Travelling literature fest to be celebrated in Doon

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 22

Ghummakkad Narain, a travelling literature festival, will be marked in Dehradun on September 24 this year.

The festival was started in 2010 in the memory of Soviet Land Nehru Award winner and eminent literary personality Thakur Vishva Narain Singh, under the aegis of UNESCO, to support the Indian government’s RTE, which mandates libraries for all schools.

Festival organiser Rachna Bisht and president Nivesh said that the idea for the festival is to reach out to children and areas where they do not have access to books. The festival covers private as well as government schools. Books are donated to schools to set up libraries where there are none.

Bisht said the festival so far has been addressed by the likes of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Dr Shashi Tharoor, Margaret Alva, Sunil Shastri, Nandia Das, Sushma Seth, Emily Gravett, Joanne Blake and Xanthe Gresham.

She said the festival will be held from 9 am to 10 am at Heritage School, 10:30 am to 1 pm at Jaswant Modern School and 2 to 3 pm at Alayaa Studio in association with DIT University.

Following this, the festival will travel to Shimla in October and to Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai in November.

She said the Dehradun leg of the festival would be held in association with Penguin Random House.

“It is most fulfilling when you see children enjoy such sessions and take to reading. It is the seventh anniversary of Ghummakkad Narain and we can say that we are proud of the festival and grateful for Thakur Vishva Narain’s dream that is helping so many children get closer to books, learning, dreaming and thinking,” she added.