Lucknow Literature Festival kick starts on a grand note

The three-day long Lucknow Literature Festival witnessed a grand opening on Friday at Indira Gandhi Pratishthan. The sixth edition of the literary festival had several interesting events lined up for the day. The event kick-started with a welcome address by Jaideep Narain Mathur and Kanak Rekha Chauhan.
(L) Anuradha and Lalita Pandey (R) Atul Tiwari (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav and Vishnu Jaiswal)
The first session titled Shonar Bangla, was held with several known personalities from the field of Bengali literature.The session, which was moderated by writer Anjum Katyal, had actor and author Barun Chandra, director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, Odissi dancer Dona Ganguly and culturist Sundeep Bhutoria. They spoke and discussed about the rich Bengali culture and the impact regional languages have on society.
(L) Deepika Chaturvedi (R) Dr Hari Om and Malvika Hariom (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav and Vishnu Jaiswal)
Sundeep, while addressing the keen listeners in the audience, said, "Bahut suna tha Lucknow ke baare mein, aaj dekh bhi liya!"
The next session to follow was Punjab, Punjabiyat, Punjabi which had ace actor Kanwaljit Singh, Surjit Patar, Ramanjit Kaur and Mallika Ahluwalia in attendance. We also spotted actress Nadira Babbar at the event.
(L) Sharad Choudhary (C) Nadira Babbar (R) Kawaljit Singh (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav and Vishnu Jaiswal)
The evening got even more interesting when a documentary on river Gomti was screened at the festival. Directed by Deepika Chaturvedi, the film talked about the origin of the river in Madho Tanda, a small village near Pilibhit, and how the people there are working towards restoring the river to its original glory. The session was also attended by Kaushal Raj Sharma, District Magistrate, Lucknow, who said, "River Gomti is unique in itself as it’s source, unlike other rivers, is not a glacier but an underground source and we need to work towards preserving it." Giving him company on stage were bureaucrats Hari Om and Lalita Pradeep, Gaurav Prakash, film director Satish Kaushik and Sharad and Sushil Choudhary. Later, Sushil offered to screen the documentary in villages and cities across UP in mobile multiplexes that have been devised by him.
— Prachi Arya
(L) Neelam Khatara and Vidya Srivastava (R) Satish Kaushik (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav and Vishnu Jaiswal)
(L) Parul Goswami and Kanak Rekha Chauhan (R) Sushil Choudhary (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav and Vishnu Jaiswal)
(L) Margaret Alva (R) Kaushal Raj Sharma (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav and Vishnu Jaiswal)