Last week, the first edition of the Western Ghats Lit Festival, was organized successfully in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore. The fest was organized by the Verandah Club, and the theme of the same was ‘Reimagining India- A historical future to set ‘right’ the wrongs’, with a good start, the festival has shown great potential for the future years. The organizers of the fest, Rajesh Govindarajulu, Jagannathan, and Saravana Kumar, with the successful culmination of the event, have shown that a high-quality event can be organized in the time period of less than three months.
More than 300 participants took part in the fest with most of them making monetary contributions as well. The event was curated by Shefali Vaidya, and the speakers included Anand Ranganathan, Vikram Sampath, Shefali Vaidya, S Vijaykumar, TR Ramesh, MR Venkatesh, Ashwin Sampathkumar, Dushyant Sridhar, Ami Ganatra, Venkatesh Rangan, KK Muhammed, Prof Kanagasabapathi, Sai Swaroopa, Arti Agarwal, Savio Rodrigues, Pavithra Srinivasan and JVC Sreeram.
The fest began on Saturday, 8th October, with the lighting of lamp and prayer songs. Following which Govindarajulu addressed the guest welcoming them to the event. Over the two days of the event, Saturday and Sunday, 9th October, the renowned speakers talked on various topics. For instance, Anand Ranganathan talked on the topic ‘Freedom of expression- an Indian perspective’, and Vikram Sampath talked on ‘History-the right perspective’. A panel discussion also took place on the topic of ‘cownomics’, the participants of which were Arti Agarwal, Savio Rodrigues, and Ashwin Sampathakumaran.
The commencement of the Western Ghats Lit Fest is a positive sign for the world of thought leaders, as it is important for such events to spread all across the country, no matter whether the city is small or a metropolitan, for everybody to see India more closely in order to get a better understanding of the very essence of the nation, and for fresh faces and new talents to come up to the stage and open the portal to a whole new world of ideologies and viewpoints.
Rajesh Govindarajulu stated that Coimbatore was known for its dharmic literature and it was apt that the city was holding a literature festival.
