The three-day first edition of Koshala Literature Festival-2022 (KLF) concluded here on Monday, with literature lovers attending multiple sessions of authors and poets who had come from various places across the nation.

Heritage evangelists from the city gathered for a session titled ‘Romance of Lucknow’ to express their interest and support in making the city of Nawabs an even better place for art, culture and literature lovers. Jayant Krishna, CEO, Foundation for Advancing Science and Technology, said that he would exhort the state government to initiate the UNESCO World Heritage listing process for the historic city of Lucknow. “It will help the city’s cultural equity to get enhanced and this way we can solicit funding from the World Heritage Fund for the conservation of the city’s old culture,” he said.

“An annual ‘Claude Martin Festival’ will be hosted at Constantia House, La Martiniere, Lucknow to showcase the institute’s architecture and intangible European and Anglo Indian heritage, along with cultural performances,” said Carlyle McFarland, principal, La Martiniere College, Lucknow. Sanatkada’s Madhavi Kuckreja said she would like to work on creating a ‘Museum of Lucknow’ to showcase its culture, as well as a performance area for artistes.

Nawab Mir Jafar Abdullah, who was also present at the occasion said, “We should project Lucknow’s heritage in a secular manner without giving it a communal colour so that citizens and tourists can appreciate and absorb the city’s composite culture, affectionately known as the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb,”

A formal book launch and a panel discussion of the book titled ‘Bisre chulha, bisre swad’ by Urmila Singh was moderated by food critic Puspesh Pant. The book is a collection of various cuisines of Awadh which are healthy, easy to cook and long forgotten. The festival finally concluded with the enthralling musical performance by folk singer Malini Awasthi.

“These three days were fantastic and people of all ages participated enthusiastically. The response was way better than expected. We were sceptical at first, but after seeing the response from Lucknowites, we will try to organise it on a larger scale next year,” said Prashant Singh, founder, KLF.

Note: This news piece was originally published in Hindustantimes and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights.