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Western Ghats Lit Fest 2022 - The Event That Put Coimbatore In The Modern Lit Fests Map
(A photograph from the Western Ghats Lit Fest 2022)
Coimbatore last week finally found itself on the lit-fest map with the Western Ghats Lit Fest organized by the Verandah Club.
Put together by part-time enthusiasts the festival showed all signs of a good start with plenty of potential in the coming years.
Just as political narratives are obsessed with Delhi, India's literature festivals have been obsessed about 2-3 very high profile events.
But this is now changing. Lit fests are now an annual fixture in places like Pondicherry, Mangalore and Bhubaneshwar. While a certain number of guests are regulars at all these events we’re also beginning to see fresh talent and new faces come out on the stage.
What’s interesting is that these smaller, warmer lit fests help thought leaders ‘see’ India at a much closer range - India’s media celebrities now are not just talking about a handful of well known artworks or sites.
For example, the Coimbatore Western Ghats Lit Fest was a very convenient thing for many patrons who wanted to see the Dakshin Vrindavan go-shala that is only an hour or so away.
They’re also now likely to be speaking about Coimbatore’s heritage sites such as Perur, Velliangiri hills or the Isha Foundations Adi Yogi statue. The same would go for, say, Pondi, Mangalore or Bhubaneshwar.
Such fests in smaller cities also build up intellectual and organizational capital - people who are able to mobilize opinion, generate patronage for new books or authors and, more importantly, bring in new sponsors to pay for these events.
The organisers of the Western Ghats Lit Fest Rajesh Govindarajulu, Jagannathan and Saravana Kumar have shown that it is possible to put together a high quality event in less than three months time. More spin offs such as book readings, meet the author and heritage walks are being planned.
Govindarajulu and Jagannathan have already been hard at work running Verandah Club where webinars have been run every week for nearly a year using a Made in India conferencing app called Vayam.
Over 300 participants attended the Western Ghats lit fest with most of them making a monetary contribution.
The event was curated by Shefali Vaidya who nudged the team to build on the ‘Friday Filter Coffee’ with Rajesh Govindarajulu events organised by The Verandah Club and host a lit fest. The Verandah Club magazine was founded two years ago by Rajesh Govindarajulu and Jaganathan, it has published over 650 articles and 100 videos connected with cultural themes.
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.
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