Education

Literature festivals are full of accomplished, acclaimed and awarded people, some eccentric beyond our wildest imagination and some gracefully grounded. Their intensity and grade of intellect makes them win our approval without hesitation. There were intensive sessions for 12 hours each day and yet we did not seem to have enough. Some sessions we sat cross legged on cold stone floor in Rajasthan cold weather, with pleasure, when no chairs were available. Diggi palace, the venue for the Fair, had six places where six sessions would continue simultaneously like the Front lawns, Baithak, Samvad, Mughal court, Darbar Hall. It was a literary interactive conference quite like and yet unlike Mumbai Lit Live or Bookaro festival at Delhi. 

Virginia Woolf may have written an extensively-read commentary on women and the need for women’s institutions in her book, ‘A Room of One’s Own.’ However, while sitting in a discussion in Newnham College itself, I was taken aback when it did not end with a unanimous agreement in favour of women’s institutions.