Poetry Reading: “My Country: Distant as My Heart from Me”

 

Mourid Barghouti and Tamim Albarghouti read their poetry in a mesmerising jugalbandhi

 

 

 

From 16:00 to 17:30

 

“Stuck in Historical Amber?”

 

Susan Abulhawa and Sharif Elmusa speak about what it means to be “out of time, out of place”, to be never at home, and much else besides

 

 

 

A free-wheeling conversation with well-known book critic, Sunil Sethi

 

 

 

At 18:30

 

“Palestine: Nothing Makes Sense, Why Should I?”

 

Suad Amiry performs the tragi-comedy of her situation as a Palestinian under Occupation in the West Bank

 

 

 

Launch of the book My Damascus

 

Suad Amiry takes the reader by the hand and walks her through the city of her childhood, interleaving Damascus in history from the 1860s to the 2000s, with family history, of roughly the same period.  A tour de force

 

 

 

Ahdaf Soueif is the mistress of ceremonies




Organised in collaboration with Women Unlimited 

 

 

 

Counterfacts on the Ground

 

A discussion on living under occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, and on writing back to subvert suppression.

 

 

 

Laila El-Haddad and Adania Shibli talk to Raghu Karnad, and read from their work

 

 

 

From 16:30 to 17:30

 

Palestine in Publishing

 

A discussion on the challenge of publishing and selling Palestinian writing in, and outside, Palestine.

 

 

 

Michel Moushabeck, Interlink, USA; Mahmoud Muna, Educational Bookshop, Jerusalem; Sudhanva Deshpande, Leftword Books, New Delhi & Ritu Menon, Women Unlimited, New Delhi exchange experiences and views, talk about difficulties and how they overcome them, intelligently!

 

 

 

At 18.30

“The Blue Between Sky and Water”

 

Susan Abulhawa reads from her new book and discusses it with Githa Hariharan

(Organised in collaboration with Women Unlimited)
 

Discussants: Shri Kamal Bakshi, former Ambassador and then Indian Ambassador to Iraq; Shri K.P. Fabian, former Ambassador and then Joint Secretary (Gulf), Ministry of External Affairs; Shri K.P. Singh, former Ambassador and then Indian Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait; and a senior representative from MEA

 

 

 

Moderator: Shri Suhas Borker

 

 

 

The evacuation of 176,000 Indian national from Kuwait and Iraq, mostly by air from Amman, following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990 was the largest evacuation by air in history. What is the relationship between the historical and fictional narrative? What are its implications on the contemporary narrative?


(Collaboration: Jan Prasar)

 

 

 

 

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A visual interpretation of the world of recycle and waste management

Curated by Aditya Arya

 

Artists: Cheena Kapoor; Manu Yadav; Monica Tiwari; Rahul Sharma; Saumya Khandelwal; Shweta Pandey; Sidhhartha Behl; Sreedeep; and Swarat Ghosh

Inauguration by Dr. Ashok Khosla, Founder President and Chairman, Development Alternatives on Friday, 1 April 2016 at 18:30

 

 

 

 

 

 

A series of three lectures by Sharon Lowen, well-known exponent of Odissi who will provide a panoramic visual overview of 20th century American dance genres through film and video clips encompassing folk to Broadway, ballet to Pilobolos

 

Thursday 31st March

Broadway and Concert Dance

Mid-century transitions in Ballet and Modern

 

Monday 11th April 

Abstract Expressionism

Post Modern, Dance Theatre and Contemporary Dance

 

Speaker; Dr. Alexander Goerlach, founder and publisher of the debate magazine, The European

 

Chair: Shri Ronen Sen, President FIGS

 

(Collaboration: Federation of Indo-German Societies in India; and Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, New Delhi)

 

CANCELLED

A film by Brent Huffman

Introduction & Discussion: Shobita Punja, Art Historian and independent scholar; and William Dalrymple, Author and Historian

 

Multiple award winner including Grand Prize & Audience Award, Arkhalos Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Film Festival; Best Film, The Archaeological Channel International Film & Video Festival; Best Documentary, International One Hour Film Competition, Cinemambiente Environmental Film Festival, Turin, Italy; IDFA Honorary Award for 2015, IAFOR Documentary Film Award, The International Academic Forum, Kobe, Japan; among others

 

Saving Mes Aynak follows Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori as he races against time to save a 5,000-year-old archaeological site in Afghanistan from imminent demolition. A Chinese state-owned mining company is closing in on the ancient site, eager to harvest $100 billion dollars worth of copper buried directly beneath the archaeological ruins. The film examines the conflict between cultural preservation and economic opportunity through the lens of the Afghan archaeologists and local villagers who work and live near Mes Aynak

 

 

 

Speaker: Shri Jawhar Sircar, CEO, Prasar Bharati
 
Chair: Prof. Dipankar Gupta

The focus is on how only one of the 5 Divisions of Bengal (the western Rarh tract, i.e., modern West Bengal) became a Hindu majority region, while the 4 other Divisions of Bengal (including Bangladesh) had an overwhelming Muslim domination.  Sircar has been analysing this from the early 1980s and had undertaken field researches for a project of historical anthropology, that was supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) which covered the 6 western districts of Bengal.  His conclusions are that there were ‘three distinct phenomena’ that helped the revival and reconstruction of the Hindu identity, in the western part of Bengal, which he will narrate through slides, tables, statistics and maps, based on his monograph.”