Thread for Hay Festival,where Thiruvananthapuram has been chosen as the much preferred destination.

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It’s time for the Hay Festival Kerala again, as Thiruvananthapuram plays host to one of the biggest literary events that is held across the globe, from 17th to 19th November 2011.

For the second time ever after last year, Thiruvananthapuram plays host to the Hay Festival. Essentially a literary festival, it has been touted to be ‘a rare and wonderful meeting of complementary talents and ideas’. And it is Thiruvananthapuram that has been chosen as the much preferred destination again. “It felt like a natural home for the Hay Festival,” says Peter Florence, the founder and director of the festival. “We chose Kerala,especially Thiruvananthapuram, for its rich tradition of literary writing in Malayalam. We hope to spread its appeal gradually across borders,” says Lyndy Cook, executive director of the festival.

This year’s Hay Festival, international writers include Jung Chang, Rukmini Nair, Germaine Greer, K. Satchidanandan, Simon Armitage, Anita Nair, Dr.Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Subramaniam, Anna Funder, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Anupama Raju and many other compelling and entertaining speakers are participating.

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THE VENUES

Kanakakkunnu Palace

Kanakakunnu Palace is located in Thiruvananthapuram (also known as Trivandrum) close to the Napier Museum. It was primarily used as the summer palace of the erstwhile royal family of Travancore. Built by Sree Moolam Thirunal, the Palace was later renovated by Sree Swathi Thirunal, with the introduction of tennis courts and other features. The palace boasts beautiful chandeliers and a large collection of royal furniture. With its stunning architecture, it is a legacy of the colonial era, having been used as a guest house to entertain visiting dignitaries.

Kanakakunnu Palace is one of the major tourist attractions in Thiruvananthapuram. The atmosphere of royalty left by the Travancore family can still be felt in the palace.

Protected by the tourism department, the palace plays host to many cultural events and shows. The palace grounds are an excellent place for runners to exercise, and for families to relax in the evenings. The Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) has listed this palace as a heritage monument.

Nishagandhi Open Air Auditorium

The auditorium is located within the palace compound and is a sought-after venue for staging various cultural events and entertainments. The Nishagandhi open-air auditorium hosts an annual week-long Nishagandhi Dance and Music Festival, which stages Bharathanatyam, Kuchipudi, Mohinayattam and other performances. Various artists participate in this cultural spectacle.

Sooryakanthi Auditorium

The Sooryakanthi auditorium is a very popular venue which stages exhibitions, trade fairs and cultural events. The palace grounds also host a week-long food festival which sees the participation of hotels from all over Thiruvananthapuram.

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THE PROGRAMME SCHEDULE

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Britain Must Lead The Way in Green Technology,says Simon Singh

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The only way Britain can get out of the economic crisis is to invest in the development of new technology, according to Simon Singh, one of Britain’s most respected science writers.

Simon Singh said that the study of pure science was hugely beneficial to the economy and urged the government to make the country ‘world leaders’ in green technology.

‘The only way we’re going to get out of this is investment,’ he said. ‘We could be world leaders in tidal energy research, wind power, solar cell technology. These are areas where someone is going to lead the way.’

Speaking to an audience at the Hay Festival in Thiruvananthapuram, the author of Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Big Bang explained why government investment in scientific research could be justified at a time of economic turmoil.

More here (http://bit.ly/uDpjI4)

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Agnès Desarthe on Food and Sex

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The French novelist Agnès Desarthe, speaking at the second Hay Festival in Thiruvananthapuram, delighted the audience with a racy discussion of the links between food and sex.

Her novel Mangez-moi, published in English as Chez Moi, is about a woman who tries to rein in her rampant sexual drives by running a restaurant, and in the course of the book has an affair with a teenage boy – a kind of reworking of Lolita in which the genders have been reversed.

She said she thought the subject matter might cause some ripples. But she found this not to be the case, at least not in her native France. “A bigger taboo,” she says, “is the fact that the mother has problems loving her baby. It seems you can have sex with anyone you like – but motherhood…”

Source (http://thiruvananthapuramupdates.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/hay-festival-kerala-the-telegraph-article-agnes-desarthe-on-food-and-sex/)

Literary legends, musicians and film-makers took centre stage on the Kanakakkunnu Palace premises on Thursday as the famed Hay Festival made its return to the state capital. The Alchemist Hay Festival inauguration witnessed two doyens of Malayalam literature engaging themselves and the audience with their conversations and takes on the literary arena in the state.

Novelist M Mukundan, introducing M T Vasudevan Nair as a living legend in realm of Malayalam literature, elaborated on how he was influenced by MT’s writing. Mukundan cited books such as ‘Manju’ (The mist) and ‘Aal koottathil thaniye’ (All alone in a crowd) that were indeed unique.
Cultural Affairs Minister K C Joseph and Shashi Tharoor MP also spoke at the inaugural ceremony.

The Band Stand venue at the Hay Festival was all poetic when eight poets came together hand-in-hand to form a circle, reciting poetry in their respective languages. Poets from different regions were enthusiastic about introducing each other and they shared experiences they had over the past few days prior to the event at the famed Kovalam Beach.
They shared how they drew inspiration from folklores, other poets and writers. They were not shy in translating and reading out each other’s poems in their own languages.

Robert Minhinnick was introduced by K Satchidanandan. A novelist, essayist, and environmentalist, Minhinnick also wrote a spontaneous poem in response to Satchidanandan’s ‘Stammer’ (Vikku), which he read out at the session. He also read out his ‘Opera in Baghdad’ as part of the conclave. Twm Morys, introduced by Anamika, was fun loving and vibrant, carrying his guitar to spice up his songs. He also read out the folklore poems he wrote in the Welsh language.
Eurig Salisbury, a young Welsh poet, shared his interest in mythology, fantasy and urban poetry with Sampurna Chatterji. His poems were described as contemporary takes on love and mythologies.
Sian Melangell Dafydd also made her presence felt, by reading out verses from her works. Apart from being a poet, she is also a historian, editor, and rock climber too.

Anitha Thampi, a poet from Kerala, read out her poems, including ‘Muttamadikumpol’ (Sweeping the front yard). She also translated and recited her fellow Welsh poet Sian Melangell’s ‘Flute.’
Satchidanandan, introduced by Minhinnick, said he experienced different ways of translating poetry in the days he spent with fellow poets. He also recited the Malayalam and English versions of his poem ‘Stammer’ (Vikku). He also translated 14 poems of Twm Morys and recited his own work titled ‘2’. He concluded the session reciting his poem ‘Kozhipanthal’, followed by a song by Twm Morys..


Express bUzz

Scientist-turned-author Simon Singh might ruffle more than just a few feathers with his talk on alternative medicine at the Hay Festival, here on Friday afternoon. The talk would be mostly from the research he conducted for his fourth and most controversial book,’Trick or Treatment - Alternative Medicine on Trial’, which he co-authored with Edzard Ernst.

If you are wondering why Simon chose not to speak on particle physics, the topic in which he has a PhD and has the experience of working at CERN, or even the art of making and breaking codes on which he has written a book titled ‘The Code Book’, here is what Simon says: “I know in India these alternative medicines are hugely popular, especially homoeopathy. In most cases, there is no evidence that these kind of alternative medicines actually work. Yet, some of the practices can be quite harmful too.”

While Simon says he is not brave enough to write about evolution or genetics, his straying into alternative medicine had the British Chiropractic Association going in for a long legal battle with him, which ultimately Simon won. “Had I lost, I would have lost half a million dollars. So now, I am on a fight to free science of libel. Libel laws in England are hostile to free speech and very expensive and we are fighting to change the law. Hopefully, something positive should happen in the next eighteen months,” he says.

Simon’s grandfather had migrated to England from Punjab way back in 1938 and Simon’s links with India are the visits he makes once in about two years to visit his relatives. But apart from this, Simon particularly enjoyed a trip to the Deccan Traps, exploring for the BBC whether the volcanic eruptions here for thousands of years had anything to do with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Having worked at the very best of particle physics laboratories, with probably the cream of scientists working in the area, we at Express could not restrain asking him whether he, at any point in time, missed the lab atmosphere. “Not really. Most of the guys who worked with me were faster, quicker and sharper and I realised I was not going to make great discoveries that make science exciting. So I just chose the next best profession that would keep me close to science,” says Simon, who worked with the BBC for about six years, wrote four books, did radio and television shows and is now moving to theatre.

Besides, his shifting to science communication, he says, has opened up a wider world of science rather than just the elusive Number 6 Quark, which he tried to track down at the CERN lab. “I could interview giants like Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins and do a whole lot of stories right from volcanoes to surgical cures for snoring. I took the right decision,” Simon says without a shade of doubt.

Miracles inevitably trigger curiosity in this science writer and the blood miracle of the Naples Cathedral would be the most exciting science story that he did, recalls Simon.

“At this cathedral, the blood of Saint Januarius is stored in a vial. Every January, the priest takes this out and turns it upside down a few times and the solid blood turns liquid. Later I found from a chemist friend that there are thixotropic substances that that are solid under normal conditions, but flow when shaken. I use rationality to explain irrationality,” says Simon, who authored ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ on the world’s most notorious mathematical problem.

Simon Singh is accompanied by his wife Anita Anand, who is a political correspondent in the UK and their 20-month-old son Hari. ‘’I want to take him all around India”.

Express BUzz

The phonetic octaves of Welsh had a sing-song quality to it as Twm Morys brought forth with it all the warmth that the rustic language holds.

The rebounding vigour of the tremulant ‘r’ sound that filled his poem was evocative, perhaps of the urgency of a wind that swept the hilly terrain of his country. “Welsh is a very singable language and the song I presented today was a very old folk song. It has been sung in a variety of tunes and I sang one of the versions,” said Twm after the multilingual poetry session at the Hay Festival Kerala which began on Thursday at the Kanakakkunnu Palace.

Welsh poetry, oral and written, is a rich repertoire on the geography of the Celtic nation, said Twm, who has published two volumes of poetry in the Welsh language. A trained musician, Twm plays the guitar, the harp and the Welsh bagpipe.

“I write two kinds of poems. The traditional Welsh poetry which has an intriguing rhyme and meter which are hard to master. It took me seven years of practice to be able to write in that style. The second kind of poems are written especially to be sung. It has to be musical and should be interesting to listen to,” he said.

The folk song that Twm presented at the poetry reading session was one that linked all living beings to mother earth. Each line of the song added a living organism to the cycle which was then wound back to the vital connection with the earth. “The song is a typical example of Welsh poetry. Our country is very rural, full of trees and greenery. Yes, some of it is changing, but it has largely remained much the same,” said Twm pulling the guitar over his shoulders and walking his lanky frame to the meadows stretching across the hall.

“I have been to Delhi but it is the first time I am coming to Kerala. The weather is delightful here,” he said, looking around.

Twm said that his own poetry is more about life,“everything in life”. “I do write about the history and mythology of Wales. But I also travel a lot and it is reflected in my poems. He writes for television and radio and sings with the folk-rock band, Bob Delyn a’r Ebillion. He was also the Welsh children’s poet laureate for 2009-10.

Three other poets from Wales - Robert Minhinnick, Sian Melangell Dafydd and Eurig Salisbury - participated in the reading along with Hindi poet Anamika, Sampurna Chattarji, who writes in English, and Anitha Thampi, who writes in Malayalam. K Satchidanadan chaired the session and presented his poem.

Express Buzz

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Fergal Keane a senior BBC correspondent said that many Japanese are in denial about the atrocities committed during campaigns in China, Burma and India.Consequently, he said, the teaching of history in the country “profoundly” needs to be changed.

Speaking at the Hay Festival in Thiruvananthapuram, the veteran war reporter said that the Japanese reputation for savage treatment of enemy troops captured alive was well deserved.

“The brutality was not a myth,” he said.

His new book – Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 – chronicles a little-remembered battle in India where a tiny number of British and Indian troops managed to repel a much larger Japanese force in what Keane dubs the ‘last great battle of Empire’.

The book catalogues a series of atrocities committed by the Japanese in battles before the siege including beheading enemy troops or tying them to trees and using them for bayonet practice while they were still alive.

“What you have to remember about the Japanese Army in the war was it was an army in which brutalisation existed at every level,” Keane told the audience. “The general slaps the colonel, the colonel slaps the major, the major beats up those under him.

“The idea of compassion or mercy was alien. The idea of surrendering was unheard of.”

It was because of the Japanese reputation for brutality that the British and Indian troops who fought them at Kohima were so desperate not to be captured alive, he said.

“They knew it was either being tied to a tree and bayonetted or sent off for slave labour,” he said, recounting how the fiercest battles were fought over a tennis court, with trenches at either end.

Since the war, Keane said, many Japanese had been unable to confront the truth about what had happened and had chosen to ignore the behaviour of their troops.

Those who took part in war should not be judged too harshly with hindsight for the way they behaved at the time, he suggested. “After all these years in war zones, I tend to be more forgiving,” he said.

Source (http://bit.ly/uHDvjs)

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Thanks for the extensive coverage with pictures Ajith. Same to Deepak for pitching in with news coverage.

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Iconic international feminist writer Germaine Greer, stole many hearts with her nuanced reading on Shakespeare’s lovers here in a session that was liberally sprinkled with references to Bollywood. The Australian writer and academic, one of the star highlights of the three-day Hay Festival that began here on November 17, talked about how the English playwright’s works was full of younger men wooing older women. “When it comes to wooing women, boys were much better at it than men,” said Greer addressing the lecture “Shakespeare’s lovers” at a fully-packed Palace Hall of the Kanakakannu Palace of the erstwhile royal family of Kerala at Thiruvananthapuram. “During the times of Shakespeare, young people did not hang around together or have a say in most matrimonial matches. They were initiated by friends or family … marriage was a sort of negotiation…. just like in India,” said Greer. The noted writer said the playwright’s heroines “easily and readily give their hearts away and then do not think about taking it back…. almost like in a Hindi movie situation”. In Shakespeare, there was said to be a bubbling scandal in the royal courts with the Queen of England said to have an affair with the Duke, said the author. “A young boy was wooing an older woman and this was on the minds of Londoners when Shakespeare was wooing his future wife,” said Greer. “You may think that is odd that the lover is just out of school but actually that has never been the situation… As you can see Justin Beiber is a favourite with women and when you ask them when did they fall in love with him, you realise the actor was just 13.”

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Tarun Tejpal and Nayantara Sahgal, two leading Indian novelists and commentators, have criticised large sections of the Indian media for failing to properly engage with the problems of the country.

They were addressing a large audience on the second day of the Hay Festival in Thiruvananthapuram, sponsored by the Telegraph.

Acknowledging the problems of both of poverty and of human rights abuses in the country, Tejpal, whose latest book has been longlisted for the Man Booker Asia Prize but who works principally as a journalist, said the media was not “set on the best course to redeem the situation”.

He said that despite the huge increase in television channels and newspapers, the Indian media is no longer in touch with what is going on. There is not often enough getting down and reporting on the real stories on the ground. “I believe the calling of the journalist in India is a challenging one,” he said. “There is a great sense of distress about the Indian media – wherever I go in India.”

Sahgal agreed. “A wall of silence exists about the real state of the country,” she said, bemoaning the “fast news, fast buck” culture of sections of the Indian media which focus on “Bollywood and cricket”. “They are catering to someone with a very short attention span,” she said. “They assume young people all want fast news.”

They agreed that the effects of cultural “dumbing down” could be traced to Indian fiction as well. “Novels in India are not singing right now,” Tejpal said – this despite the apparent boom in Asian fiction in British bookshops.

Sahgal blamed the digital age of soundbites and information overload for the inadequacy of much of the fiction coming out of India. “I wonder whether information will kill the imagination,” she said.

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The pains and pleasures of reading a novel

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Writer Chandrahas Choudhury speaks on ‘Ten ways in which a novel can change your life’ at the Hay Festival in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday

“Mystery,'' I heard in my thoughts, or perhaps, “mercy,'' but I wasn't certain of either.

When Enishte Effendi finally meets God (or rather thinks that he meets God) in his afterlife in Orhan Pamuks's celebrated novel ‘My Name is Red,' the painter cannot hear properly what God says in reply to his question on the meaning of the world.

Writer Chandrahas Choudhury says that besides the evident irony and humour in the situation, there is a reason why the author cleverly evades a clear answer to that question.

“Neither the answer mystery nor mercy would have been satisfying enough. By refusing to give a definite answer Pamuk suggests that the answer depends on the reader. That is what novels do. They teach us to accept that there are multiple answers to a problem,'' he said.

Mr. Choudhury was making his case on the novel reading experience at the session ‘Ten ways in which a novel can change your life' on the second day of the Hay Festival here on Friday.

Picking up passages from classic works of renowned authors, Mr. Choudhury demonstrated how novels go beyond entertaining human minds and touch our lives.

“By describing in detail the little nuances of life around us, novels expand our sensory awareness and multiply our awareness of the world. They also sometimes take us back to our own memories,'' said Mr. Choudhury quoting a passage from ‘Suite Francaise,' the 1942 novel of Jewish author Irene Nemirovsky who died in a Nazi concentration camp.

“Novels express the contingent nature of human experience. In Ashvaghosha's ‘Handsome Nanda' written in 200 CE, Buddha's half brother Nanda is caught between his impulse to stay with his beautiful wife or join Buddha's procession. In the split second that his wife goes out of his sight Nanda decides to go and meet his half brother. But that actually turns out to be the last time his sees his wife before becoming a monk. Many life- changing situations in real life are like that, they happen for many reasons and in a matter of minutes,'' he said.

Quoting a passage from Anton Chekov's ‘The Kiss' in which soldier Ryabovitch is kissed by a woman for the first time in his life, albeit mistakenly, Mr. Choudhury describes how novels open up the pleasures and dangers of imagination. “Novels remind us that so much of our life is lived in our imagination, in our private theatre. Here Ryabovitch's imagination goes on a spree. He imagines that he has married, separated and even had children with the unknown woman who kisses him mistakenly,'' he said. One of the greatest pleasures of reading a novel is in losing yourself in someone else. Novels expand the experience of understanding someone else's thoughts. They bare open human motivations through layered narratives and put faith in the reader to unpack and make sense of the narrative, Mr. Choudhury said.

Willa Chather's ‘My Antonia,' Vasily Grossman's ‘Everything Flows,' Manu Joseph's ‘Serious Men' and Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's ‘Dalu Gets Into Trouble' were among the works from which Mr. Choudhury read out passages at the session.

Source (http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/article2642077.ece)

Smitten by storytelling

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Cat Weatherill and Jan Blake, storytellers, performing at a session at the Hay Festival in the city on Friday.

As Cat Wetherill and Jan Blake, leading storytellers, took to the stage at the Storytelling for Children session held at the Hay Festival on Friday, the enthusiasm of the not-so-young people waiting to go back to being children was palpable.

No sooner had Ms. Blake launched into her imitation of a chicken (Tuklaka, Tuklaka…) that the crowd was giggling. “Well, let's bring in more chickens,” she said and soon enough, there was more giggling as the crowd joined in, flapping their hands, dipping their necks, and shouting loud and clear “Tuklaka Tuklaka…” When asked if a chicken could carry a fox, river and fire in its basket, the crowd chorused, “Yes, yes, Tuklaka chicken can.”

Shortly afterwards, as Ms. Wetherill's high-pitched braying echoed in the hall, the audience watched the magical donkey scare away a thousand horses in a jiffy. As Cat spoke about the luscious strawberries and the juicy apples that the donkey ate, a few children present in the front row licked their lips and looked at their parents. Half-open mouths and childish giggles were what they got in return. The audience were lured by the wish-granting witch and noise-hating gods.

As Ms. Blake thanked the ‘children' at the end, she said another session would be held at the venue at 10 a.m. on Saturday, this time for children who missed out on the fun because they had school on Friday. (Entry to the Hay Festival is free).

Ms. Blake said storytelling was an excellent medium to bring back children to literature. After a session, children often asked questions about the sources of the stories, and an opportunity arose to introduce them to literature.

Speaking toThe Hindu, Ms. Blake said there was a lack of diversity in storytelling. Often, storytellers forgot to establish a connection with the story and hence, failed to involve the audience.

“If my storytelling has helped one person among the audience to bring a small change in his/her life, I am happy,” Ms. Blake said.

Ms. Blake has been performing worldwide since 1986, specialising in stories from Africa, the Caribbean, and Arabia.

For Ms. Wetherill, the stories come alive through the audience. She runs her own company - Cat & Company - that imparts training and conducts workshops for children. She has also written three children's novels.

Source (http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/article2642083.ece)

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Kerala Kaumudi

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Mathrubhumi

On the concluding day of Hay Festival, the literary enthusiasts of the city were gifted with a poetic tribute on God’s Own Country by British poet Simon Armitage who was evidently moved by the rain-drenched nature that greeted him on arrival. The poet read works selected from his collections.

The best editors are those who work from the point of view of their writers and a debut writer would feel very secure working with such editors, said publisher, writer, and editor David Davidar, the man who single handedly changed the publishing scene in India. As the head of Penguin Books he also exhorted the young to do whatever they felt strongly about without fearing the reaction of the society.
Davidar was in conversation with Indian writer Namita Gokhale on his books and thoughts on the concluding day of the Hay Festival at Kanakakunnu Palace.

He talked about his latest work of fiction ‘Ithaca’, which is an account of international publishing based on Davidar’s own experiences. The author also digressed to his childhood in Kerala and Tamil Nadu when he was introduced to the world of books by his grandfather. He said that the publishing scene has changed tremendously in many ways in which one could publish.

The discussion on Women’s fiction in Malayalam raised several points of contest with author K R Meera calling for a gender-based tag for fiction written by men. “Why is it that the works of M T Vasudevan Nair or M Mukundan or other male writers are seen as the canonical literature while women’s writing is bracketed within tags? If there is ‘pennezhuthu’, its counterpart should be tagged and scrutinised under the tag of ‘aanezhuthu’,” she said.

Author Chandramathi, on the other hand, stated that she was a feminist though not a radical one. “I have always maintained that I am moderate feminist.” I am writer and a woman, but I don’t like a combination of both as a tag for my writing, she said.

Academician G S Jayasree put the discussion in its theoretical perspective by referencing to early feminist writers such as Lalithambika Antharjanam and K Saraswathy Amma.

As an interesting corollary, academician and writer J Devika called out to representatives of DC Books among the crowd. Finding none, she made the open statement that if the publishing giant which held the translating rights of Sarawathi Amma’s stories did not come out with a collection in English in another five years, she would take the task upon herself.

African story teller Jan Blake’s voice reverberated through the sunny afternoon as it changed into moods of joy, awe and agony in quick succession. Chinese author Jung Chang, known for her biography of Mao and memoir Wild Swans, talked about her milieu.

The Festival concluded with the screening of a documentary by New-York and London-based director Liz Mermin, ‘Shot in Mumbai’.

Express Buzz

Two documentary films were screened on the final day of the Hay Festival. ‘I for India’, a homemade documentary filmed by Yash Pal Suri, helped in driving home thoughts on what it really means to be Indian.

Suri, who left India in 1965 to the UK and used his super 8 camera over a period of 40 years, returned home with those images of snow, miniskirt-wearing ladies dancing bare legged, his first trip to an English supermarket, portraits on personal life and emotional experiences within his family. The documentation process has been genuinely handled, capturing the very fine details.

The documentary brings to the fore the nostalgic Bollywood movie songs of eighties which used to be merged with the environmental ambience of Hindu ritualistic weddings and other family activities.

It was as if a totally different mood experimentation with sound and music was happening all through. Suri’s commentary on images of those memoirs abroad felt very personal, but it seemed a window to the economic and cultural exchange between England and India.

Yet another documentary that was screened followed the life of Budhia Singh, a four-year-old boy who created world record by running 65 km at a stretch.
He was the subject of media controversy and political high handedness a few years ago. The documentary ‘Marathon Boy’ follows Budhia’s life from age of 4 to 8 years. Budhia was sold for around Rs 800 by his biological mother to Biranchi Das, Judo coach.

Budhia was noted for his unique talent for running long distances, trained and encouraged by his mentor Biranchi Das. His talent soon made him a folk hero.
But he soon attracted controversies and political agitations in terms of child abuse. Coach Biranchi Das defended Budhia and stated that he would present the boy in future Olympics, when everybody would shut their mouths. But Das was brutally murdered after a series of dramatic events.

Source : EB

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Amazing.. I feel trivandrum is the perfect place for such an event.
I get goose bumps while seeing the images and videos if the event!!

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/32492536?byline=0&amp;color=000000" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/32492536">Hay Festival Kerala, India</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/hayfestival">Hay Festival</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> (http://player.vimeo.com/video/32492536?byline=0&amp;color=000000" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/32492536">Hay Festival Kerala, India</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/hayfestival">Hay Festival</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>)

^^
http://player.vimeo.com/video/32492536

Making Hay in God's Own Country

http://www.theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/mast_image_landscape/mastimages/Artsdesk-madebyfinn.com-5.jpg
Thiruvananthapuram does seem the perfect place for the Hay festival's Indian incarnation

Thiruvananthapuram, capital city of the state of Kerala in the far south-west of India, is as crowded with people as its name is with syllables. By mid-November, most of the monsoon rains have passed and the city is bathed in a stiflingly sticky wet heat. The main thoroughfare, Mahatma Gandhi Road - a statue of the great man stands at an intersection garlanded with orange and yellow flowers - is a constant cacophony of traffic. Swarms of black and yellow rickshaws buzz like so many bees amid the jumble of modern cars, motorbikes, scooters and 1950s classics. Cracked, worn and non-existent pavements overflow with women in bejewelled saris of pink and red and green while shirtless young men bedecked in beads, hands on each others' shoulders in a chain of Hindu brotherhood, make their way joyfully to worship at Sree Padmanabhaswamy, the world's richest temple. Click here to read complete article (http://www.theartsdesk.com/books/theartsdesk-kerala-making-hay-gods-own-country)