With the deaths of its pillars Anil Dharker and Shashi Baliga, what lies ahead for Tata Litlive?

It was early spring in 2021 when British journalist Georgina Brown had a final email exchange with her dear friend, Anil Dharker. They had been discussing possible guests from the UK for the next edition of Mumbai’s popular Tata Literature Live! festival – an annual event in November that Dharker had successfully launched a decade ago.

Brown, whose husband Crispin Simon was then Britain’s Deputy High Commissioner for Western India, had become involved with the festival shortly after her arrival in Mumbai in late 2017. She and Dharker bonded quickly over their shared love for the arts and the fact that Brown, a respected theatre critic, had reviewed his daughter Ayesha Dharker’s versatile acting performances on the London stage.

The coronavirus pandemic had forced Lit Live! into a fully virtual avatar in 2020. But in February 2021, India’s Ministry of Health announced that SARS-Cov-2 infections were at an all-time low. Things were starting to look up, and Dharker and his team were hopeful of a physical festival come November.

Brown and Dharker were especially keen to host Northern Irish author Maggie O’Farrell, whose prize-winning novel Hamnet – a fictional account of the short life of Shakespeare’s son, set in sixteenth century England’s era of plague –…

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