Mohan Kakanadan, editor of the Malayalam magazine, Kaakka, is a regular at literary festivals and has one lasting memory common to all. "I have noticed how writers from the regional languages are treated as ordinary folks at such festivals," he says. Kakanandan vowed to change that.


Shanta Gokhale, Marathi author 

Today, as his brainchild, the two-day-long Gateway LitFest winds up, it will have discussed freedom of speech in the context of Perumal Murugan (the Tamilian writer who recently renounced writing), whether regional literature is keeping up with new-age tools in literature, what writing of the marginalised means, and whether regional literature in India can ever be a 'business' like Indian writing in English is. By the end of it, Kakanandan hopes he will also have answered a few questions of his own.