Larger than Life

Larger than Life

Herald Review November 16, 2014 

Andrej Boleslavsky an independent and new media artist from Czech Republic will allow people to appreciate the beauty in microorganisms through his Archibio project at the Story of Light Festival.

Science and art will come alive early January in the city of Panjim at India’s first science- meets art festival- The Story of Light Festival. Over 40 artists and scientists from 14 countries have confirmed their participation and will be descending on Goa to transform the city into a magical learning playground for UN’s International Year of Light 2015.

One of the largest interactive public installations at the festival ‘ Archibio’ will be set up by independent artists from Czech Republic Andrej Boleslavsky and Maria Judova. The experimental and contemplative project uses video mapping to explore the beauty of minuscule and microscopic life forms from bacteria, plants or an ant colony which otherwise remain invisible.

Video mapping is a projection technique that can turn surfaces into dynamic video displays.

The beauty of these organisms can then be appreciated as the project will magnify and project them onto a large scale public space- a building façade or a blank wall.

Andrej centres his project around the idea that DNA is the best software and began searching for ways to express this claim. His project comprises three scenes, all of them live streams from a microscope and two capture chambers. In the first chamber he will capture ants running in a small 3D printed model of the building and in the second one he will be making a time- lapse capture of growing plants.

The images will then be processed by computer so the projection precisely fits the building. The process, called warping takes some hours to set right and Andrej will be carrying the microscope, cameras, chambers and computer.

Since one of the projected scenes is a live stream from a microscope, the audience will be participating, changing microscopic slides with samples. “ In the Czech Republic I was projecting growing trees, climbing ants and microscopic samples. It would be great if I can find some suitable life forms in India and adapt the project,” he said. The organizers are trying to find the best location for the project evaluating feasibility and architectural quality of the building which will be mapped. Video mapping gets tricky when it comes to production cost and projectors rental price. It goes exponential with the size of the building.

Andrej’s fascination for art and technology began in his childhood. “ My grandfather was a watchmaker and both my parents worked with art. I see both art and technology as platforms to share interesting ideas and materislise them. I guess I’m addicted to complexity.” He created his first video- mapping project in 2010 and hasn’t stopped experimenting since with new media since. One doesn’t always need big buildings and large budgets to create interesting video- mappings he says. Instead he tries to bring something new to this medium each time.

He will be visiting India for the first time and says the project will be open for everyone to interact.

Along with Archibio he will also setting up a light-painting workshop where he will engage the public in creating long exposure photography with programmed light sources.

The festival will be an educational experience for participants and passersby as various installations and workshops will be scattered along the promenade overlooking River Mandovi. Screenings, dance performances, installations, photography workshops, live projections, panel discussions will all form part of the festival.

The five day festival beginning January 14 seeks to dispel myths about science and bring fascinating concepts to life by allowing people to better understand them through interactive methods.Review Bureau

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A new genre of Chick-Lit

A New Genre of Chick-Lit 

Herald Review  November 16, 2014

Dr Anita Heiss was the first to introduce Koori chick- lit in Australia. She will be visiting next month to talk about her work. 

LISA ANN MONTEIRO 

Australian Aboriginal author and activist Dr Anita Heiss engineers social change through her writing.She writes to bring communities together.

The indigenous population in Australia hardly found representation in mainstream literature. Heiss, a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales decided this needed to change. It was time to begin putting her people on the Australian identity radar.

Chick lit - often dismissed by literary critics- she finds, is the most accessible literary style that allows her to engage with an audience that is not otherwise engaging with indigenous Australians.

She doesn’t believe history can only be learnt from non- fiction books and text books.

The protagonists in her books are young indigenous urban women who juggle romance and careers. Her books Not Meeting Mr Right, Avoiding Mr Right, Manhattan Dreaming and Paris Dreaming have all the elements of a chick lit book but with something more- an Aboriginal’s perspective.

Heiss writes about relationships that connect women and also touches on issues and politics that are important to her. Her novels discuss black deaths in police custody the stolen generations, the Northern Territory Emergency Response intervention, indigenous intellectual property and copyright, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and culture around the country and issues of identity.

They also have references to indigenous artists, film makers and writers. In Manhattan Dreaming, Lauren a Wiradjuri woman is a curator at the National Aboriginal Gallery ( fictitious) in Canberra.

She is passionate about indigenous art and smitten with Adam, the star forward for the Canberra Cockatoos. He is quite the player and when she applies for her dream job at the Smithsonian, her dream comes true. She is then torn between Man and Manhattan and has to make a decision.

Heiss says she uses chick lit as a tool to reach women who may never have met, worked with or thought about.

“ We talk a lot about what makes us different in Australia - to the point of instilling a fear of difference in each other.

I like to talk about what makes us the same as human beings – particularly the emotions we experience; love, fear of rejection, sympathy, empathy and so on.

If we consider what makes us the same in terms of being women, then it's much easier to talk about what makes us different and then we can start to really get to know each other, to engage on a meaningful level and even find a sense of peace in an otherwise chaotic world,” she told Herald Review.

Heiss was the first Aboriginal student to graduate with a PhD in Communications and Media from the University of Western Sydney. She is also among the first women of colour to write into commercial women’s fiction in the country.

Heiss’ mother was born on Erambie Mission Cowra in Wiradjuri country while her father was Austrian from Salzburg. She says her grandmother was among the stolen generations of indigenous Australians taken away from their families and placed with a foster family, part of a government policy to try to assimilate Aboriginal children into white families. She also wrote Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney, 1937, a fictional diary of a young aboriginal girl from the stolen generation.

In 2009 Heiss along with eight other Aboriginal people took columnist and political commentator Andrew Bolt to court for two articles ‘ It’s so hip to be black’ and ‘ White fellas in the black’ published in the Herald and Weekly Times. His column implied that lightskinned people identified as Aboriginal only for personal gain. His articles Heiss said discredited her professionally and insulted and humiliated many others.

Bolt mentioned Heiss made a decision to be Aboriginal…’ which ‘ was lucky, given how its helped her career’ also stating that she won jobs reserved for Aborigines. In 2011 the Federal Court ruled that Bolt had breached the Racial Discrimination Act. Bolt outside the court described the verdict as ‘ a terrible day for free speech in this country’. At the time Heiss was penning the book ‘ Am I Black enough for you?’ She was 43 and people said she was too young to write a memoir. She felt the story of her identity wasn’t something that was going to change as she got older. The need for it to be told had proved more necessary in recent years.

The book just like her novels is a statement that “regardless of where we live we are strong in our identity, and it is one of the few things that can never be taken from us- unlike governments taking away our children, our rights, land and most recently the rights to manage our own incomes in the Northern Territory.” “ Through my book I wanted to demonstrate that we as Aboriginal people have our own forms of self- identification and self- representation. My book offers alternate realities of being Aboriginal today- in all it’s positive, successful, loving glory,” Heiss says.

Heiss along with Cathy Craigie who has worked extensively in Aboriginal arts and media, Ellen van Neerven writer and editor, Dr Jared Thomas, an arts development officer and Nicole Watson, an author and former lawyer and columnist, all from Australia will be participating in the Goa Arts and Literary Festival next month. Review Bureau 

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Justice to Children

Justice to Children 

Herald Review November 16, 2014 


Christine Beddoe, child rights activist will be talking about institutional abuse and the challenges arising in prosecuting travelling sex offenders.


LISA ANN MONTEIRO 

Christine Beddoe, advisor to the British Parliament on Child Abuse is presently visiting the country, raising awareness about travelling sex offenders and pushing for a memorandum of understanding between UK and India to facilitate investigation and prosecution of child sex offenders.

Although there continue to be many cases of sex offenders travelling to India, Beddoe says the trend has shifted from being tourism based to travelling child sex offenders who target schools, shelters and orphanages under the guise of charity workers, teachers and volunteers. “ Institutional abuse is the new child sex tourism and must be viewed as organised crime because it has the potential to involve many victims and multiple perpetrators. It is a pre- meditated crime, well planned and can involve networks of sex offenders from different countries operating together, sharing child abuse images across borders and abusing children disguised as ‘ the good samaritan.” Predatory sex offenders will go to extreme lengths to get access to children. They go to a local community volunteer their services and work to build up their reputation.

Beddoe highlights the infamous Anchorage shelter case in Colaba, Mumbai where UK citizen and ‘ charity worker’ Duncan Grant, set up the shelter in 1995. His associate Allan Waters also from the UK was a regular visitor to the home. The duo were charged with sexual assault after five boys complained to the police about abuse by the men. Mumbai High Court acquitted them in 2008 for lack of evidence but the Supreme Court later overturned that decision and sentenced them to six years.

In another case, India is pushing for the extradition of Jonathan Robinson a UK national wanted on charges of sexually abusing children at an orphanage in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu funded by him.

Recently Bartle Frere, a British Airways pilot was arrested in Britain on charges of pedophilia where he revealed that he spent time in Nochikuppam, a fishing village in Chennai where he took an interest in children and they in him. He revealed that he would take monthly BA flights to Chennai and made friends with families from the village.

He also reportedly claimed he would spend a couple of hundred pounds buying the children gifts including iPhones and didn’t mind it as he had money to afford and didn’t have a family to support. He was arrested in November 2013 and denied the 25 sex abuse charges against him.

Beddoe has also been closely following the extradition proceedings of Raymond Varley. She is upset about the UK Court’s decision last month, dismissing India’s appeal to extradite him. The system she said has failed children as Varley who had a number of convictions of child sexual abuse and related charges between 1974 and 1986, can now walk free as conditions on him were lifted in the UK with no charges pending. “ IN extradition cases very narrow legal arguments are put forward.

Only the merits of extradition are looked at and not pending criminal charges. In my view the Crown Prosecution Service should have established stronger relationships with the CBI and Indian officials and agreed on a strategy. The CPS did not proactively seek the opinion of CBI before the decision was made not to ask for an independent psychiatrist to examine Varley.” Any extradition case involving child sex offenders she says needs a specialised legal team trained in child protection. The prosecutors weren’t trained in child protection but were experienced in matters of extradition.

“ As a result we have a convicted sex offender who is still free to travel and potentially abuse children in the UK and internationally. The extradition system failed children,” Beddoe says.

She is calling for a high level agreement on child abuse investigations.

Without this agreement, she says cases will continue to fail with children never getting the protection they deserve.

Beddoe served as director of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes ( ECPAT) UK and has worked extensively to combat sexual exploitation of children in tourist destinations throughout the world. She will be in the State, speaking at Miramar Residency on November 18 to shed more light on the issue and the challenges that arise in prosecuting travelling sex offenders.Review Bureau 

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Music and Politics

Music and Politics 

Herald Review November 9, 2014

Ali Aftab Saeed, journalist and member of Beygairat Brigade, Pakistan’s first political rock and roll band will be participating at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival next month.


LISA ANN MONTEIRO

In January 2011, Salman Taseer, senior member of the Pakistan People’s Party and governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province was shot at by his own bodyguard while getting into his car. The guard had told the police he killed Taseer because of his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

Taseer had initiated a clemency petition for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

He had visited Bibi in jail and refused to succumb to rightist pressure on blasphemy.

Two months later Shabhaz Bhatti, a Catholic minister for religious minorities who worked to reform blasphemy laws and who also worked with Taseer on Bibi’s clemency move was also assassinated.

Taseer’s assassination in particular was a stimulant for three politically alive Pakistani youth who love music.

Ali Aftab Saeed, Hamza Malik and Daniyal Malik amalgamated their two interests, put together the band Beygairat Brigade ( dishonorable brigade) and released their first song ‘ Aalu Anday ’ ( Potatoes and Eggs) on YouTube the same year. It went viral.

The song featuring Ali on lead vocals, Hamza on the guitar and Daniyal on percussion takes jibes at religious conservatism and the military in Pakistan not sparing the army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and the extension he secured.

“ Where Ajmal Qasab is a hero most loyal, where the Mullah escaped in a veil, where Abdus Salam is a forgotten tale,” Ali sings. The Mullah refers to Maulana Abdul Aziz the cleric at Lal Masjid trying to escape wearing a burka in 2007 when the government laid siege to the mosque. Abdus Salam was the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize in physics for predicting the existence of the ‘ God particle’. He served as chief scientific adviser to the president and played a big role in setting up the country’s space agency and institute for nuclear science and technology.

He resigned from his post in protest and settled in Europe after an amendment in the constitution which declared that members of the Ahmadi sect ( to which he belonged) weren’t considered Muslims under Pakistani law.

The placards the band members hold up after the song are also filled with political satire. The last one reads ‘ if you want a bullet through my head like this video’ . And like it people did.

The band released ‘ Sab Paisay ki Game Hai’ last year poking fun at big moneyed politicians. The same year it released its third single ‘ Dhinak Dhinak’ , even more tongue in cheek than the first got banned soon after its release. The song speaks of proxy wars and army coups and lampoons generals. “ Proxy are the wars they fight to appease. In them is our men who are dead and deceased. Who will check these merry men? Who dares to stop them? My turn my turn is a politicians sport.

Generals don’t even compete, yet they win the fort,” Ali sings.

The song is considered groundbreaking as it is politicians who usually face the ire of comedians while the military is treated as the sacred cow.

The band had a tough time finding a studio to record the song. Most studio owners found the lyrics too bold.

One finally agreed but asked that his name be withheld from the credits.

Although banned, the clips of the song were aired by mainstream TV The band had a tough time finding a studio to record the song. Most studio owners found the lyrics too bold. One finally agreed but asked that his name be withheld from the credits.

Beygairat Brigade performing Aalu Anday with Ali on the vocals in the centre

and radio channels after the elections when the channels were evaluating the events that led to the 2013 elections.

“ The response we got for our songs made us realise that our opinions matter. It’s a great responsibility but so far it has been a good ride,” Ali says.

Friends and family frequently advise the group members to tread carefully but music and Pakistan are close to their heart. The youth today, Ali says are more engaged in politics. “ The media has played a very important role in this development. But on the other hand the young generation is somehow a victim of the media too by relying mostly on the information telecast by popular TV channels. That’s why we came up with the idea of a band that gives alternative opinion and the response so far has been beyond our expectation,” he says.

The band members face new challenges with each new song. “ Initially studios didn’t permit us recording songs that challenged the establishment but now since we are a popular band, we don’t fare this problem anymore. Now it’s all about finances.

Since I do it out of my own pocket, it’s all about how soon I save up enough from my day job to produce a song and a video,” Ali says.

The band has received offers of sponsorship but has declined these choosing to remain sincere to their music and audience. “ It’s about the impression more than anything else.

Even if the international companies or for that matter local financiers don’t influence our lyrical content, the impression made in front our audience that we took money and may have done it for profit, might cost us our credibility,” Ali says.

He will be visiting Goa for the first time to participate at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival early December but will not be performing as the band doesn’t do satire on Pakistani politics outside Pakistan. Ali has recently released a few non political songs as well. Review Bureau 

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'We can have a decent Christian burial now'

‘We can have a decent Christian burial now’

Herald Review November 9, 2014

Almost three years after Russel Rebello went missing post the Costa Concordia tragedy, his family will finally have a body to mourn over.

LISA ANN MONTEIRO

Last week the remains of Russel Rebello, the last passenger on board the ill fated Costa Concordia were finally recovered in a cabin on deck eight.

In January 2012 the cruise liner with 4200 passengers on board ran aground off the Tuscan coast after it hit a reef when its captain steered the ship dangerously close to the island of Giglio to allegedly impress passengers with a close up view of the island. Russel was among the 32 people who died in the Italian cruise liner tragedy and while the bodies of all the victims were found Russel’s family had no body to mourn over.

His parents back home in Naigaon, Mumbai wait anxiously for procedures to be complete before Russel’s brother Kevin brings remains back home. Russel’s father is paralysed and his mother tries to maintain a positive attitude but it isn’t easy. She never expected to lose her son, she says. “He was always laughing and very joyful. He kept his own feelings aside and was always helping people around. This is miracle for us. We’ve waited for almost three years and are thankful to God that they found him. At least we can have a decent Christian burial now,” Gladys Rebello told Herald Review.

Russel married Vilma his childhood sweetheart in 2005. His son Rhys is six years old now and constantly asks about his father. His mother and grandparents don’t have the heart to break the news to him. “We told him Uncle Kevin will be bringing him to Bombay. He asks us why it is taking so long. We will eventually have to break the news to him and make him understand,” Gladys says.

For his elder brother Kevin Rebello working in Italy, who made repeated trips to the island to assist in search operations, it has been a long and painful wait, 1025 days precisely. He will finally be able to fulfill the promise he made to his family that he would bring Russel home some day. Kevin wrote on his facebook page that he didn’t have the words to express his feelings. “ Just my pain, my tears, my heart pounding harder and my body trembling when I broke the news to my parents..” It was Russel’s dream to work on a cruise liner and travel the world and he fulfilled this. Passengers told Kevin that Russel died a hero, helping other terrified passengers. He gave his life jacket to another passenger and helped lower four life boats and a few inflatable life rafts.

He was supposed to enter the last life boat when the ship titled further, Kevin told Herald Review last year. Kevin last met his brother in 2009 in Genoa. Gladys says she is proud of her son having saved people on board. “He did what the captain was supposed to do.” Captain Francesco Schettino is facing trial for manslaughter and abandoning the ship, charges he denies. The family says they have no hard feelings towards the captain and have forgiven him. Kevin says he is nobody to judge him and is waiting for law to take its due course. Gladys says there’s no room in her life for anger as she has already lost her son and it won’t help bring him back. Review Bureau

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A Space for the Arts

A Space for the arts  

Herald Review November 9, 2014

The Goa Arts and Literary Festival will celebrate its fifth edition this year. Herald Review looks back at how the festival has grown, putting Goa on the literary landscape.  

LISA ANN MONTEIRO

It doesn’t receive large crowds, doesn’t draw on celebrity artistes and doesn’t have large funds at its disposal. Yet the home grown Goa Arts and Literary Festival with special focus on the margins manages to attract quality writers and artists from the world over.

Goan writer Damodar Mauzo felt the need for a festival celebrating the arts when he saw that writers in the region weren’t getting literary exposure and the recognition they deserved. “We hoped that the festival would be able to draw literary personalities but we didn’t expect it to grow so big. The turning point for us came when U R Ananthamurthy noted Kannada writer and one of the most important representatives of the Navya movement in Kannada literature inaugurated the first edition of the festival in 2010.”

The festival has been growing ever since and has attracted many eminent writers and poets over the years. Gulzar, Amitav Ghosh, Mridula Gard, Omar Abdullah, Mitra Phukan and Meera Kosambi have all delivered keynote speeches at the festival. The festival has also consistently highlighted the best poetry and poets from India and beyond. Last year saw a gathering of the finest, most acclaimed poets of the 1960s and 1970s Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Keki Daruwalla, Manohar Shetty, Gieve Patel and Eunice de Souza.

A number of books have also had their exclusive (worldwide) launches at GALF. Bilal Tanweer’s ‘ The Scatter Here is too Great’, Ranjit Hoskote’s translations of Lal Ded, Naresh Fernandes’ ‘ Taj Mahal Foxtrot’, Amruta Patil’s ‘ Parva’ and Maria Aurora Couto’s ‘ Filomena’s Journey’ among others.

Celebrating the margins is what makes the festival unique Vivek Menezes says. “We’ve had contingents from the North East, Kashmir, Pakistan and this year Nepal, Singapore and Australia. At the same time we also pay special focus to poetry, translations and graphic novels.” For a festival whose budget hasn’t grown over the years, the response it receives from artistes is overwhelming.

The festival has been a fixed point on the annual calendar of Ranjit Hoskote, poet, cultural theorist and curator. For him it is an opportunity to connect with fellow writers from South Asia and the world in an atmosphere that is warm and relaxed even while it is profoundly serious about the practice of the literary arts. He has also been pushed out of his comfort zone to interact with diverse artistes. “On one occasion I was asked the evening before to chair a discussion with Teju Cole, Nigerian American novelist and art historian and Heems, American rapper of Indian origin from Queens New York. I was aghast. While I knew Teju’s work I didn’t know Heems’ work that well. In the event the three of us had a wonderful conversation about subcultures, diasporic displacement and the crafting of new positions, the negotiation of artistic languages while addressing plural, unpredictable audiences. It was a terrific experience of being pushed off the springboard and enjoying the high dive. Vivek’s gift for creating such unlikely yet memorable adventures of conversation is a special feature of the festival,” he says.

Author Dilip D’Souza has attended the festival twice and welcomes the opportunity to talk about his books and writing. “It’s a useful exercise to think about what I do and explain it to an audience. It makes something clearer in my mind and that has an effect on my writing.” At other festivals writers are followed by mobs. The special scale of this festival, allowing more intimate sessions is its great strength and appeal, D’Souza feels. “ At one much bigger festival I’ve attended, there are hundreds of people in the audience. While that’s good for sales and so on, I suppose, it’s not so good for the audience most of whom will see the writer as just a speck in the distance. At GALF being in a room with 20 others listening to a greatly respected writer gives one the opportunity to talk and discuss things much more, than would be possible elsewhere. Again while writers like to have lots of people listening, the flip side is also nice- that you can have those intimate chats with people who truly appreciate your work or have something to chat with rather than answer an anonymous question from someone you can’t even see in a big crowd.”

Recently back from the Tata Literary Festival in Mumbai, reporter and writer Samar Halarnkar says it is the warmth and space for alternative voices that are unique to GALF. “There are not too many stars and lots of unexpected people.” One of the biggest challenges the festivals organisers face is the audience not meeting their expectations. They’d like to see more participation from local readers and writers and not necessarily in panel discussions. “The audience too plays a major role. We hardly see students of literature taking advantage of the lineup of writers we bring to the festival. People pay to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival. Similarly people have to shell out 100 Euros per day to attend the Frankfurt festival,” Damodar Mauzo says.

This year the organisers will be bringing in the writers to Goa prior to the commencement of the festival and organising interactions and workshops for interested schools and colleges.

Since the volunteer driven festival doesn’t attract the big sponsors and doesn’t have a profit agenda, the sessions are relaxed and devoid of any external pressure. Their duty, the organisers say is to the writers and not to sponsors. This special scale allows writers and readers to interact in informal situations which is somewhat unusual in a festival context, Hoskote says.

The festival has also managed to integrate other arts; the rock and roll great of Shillong Lou Majaw, the spectacular Bhand Pathers of Kashmir, the performing monks of Uttar Kamalabari Satra in Majuli, the opera diva Patricia Rozario and the rapper Himanshu Suri among others.

Writer E V Ramakrishnan attended the 2012 festival where the documentary of Kashmir and folk performances by Kashmiri actors (King Lear) left lasting impressions. Goa’s cultural vibrancy and unique history gives it a progressive attitude to appreciate cultural differences he says. The ambiance provided by the festival for a cultural meet is very inspiring.

He suggests more regional languages be included to educate people about the diversity of views within India. “I feel serious discussions on issues related to environment, censorship, violence and intolerance of various kinds that plague our society should also be featured. Of course this is not a conference and the format of a festival only provides a setting and it is up to the participants to make the best of it all. All the same, the content needs a little improvement.” Halarnkar says the uncertain timings and somewhat chaotic organisation, although improving, haven’t worked for him.

D’Souza too suggested improvements in the scheduling and suggested a focus on languages other than English. “Perhaps one Indian and one foreign language or country every time.” The organisers have managed to retain their participants this year despite the dates clashing with another festival which recently rescheduled their dates. Mauzo says the festival lags behind in government support. “A festival like this could boost tourism. The government unfortunately is only interested in tourism and not literary activities.” The festival this year boasts of delegations from Pakistan, Nepal, Singapore and Australia as well as a large number of local participants. Review Bureau

Talented Line up

The fifth edition of the festival will see 30 international participants with contingencies from Nepal, Pakistan, Australia and Singapore. Prashant Jha, Rabi Thapa, Sangeeta Thapa, Sheeba Shah, Sushma Joshi and Thomas Bell from Nepal will be attending while the Australian contingent includes Dr Anita Heiss, Cathy Cragie, Ellen van Neerven, Dr Jared Thomas, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Nicole Watson and Nim Gholkar. Four of the five finalists for the Kushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry will be attending. A first time special focus on food writings, bloggers including Deane, Aparna Jain, Latika George, Pamela Timms, Helene D’Souza, Revati Upadhya, Kornelia Santoro and Kaveri Ponappa. T M Krishna, Carnatic music vocalist and author of ' A Southern Music: The Karnatic Story' and Chee Malabar Los Angeles based rapper and writer will be attending. The festival will also see 12 book releases.  

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