For three days later this month, the hills of Himachal will have a busy calendar of books, big names and lively conversation. The Khushwant Singh Literary Festival returns to Kasauli from October 23 to 25, and this 15th edition takes up the theme The Art of Disagreement: Conversation Across Divides.
The festival began in Kasauli for a simple reason. “He did a lot of his writing in Kasauli. We have a family home there,” says Festival Director Rahul Singh, speaking of his father, the late Khushwant Singh. “It’s the only Lit Fest, by the way, named after an individual. He was not too happy that we named it after him. But when he saw the theme and what we were planning to do, he was then quite happy.”
It has grown with the years. “We began with an audience of only about 200. And over the years it’s now grown to about 1000 a day,” Rahul says.
Some come for the stars. Rahul recalls a session with Sharmila Tagore and Manisha Koirala, who had both written books. “Manisha had written about her survival from cancer. And Sharmila Tagore had written her memoirs, being with her late husband, Nawab of Pataudi, and how they met and everything. And that was a complete sellout,” he says. “We had to turn away people at the entrance because the hall couldn’t take any more people.”
This year promises more than 80 speakers, among them Imtiaz Ali, Sonam Wangchuk, General (Dr) Manoj Mukund Naravane (Retd), Vishnu Som, Divya Dutta and Satinder Sartaaj.
There is something for younger visitors too. “For the first time, we are having a parallel session for youngsters,” Rahul says. “Called ‘Forever Young’, the workshop is for students aged about 15 to 18, and the idea is to find out budding writers.”
This year’s theme has a story behind it. “LK Advani, the famous politician who’s still alive. My father at a public gathering, he criticised him openly for having led the movement that brought down the mosque. And so he was very openly critical about him. But LK Advani remained an admirer of his. On his birthday, uninvited, he would turn up at the house. And when my father died, he was one of the first people to come and condole with my sister and me. So that was my father’s ability to disagree with people. And yet they admired him a lot for that.”
When the festival opens on October 23, its conversations will explore how listening to others can broaden perspectives, and how common ground can be found despite differences of opinion.
