Media :
Availability:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Mon, 7 Feb 2011, 01:05 on BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
A second Forum programme recorded in the extraordinary atmosphere of the Jaipur Literature Festival with a lively audience and three prominent female creative thinkers talking about what rules Indian lives: the stars in the sky, the landscapes that fill their vision or the families that surround them?
Illustration by Emily Kasriel:Guided by the stars we send postcards illuminated artificially.
Abha Dawesar
Why do so many people in India still consult astrologers on important decisions in their daily lives? That’s one of the questions novelist and blogger Abha Dawesar sets out to explore in her latest work, Family Values. She also portrays the sometimes oppressive and mean nature of a close-knit Indian family leaving us to ponder what will it take to challenge its traditional power.
Dayanita Singh
Dayanita Singh’s recent photographs often capture the blaze of electric light that in some parts of India obliterates the night time sky. She has always been interested in the narrative possibilities of photography, and her photographic cycles (such as Fear on the Footpath which you can see if you follow the link below) tell stories that play out in the long shadows and blue-green tint of neon strips.
Jaishree Misra
Novelist Jaishree Misra set out to write a simple love story in Ancient Promises but ended up changing people’s attitudes to learning disability, with Indian law belatedly playing catch up. But how long will it be before disabled people in India are allowed to lead independent lives? Plus what prompted the darkly satirical vein that runs through Jaishree’s latest books about love and relationships among the Indian jet-set.
IN NEXT WEEK'S PROGRAMME
Next week at the Galle Literary Festival, we take a look at Sri Lanka as it emerges from a devastating civil war. With a Sri Lankan human rights campaigner, a wild-life researcher plus Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie on lessons from her own country’s civil war.
The Forum on stage at the Jaipur Literature Festival
The Forum audience at the Jaipur Literature Festival
Bridget Kendall and Dayanita Singh at the Jaipur Literature Festival
The Forum backstage at The Jaipur Literature Festival
Chapters
Broadcasts
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Sun 6 Feb 201109:05
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Mon 7 Feb 201101:05
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