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Jaipur Literature Festival 2022 Is Set To Take Art Lovers On A Fascinating Journey

Set to take place between 5-14 March 2022, the Jaipur Literature Festival will return to its home city, Jaipur, for its 15th edition. Each year, Teamwork Arts, the producer of the iconic Festival, promotes art and world heritage with numerous innovative initiatives at the Festival. This year too, the Festival will feature various sessions highlighting many aspects of art and culture. Performing arts legend Sohini Roychowdhury, an exponent of Bharatanatyam, and Sharon Lowen, a renowned dancer of Indian classical dance forms - Odissi, Manipuri, Mayurbhanj & Seraikella Chhau - will join Manjari Sinha, acclaimed music and dance critic, for a fascinating conversation on Sringara, exploring the evocative and evolutionary form. The session will examine the vast history and many interpretations of Sringara, an aesthetic peak, often considered the mother of all nine rasas in Indian dance. Intriguing and spirited theatre personality Dolly Thakore, whose autobiography breaks all barriers, has described her life with searing honesty. Co-written with Arghya Lahiri, who carries twenty years of theatre experience, Regrets, None is humorous, witty and candid as it discusses the glitz and glamour of Dolly’s eventful life. Feminist, publisher and author Ritu Menon’s biography of the remarkable actor and dancer Zohra Sehgal, who lived a full life until the age of 90, is uniquely structured in theatrical style. Menon puts into context how the creativity of dancer Uday Shankar and actor Prithviraj Kapoor impacted Sehgal. In conversation with Festival Producer and Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, Sanjoy K. Roy, Thakore, Menon and Lahiri will discuss the essence of theatre, its genius, its magic, and its pervading misogyny. Roy will also be in conversation with much-loved Indian singer and musician Remo Fernandes at a session exploring his pursuit of his greatest loves: music, art, writing and his homeland, Goa. B.N. Goswamy, one of the most eminent art historians of our times, opens a window to a wide range of subjects: all on or around the arts, which have immense potential to form aesthetic sensibility. From Ananda Coomaraswamy to the Art of Calligraphy, The Meaning of Silence to Farid-ud-din Attar’s great Sufi parable of the Conference of the Birds, among others, Goswamy invites readers to enter into the field of the arts and savour its pleasures. In an engaging and comprehensive session with Jaipur Literature Festival Co-Director William Dalrymple, Goswamy will discuss his book Conversations which promises to be a truly accessible primer on art in India and South Asia. At another session titled Mughal Portraiture: Presence and Absence, independent art historian Ursula Weekes will be in conversation with author and art historian Yashaswini Chandra. Weekes’ upcoming book, Mughal Court Painting in India, follows more than a decade of her writing and teaching on Mughal art and culture. She will discuss her latest project on how portraits were important agents in projecting the religious, social and political identities of the members of the Mughal court. The Festival will feature a session that evokes the sensual lure of the human body as well as the essential ambiguities of its representation. Writer, commentator and vascular surgeon Ambarish Satwik introspects upon the distance between the naked and the nude in the anatomy of our race, even as modern imaging technologies render us asexual and transparent. Celebrated writer, curator, and historian Alka Pande has looked at the erotic through diverse perspectives in her work. Her recent book Pha(bu)llus studies the power of phallic symbolism as a key and recurring motif in religion, culture and art. In conversation, they will discuss art and the nature of the erotic, as well as the anti-nude, in the context of the sensuous, the mortal, the philosophical and the spiritual. Writer, screenwriter and activist Farrukh Dhondy boasts of as many scintillating life experiences as professional accolades. From bearing witness to pre-Independent India, the Partition and many a social movement to meeting a roster of eclectic and even murderous celebrities, Dhondy’s life is a cinematic rollercoaster. In conversation with film and theatre director Arghya Lahiri, Dhondy will discuss his life as a writer. The Festival will offer a spectacular Heritage Event and the Jaipur Music Stage will run parallel to the main Festival as always. Like every year, the winner of the annual Ojas Art Award will also be announced. Described as the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’, the Jaipur Literature Festival is a sumptuous feast of ideas. Past speakers have ranged from Nobel Laureates J. M. Coetzee, Orhan Pamuk, Malala Yousafzai, Muhammad Yunus and Joseph Stiglitz; Man Booker Prize winners Ben Okri, Douglas Stuart, Margaret Atwood and Paul Beatty; Sahitya Akademi winners Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, as well as the late Girish Karnad, Mahasweta Devi and U. R. Ananthamurthy; along with literary superstars including Amish Tripathi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Vikram Seth. An annual event that goes beyond literature, the Festival has also hosted Amartya Sen, Amitabh Bachchan, the late A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Bill Gates, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty and former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.

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Maharashtra’s monuments have reopened for visitors

Maharashtra’s monuments have now reopened after remaining shut for three weeks due to the surge in COVID 19 cases. The famed Ajanta and Ellora, among other sites, are once again open for visitors. Tickets for these sites can now be purchased online, but visitors must be fully vaccinated against COVID 19. The monuments were closed earlier in this year on January 8, but they have now been opened by the district administration. According to the latest rules, physical tickets will not be available for visitors, however, there is no restriction on the number of people that are allowed to visit the sites. The other sites that are open right now are the Aurangabad caves, Bibi ka Maqbara, and the Daulatabad Fort. Both the Ajanta and Ellora Caves are two of the most important sites in the country. Both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and attract numerous visitors each year. While Ajanta has 30 rock-cut Buddhist monuments, Ellora is one of the largest rock-cut Hindu temple cave complexes you will ever visit. Here you can see Buddhist and Jain monuments. The famed Kailasa Temple is situated in the Ellora Caves, and is an ancient wonder. It is made from a single rock, and that has baffled historians for ages. These gems are open for public now, and visitors can take advantage of this. The Daulatabad Fort is a historic fort that was completed in 1600.

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After suspension of flights last year, Seaplane service to restart as bids open

NEW DELHI: After failing to sustain seaplane service, the Gujarat government is likely to restart the service in the coming months. According to officials from the state aviation department, Maritime Energy Heli Air Services Pvt Ltd (MEHAIR) won the bids on Tuesday and is likely to start operations on the Ahmedabad- Kevadia route in the next four months. Officials close to the development also said that a nine-seater Cessna aircraft will be dry leased to operate the route. Speaking to HT, Hareet Shukla, aviation secretary, Gujarat said, “We will approach the Gujarat government to take financial approval first, we will go ahead after it is approved by them.” Asked if the government was aiming to commence operations by June, Shukla said, “I don’t know about the exact timeline. We will try to do it (recommence operations) as soon as possible but many approvals are needed from regulatory bodies, hence restarting the seaplane operations is subject to the permissions.” India’s first seaplane service began on October 31, marking the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhai Patel. The first flight took off from Sabarmati Riverfront in Ahmedabad to the Statue of Unity in Kevadia Colony in the Narmada district on October 31, 2020 but the seaplane flights were suspended early 2021, just ahead of the second wave of Covid-19. The 15-seater Twin Otter 300 seaplane was flown back to the Maldives for maintenance in February last year. Before that, it flew to the Maldives in December as well to undergo statutory checks. SpiceShuttle, a subsidiary of aviation player SpiceJet, operated the route. The Twin Otter 300 seaplane could accommodate up to 19 people including the crew. Officials from Ahmedabad claimed that the government aims to restart seaplane operations soon. “The flights may begin from June,” an official said. “A nine-seater Cessna amphibian aircraft will be used to operate the route. Work for resumption of seaplane service is in process,” said an official from the state civil aviation department. “Aerotrans Services Pvt. Ltd, Ventura AirConnect Ltd and Maritime Energy Heli Airservices Pvt Ltd (MEHAIR) had put in their bids. They were opened on Tuesday and MEHAIR was declared to be the winner,” he added “The letter of intent is yet to be awarded,” the official added With an aim to provide faster and hassle-free travel options in the long, treacherous and hilly regions of the country, the union government announced seaplane routes under the regional connectivity scheme (RCS)- Udey Desh ka Aam Naagarik (UDAN) scheme. According to ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) and the ministry of ports, shipping and waterways, at least 28 seaplane routes have been awarded until December last year, under UDAN. 14 water aerodromes based in Gujarat, Assam, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep are at various stages of development.

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Uniform ticket cancellation charges may bring relief to air travellers: Check details

New Delhi: There has been a surge in air passenger traffic for quite some time. According to rating agency Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), domestic air passenger traffic showed year-on-year growth of 52 per cent to 111 lakh in December 2021. While more and more people are opting for air travel these days, the number of people canceling flights has also witnessed a surge. Now there is some good news for such people as the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Transport, Tourism and Culture has pitched for having uniform charges for cancellation of air tickets across airlines. Expressing concerns, the Parliamentary panel questioned the rationale of different cancellation charges by different service providers when they are operating on the same route and covering the same distance. Need for rationalising Stressing on the need for rationalising the cancellation charges, the panel said that there should be an upper limit of cancellation charges that can be collected from the air travellers. At the moment, these charges are not regulated by the government and different airlines levy different charges, which has resulted in no uniformity. "The committee feels that it defies logic that flights of different airlines on a particular sector having the same starting and destination points, and where the duration of the flight is also the same, should have different cancellation charges. The Committee, therefore, strongly recommends that there should be uniform cancellation charges across all airlines," the report said. Once implemented, this will be a huge relief for air travellers. The panel also said that the current system "defies all logic" as there are different cancellation charges for the same starting and destination points. In a separate report, the panel also expressed their concerns about so many posts lying vacant at the Airports Authority of India (AAI). The panel said the huge number of vacancies is bound to have a serious impact on the work efficiency of ATCOs (Air Traffic Controllers).

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New Zealand to start easing tough Covid border controls

AUCKLAND: New Zealand will start easing some of the world's toughest pandemic border restrictions this month but will not fully reopen until October, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. Ardern announced a five-step plan to reconnect New Zealand to the rest of the world, beginning with waiving hotel quarantine requirements for its nationals stranded overseas by the pandemic. "It's time to move again," said Ardern, who has been under pressure recently to relax border policies that have been largely unchanged since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis almost two years ago. "Families and friends need to reunite, our businesses need skills to grow, exporters need to travel to make new connections." Ardern said New Zealanders in Australia could return home and self-isolate, rather than going into quarantine, from February 27, followed two weeks later by Kiwis elsewhere in the world. The option will then be progressively made available to other groups such as skilled migrants, international students, Australians, and eventually all vaccinated foreign nationals. It will involve international arrivals self-isolating for 10 days instead of undergoing a 10-day hotel quarantine monitored by New Zealand military personnel. Only 800 rooms per month are available under the current system, with demand regularly exceeding supply tenfold. Many New Zealanders have criticised it as too harsh on international arrivals, with business groups saying it was contributing to a labour shortage and crippling the tourism industry. There have been numerous stories of fully vaccinated overseas-based New Zealanders unable to get home to see dying loved ones or give birth, such as pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis. Bellis prompted a rare about-face from officials this week when she said her initial failure to secure a quarantine spot left her no choice but to deliver her baby in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. Ardern said the quarantine system - known locally as MIQ - had been a key part of New Zealand's success containing the coronavirus, with only 53 deaths recorded in a population of five million. "The anguish of MIQ has been real and heartbreaking but the choice to use it undeniably saved lives," she said. New Zealand initially planned to start easing border controls last month and fully reopen in April but delayed the move as the Omicron variant emerged. Ardern said New Zealand's high vaccination rate - almost 95 per cent of the population is double-jabbed, with a third also receiving a booster - meant change was now possible. The Prime Minister said 92 per cent of adult Kiwis were expected to have a booster when the changes begin at the end of February. The quarantine system will not be completely dismantled as it will still be needed to cater for unvaccinated international arrivals. Air New Zealand said it was "thrilled" at the changes and was geared up to operate more than 300 flights between New Zealand and Australia in March. "Having the certainty they will be touching down on home soil and reuniting with friends and whanau (family) in just over three weeks will come as a relief."

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J&K tourism plans to start border tourism in Kashmir

If all goes well, travellers will soon be able to visit the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. As per latest reports, tourism department officials in Jammu and Kashmir recently wrote to concerned authorities to open up tourism along the LoC in Kashmir. This move comes in the wake of a ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan. Reports have it that the decision made by the Director General of Military Operations of both the countries last year to respect bilateral ceasefire agreement has brought normalcy in the lives of people residing on both the sides of LoC and the international border in Jammu and Kashmir. If reports are to go by, a huge number of visitors to Kashmir have been showing interest to visit such unexplored places since last year. Officials are of the view that the border districts of Bandipora, Kupwara, and Baramulla, spread along the LoC, have huge tourism potential. Ajay Bhatt, MoS in the Defence Ministry, in September last year, held a meeting with the respective stakeholders and officials of the tourism department, and assured that the ministry is committed to promote tourism in the border areas in J&K on priority basis. On these lines, a tourism festival was held in August 2021 at the Bangus Valley in Kupwara district, where Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha had stated that both the UT's tourism department and the Army will make efforts to facilitate visits to such remote places. Sources in the know-how further informed that officials of the tourism department have even written to the district development commissioners of Bandipora, Kupwara, and Baramulla to start the process of border tourism. And to begin with, the tourism department will be keen to start border tourism in places like Karnah, Gurez, Uri, Bangus Valley, as per the sources.

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