When The Hindu first began to carry advertisements for this year’s Lit For Life and asked all those who were interested to attend to scan the QR code and register for it, I did so with not so much hope in the turn of events that would allow me to attend the festival. But as it happened, the universe deigned it fit to allow me (in my humble opinion the universe doesn’t care one way or another what anyone on this planet or on any other planet does or does not do, but we so like to think ourselves important enough to warrant its intervention in our insignificant lives) to attend the post-lunch session on the second day of the Lit Fest.

And boy! What a session it was!

I caught the closing part of “Punjab: In a Fractured Land” where Navtej Sarna (professional diplomat for nearly four decades & author), Ramesh Inder Singh (distinguished civil servant of the Punjab cadre) and Amandeep Sandhu (author) were in conversation with Mandira Nayar (journalist). It served as a brief introduction as to what I can expect in the coming sessions. As a first time visitor to the Lit Fest, I had no idea what to expect and how the sessions would be organized. The apparent expertise of the panel members showed me that I was in for a treat.

The next session, the session I was so keen to attend was “The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom” by P. Sainath (Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), journalist & reporter for over four decades). The session was eponymously titled on his latest book, it being only the second book that he has written in his illustrious career spanning decades. His first book “Everybody Loves a Good Drought” (1996 and still going strong with its current 60^th reprint) had made such an impression when I first read it during my student days that I had been on the lookout for more of his writings. And his PARI  became a frequent haunt for me to keep up with his work though I must confess that of late I had not been a visitor to his site. His talk was about the last living freedom fighters who had fought the fight against the British Raj, against colonialism and had given their all to it. The youngest of them, he said was 92 years old and the oldest 105. In a few years, he said, we wouldn’t be having anyone left to see, hear and touch, anyone who had fought the fight and lived to tell the tale. What anguish laced his voice and words! What pain coursed through his visage as he spoke of these men and especially women, who had not been acknowledged in any way and who had not asked for acknowledgement of any kind but who were being treated not even as footnotes to history. What anger flashed out from him at the callousness and irreverence with which these esteemed people had been treated in their lives! Maybe this injustice can be rectified by us people, us who go out and get the book and read and get to know about these unspoken and unknown heroes of our independence struggle and tell their stories to the coming generations, keeping their legacy and memory alive.

After this highly charged session, it was only right for the next session to be a bit cooler and so we headed in to the “Building Climate Resilience”, a panel discussion by Dr. Arunabha Ghosh (Founder CEO of Council on Energy, Environment & Water – CEEW), Supriya Sahu (Additional Chief Secretary, Environment, Climte Change & Forest Development, Government of Tamil Nadu, India) and Shawn Sebastian (Co-founder of Drokpa Films, filmmaker & independent journalist) moderated by Sahana Ghosh (contributing editor at Mongabay-India). Dr. Arunabha Ghosh touched upon how on the face of natural disasters it is not just enough to save lives but livelihoods as well and how it was very difficult to find stories of communities that were building climate resilient models locally in their communities and the progress they were making. Supriya Sahu highlighted the Tamil Nadu government’s policies managing climate change and how community participation is crucial for any government policy be effective in bringing about a change in awareness and perception. Shawn Sebastian talked about the difficulties of documenting communities all over the country and how documentation does not limit itself to just scientific data and facts and before-after figures but also the stories embedded in the communities itself. It gladdened the heart to see that effective and serious efforts were being made to address the changing environment.

The fourth session of the afternoon was “Free Speech in the Age of Internet” again a panel discussion by Apar Gupta (lawyer & writer), Dhanya Rajendran (Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief of The News Minute), T. M. Krishna (singer & activist), and Suhirth Parthasarathy (lawyer), moderated by N. Ravi, Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd, the holding company of The Hindu Group. Most of the discussion went above my head as it spoke of legal nuances to free speech but Dhanya Rajendran and T. M. Krishna were easier to understand with their words and experiences being more relatable to our ordinary laymen lives.

The final session, the showstopper if we can call it that, was “The Company Quartet: An Illustrated Lecture” by William Dalrymple. For anyone who doesn’t know who he is, an introduction to him would run to many pages so I’ll just keep it short with the words that he is the one who busts the myth about the East India Company and talks about history that is not in India's or Britain's textbooks. Anyone who is from a country that has been colonized by Britain should read his book to know the extent of the viciousness with which the colonized country was brutalized and riches rapaciously plundered. Or at least listen to his podcast ‘Empire’ on whichever podcast platform it is available on. It was a richly illustrated lecture, his illustrations and information sourced from various documents available in Britain and India, everything thoroughly and meticulously researched. It took him twenty years to write the four books in the quartet, he said. And the research shows. Anyone who would like a better and clearer picture of how a small business company having only 35 employees, sitting in a small office in London could conquer and plunder the richest country of that time that was India should either read or listen to William Dalrymple. “Why?” you may ask. Because that was the precursor to the model on which the Amazons and Googles and Facebooks have been built. So it matters to us, anywhere in the world, even now.

As the program was already running very much behind schedule, there was not much time to look around the venue that had lots of outside-the-session activities like Scrabble and Postcard to the Author and book store. What an afternoon and evening it was! The more-than-half percentage of the young audience and their active participation in Q&A sessions with the authors and the panel experts left a warm afterglow, the heart slightly calmed with the thought that perhaps there was hope after all in this world that is becoming increasingly fractured and polarized. Maybe more such festivals are needed, to not just show that there is hope but to nurture and spread it around in ever-widening circles.

Maybe we should consider attending such a thing wherever we live, if ever we get such a chance to do so. The slight overdose of hope we inject ourselves with may help us in getting through the days when we would rather not open our doors and go out into the world.