Ghummakkad Narain to arrive in Doon on Sept 26

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 24

The much-awaited Ghummakkad Narain, the Travelling Children’s Literature Festival, will arrive in Dehradun on September 26.

The festival this year will be paying a special tribute to late President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who had inaugurated the first edition of the festival in Dehradun in 2010. “Dr Kalam had motivated us to travel to far flung regions to introduce books and reading to children, who, otherwise, do not have access to either. It was a unique privilege for the festival to host him in Dehradun in its very first year,” said festival organiser Rachna Bisht, president of NGO Nivesh.

Ghummakkad Narain started in January this year with Kathakar–International Storytellers Festival in Delhi. Storytellers from the UK, Africa and Scandinavian countries travelled to Delhi to perform alongside Indian groups from Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Manipur in the three-day festival.

The festival will now come back to its place of origin on September 26 where it is being held in association with Westland and Puffin India and brings Roshen Dalal and Christopher Doyle to interact with students. The sessions will take place at Jaswant Modern School and at Dehra Dun Institute of Technology in Dehradun. The festival is likely to travel to Srinagar in Pauri Garhwal in October and will finally conclude in Delhi in December

The festival was started in 2010 in the memory of Thakur Vishva Narain Singh under the aegis of Unesco to support the Central government’s Right to Education, which mandates reading and libraries for all schools. The idea for the festival is to travel to children to areas where they do not have access to books. The main organisers of the festival are two NGOs Nivesh and Himalayan Hub for Art, Culture and Heritage.