A host of global names including Netflix star chef Asma Said Khan, India's only woman foreign secretary who was India's ambassador to Pakistan, China, and the US, Nirupama Rao, the world's most revered food anthropologist, and Canadian writer, Dr. Colin Taylor Sen, Padmashri and India's most noted historian, Pushpesh Pant, Oxford University professor, Dr. Kunal Basu, Founder of India Festival in Sweden, Sanjoo Malhotra, Bengal's greatest living artist, Jogen Choudhury, MP and former Culture Secretary of India, Jawhar Sarkar and more phenomenally big names have joined hands to host the World's First Literature Festival on Mishti in Kolkata on Dec 9th -11th, 2022.
A nearly 400-year-old Bengal love story is all set to hit the global stage when Kolkata plays host to one of the country's biggest festivals. The three-day Jugal's Literature Festival or JLF will be one of the largest gatherings of writers, intelligentsia, historians, food aficionados, and stalwarts from the world of cinema and theatre. To be spread across 10 venues that will bring together some of Kolkata's iconic addresses - both traditional homes, art galleries, and modern institutions, each venue will for the first time ever, also have the world's longest tables of mishti with over a 60 variety spread out - long enough to create a world record of sorts.
The festival is the brainchild of an India-Canadian 30-year-old Lahana Ghosh - who decided to give up her cushy job in the financial district of Vancouver to return to her roots in Kolkata and give the sweets industry the respect it truly deserves. Interestingly, she is breaking every glass ceiling by creating the first-ever all women's kitchen for mishti makers - bringing down one of the last remaining bastions of a male-dominated industry.
Lahana's grandfather started Jugal's which turns 100 years old in 2023 and the JLF will be the renowned Ghosh family's gift to the City of Joy; truly an event that cannot be missed.
