BLF 2015!

Over the weekend, we attended the fourth edition of Bangalore Literature festival, an annual literary event that Bangalore is home to. We have been regulars at the BLF ever since it began in 2012, following it all the way to Electronic city (the venue for the event during the last two years) and splitting the two-day event between Abhay (our only child then) and ourselves. This year however we weren’t sure if we could make it with a six month old in tow!  However, with the run up to the event embroiled in controversies with some authors pulling out of the event and given that it was to be held at a near-by location, it became all the more imperative that we attend and support a community funded initiative such as BLF that we so look forward to attending each year. So there we were at the Royal Orchid hotel along with our nine year old and our six month old …shuttling between ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ discussions while keeping an eye on our older one’s activities at Makkala koota. Before you brand us as ‘reckless’ for dragging an infant to crowded event like this….hold on … as we found many such parents slinging their infants, some of whom were as little as four months old! BLF 2015 saw many workshops being held for children at the Makkala Koota wing. So much so that our nine year old was the busiest of all, perhaps to make up for his absence last year, starting with Tulika’s workshop with illustrator Sowmya Menon followed by Bookalore’s puppet party and Doodle Dhamaka where he got doodling on the doodle wall about his idea of Bengaluru. Thanks to the organizers who readily accommodated the needs of an infant, our little girl seemed to enjoy herself watching so many kids and hearing so many new sounds! So BLF 2015 was indeed a big hit with our little ones and here’s begging for more next year!  

Abhay was quite pleased to attend a Bookalore event after a long time and enjoyed the stories through puppets performed by Vijayalakshmi Nagraj, the author of many children’s books and one of whose books we decided to pick for our reading together. While Abhay is too old for   her book “Jhilmil the Butterfly”,  he is just right for her another one of her books “The Natural Wonders of India”, a publication by the Energy and Research Institute ( TERI) on nature’s bounty and beauty across the length and breadth of India. Join the twin girls Reva and Sarayu as they take your young reader on an armchair trip to the ten best natural spectacles in India. With a travel itinerary that could be anybody’s envy , from Pangong Tso, a pristine lake shared by India and Tibet at an altitude of 14,500 feet, where the twins spend their summer vacations to the salty marshlands of Rann of Kutch  and the Indroda Dinosaur and Fossil park at Gandhinagar, follow them as they explore the unique landscape and physical features, flora and fauna and the attendant conditions of living, while carrying a subtle message of environment conservation. Presented in a simple yet interesting narrative, and accompanied by vivid pictures and photographs, this book successfully manages to avoid the usual trappings of a work of non-fiction that children tend to steer clear from and sure can double up as travel book for your next vacation!! J