Dinner party and JLF Writers’ Ball

Jaipur, January 22, 2014: After the Jaipur Literature Festival 2014 it was an easy day today.

I hosted a dinner party at the ITC Rajputana on Monday evening for the authors who are in city for the Litfest. I also invited few of my personal friends and some other guests.

It was very well attended. Gloria Steinhem, Farah Ghuznavi, Lily Wangchuk, Yatindra Mishra, Ashok Vajpayee, Urvashi Butalia, Namita Gokhale, Anamika Gupta, Sudhir Mathur, Doova Sharma, Rahul Kapur, Aradhna Pradhan, Sunil Gupta, Manish Pushkale, Ruchira Gupta, Sunita Amin and others.

Yesterday I attended the The Writers Ball, which marked the conclusion of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2014, hosted by the Ford Motor Company at the Hotel Le Meridian.  The Ball was a cultural and literary potpourri with the authors and the culturatti having a whale of a time in the evening with traditional Rajasthani dance, food, fun and entertainment.

It was an informal setting and the writers and intellectuals rubbed shoulders with socialites and party goers of Jaipur. Chugge Khan and his band regaled the guests with a mix of traditional Rajasthani music.

Among those present at the party were filmmaker Anurag Basu, writer Pawan Verma, Jeet Thayil, Bagladesh High Commissioner, Tariq A Karim, Kabir Bedi, William Darymple and his wife, Sanjoy Roy, Namita Gokhale, Parveen Dusanj and so on including and a large number of city’s celebs and foreign guests and authors.

Kalbelia dancers who swung to the tunes of rustic Rajasthani desert music were loved by one and all. Just as it had started, the JLF 2014 ended on a high note.

I will fly to Kolkata tomorrow evening.

ess bee