next venue to attend the latter half of another session.

Learning from the Best in the World

Jonathan Frazen at that point of time was one of the most well renowned American novelists. He was a recipient of the National Book Award in the United States of America and the best selling author of books titled, ‘The Corrections’ and ‘Perchance to Freedom’.

So many new interesting people to meet

I found the situation I was in, quite interesting from a learning perspective. Authors spend most of their time writing, which is very obvious. Not many of them come out regularly and speak to large audiences. There are several exceptions. The chance of a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist or Nobel Prize winner coming to my college or work place, was highly unlikely unless I worked at Google or for the government.

Why the Jaipur Literature Festival was such a Great Classroom?

This festival I was currently part of, was like a classroom I had created for myself. I don’t expect a renowned author or researcher to come too me. Rather I respect their time, study their schedule and go to places where they are scheduled to speak based on their own commitments.

It was surreal sitting in the audience, learning directly from a renowned contemporary novelist or writer of our time. This was possible, because I put in the effort to find my own teachers. These teachers were masters of the field. I went to them and did not expect them to find me and come to me. It was my responsibility to find them and learn as much as I could from their experience.

All of this was playing out for me at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Let us Learn Together

Tweet @AbhishekShetty_

Sat-chit-ananda