The Hyderabad Literary Festival started off at a brand new venue - a spanking new venue actually 'The Sattva Knowledge City at Hitec City. Now we are used to Taramati Baradari, MANU, HPS, Vidyaranya - all old school traditional spots and suddenly we moved to this glitzy, glass covered building which houses Starbucks, Hard Rock Cafe etc.
Vinod had reached the spot before me and told me that one had to really find the right gate -luckily I found myself in the right spot. Parked and met Vinod outside, collected my stuff and then headed off for a spot of lunch. We made it well in time for the session which was to start at 3 and found that the previous session with authors Menaka Ramana and Andaleeb Wajid was going on and on and no one was closing it down - not the coordinator, not the moderator. But to be fair that session had a huge number of people in the audience and it was very lively unlike our session which had some six or ten people. Jayesh came and attended the session as he always does for anything cricket, Brij Raj came as he does every year, Bijju and Prashanthi were there. Vinod for a while and I believe Neha from Backflipt also came for the session as she messaged me later.
Anyway our session - a conversation about the book 'Gods of Willow' written by author and entrepreneur Amrish Kumar - a coming-of-age book about a college going kid who fancies that his fortunes are linked to the Indian cricket team's fortunes. Amrish spoke about how he came upon the idea, how he wrote the book and what he wanted to convey through it. Then he read a passage from the book.
Was a fun session. Vinod and I then had a cup of tea with Bijju and Prashanthi and then left.
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