Manorama HORTUS is a multidisciplinary festival of literature and the arts, bringing together writers, artists, thinkers, humanitarians, politicians, sportspersons, entertainers and audiences across borders. Over four days, the festival unfolds through conversations, readings, performances, exhibitions, workshops and exchanges that cross the boundaries between disciplines.
Rooted in the spirit of creative inquiry, the festival takes its name from Hortus Malabaricus, the 17th-century botanical compendium that mapped the rich flora of the Malabar coast.
Following its debut on the shores of the Arabian Sea in Kozhikode, Kerala’s first UNESCO City of Literature, HORTUS now comes to Kochi—another city shaped by water, trade, and cultural exchange. Long a gateway between worlds, Kochi today remains cosmopolitan, inclusive, and constantly reinventing itself.
From 27 to 30 November 2025, the festival will unfold across public and familiar spaces near Vembanad Lake, welcoming readers, listeners, and seekers to explore a wide spectrum of experiences. The second edition of HORTUS will bring together literature, talks and debates, stand-up comedy, crafts, culinary arts, theatre, music, dance, visual arts, photography, performance, films, video art, as well as a dedicated pavilion for children.
This is a space where culture comes alive in many forms—shared, inclusive, and belonging to everyone. HORTUS 2025 invites all to celebrate, ignite, enrich, and reflect.
Dr. M.Leelavathi Writer, Chief Patron, Manorama Hortus Like air, mind and light, knowledge knows no geographical boundaries. Knowledge is, or should be, a common heritage of humanity. This has been an accepted concept among intellectuals and languages. The monumental book HORTUS MALABARICUS is an instance of that faith.
It's highly heartening that Malayala Manorama celebrates a literary festival in the name of this treasure of a book. The event is befitting to the cultural heritage of Manorama, beginning with Kandathil Varughese Mappilla, the great and broad minded individual who respected and encouraged every one who possessed cultural or literary talents or learnings. I extend my best wishes to his present descendants and heartily congratulate them on having taken up this endeavour.
P. Rajeev Minister of Industries and Law, Kerala It is a matter of immense pride and intense joy that Kochi is playing host to the second edition of Hortus, the literary and cultural festival organised by Malayala Manorama from November 27 to 30, 2025.
Hortus puts forth a bouquet of topics, ranging from Literature to Development, connected through Culture, Science, Politics, Art, Entertainment, Knowledge and what not.
I am confident that Hortus will ignite the minds of the young and the old alike, offering immense opportunities for meaningful dialogue and stimulating discussions.
So here’s a heartfelt welcome to one and all to Kochi.
Be at Subhash Park and be an active participant in this four-day-long cultural fiesta.
M. Anilkumar Mayor of Kochi
As the Mayor of Kochi, it is with profound joy and civic pride that I extend a hearty welcome to the Manorama Hortus festival. Kochi was the cradle of the monumental book, Hortus Malabaricus. It was here that this classic work on Kerala’s botanical richness was conceived and compiled. It is thus a homecoming for the festival to this sacred ground of literature.
Kochi has for centuries been Kerala’s widest window to the world; a maritime hub awash with the currents of global trade and thought. Kochi welcomed sailors from Portugal, Holland, England and several other distant countries, thereby weaving a cultural tapestry of extraordinary diversity and genuine acceptance. This inclusive spirit allows Kochi to thrive both as a preserver of traditions of the past and as a harbinger of the new in the world.
The Hortus festival, in its quest to celebrate culture and explore the collective understanding inherent in the theme “Me-You-Us: The Power of We,” finds its most natural home here.
The city welcomes everyone to the festival with pride and happiness.
JAYANT MAMMEN MATHEW EXECUTIVE EDITOR MALAYALA MANORAMA We are glad to welcome you to Manorama Hortus 2025.
The festival is being held at Subhash Park, Kochi, one of the finest public gardens in Kerala. Kochi is also the city where Hortus Malabaricus, the landmark 17th-century botanical work on the plants of the Malabar coast, was compiled.
True to its name, Hortus is a garden open to all — every gender, every background, every belief, every language, and every form of expression.
Over four days, you will experience plants, art, music, ideas and conversations that connect us all. The theme this year is You – I – Us: recognising our individual stories while celebrating the unity that binds us.
Come, participate, and take home something new.
N S MADHAVAN FESTIVAL DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The second edition of Manorama Hortus is here—this time in Kochi, again by the water. From the widely attended Kozhikode edition on the Arabian Sea, we now move to Subhash Park, overlooking the Kochi backwaters. We shift from a UNESCO City of Literature to a city that was, in many ways, the cradle of Malayalam letters—the venue stands opposite Maharaja’s College, where generations of poets, from Changampuzha Krishna Pillai to Balachandran Chullikkad, helped shape our literary tradition.
In a world increasingly riven by binaries—the most corrosive of them the easy slide into ‘us versus them’—we have chosen, perhaps idealistically, to shape this edition around the all-embracing theme me, you, and us. It invites us to shed the scales of an egotistical self, to move beyond the adversarial ‘other’, and to imagine instead the generosity of us. Over the four days from 27 November 2025, we hope to celebrate this spirit of us-ness—a small but, we believe, meaningful gesture in difficult times.
In recent years, literary festivals have too often fallen into familiar patterns: talking heads circling non sequiturs, trivia in place of thought, entertainment overshadowing inquiry. Success is too easily measured by footfall rather than substance. At Manorama Hortus, we attempt something different. We bring together some of the finest minds in Malayalam literature, notable voices from abroad, and discussants from across India and beyond to address the urgent questions of our time.
We also feel that literary-festival formats must evolve to meet the world of this new century. We have given space to the Malayali’s contemporary forte—cinema. The Berlinale has curated a special film package for us. Cuisine, another cherished preoccupation, finds a place in the Chef Studio. At the Living Library, books take the form of real people, ready to be ‘read’. The most irreverent theatre form of our moment—stand-up comedy—will take the stage. We have not forgotten the next generation: a wide range of activities and workshops await children. And throughout, we acknowledge our AI-driven, brave new world, including with a workshop on video-game writing.
Welcome to Hortus, where we have tried to offer not just a festival, but a complete experience
Bandhu Prasad Note from the Curatorial Team Me–You–We: Relational Futures
We live in an age that asks anew what it means to live, to relate, and to become. “Me–You–We” traces an unfolding from solitude to sharedness—an enlargement of the self toward kinship. It urges us to remain with the trouble and the joy of our times, cultivating care within entanglement rather than imagining purity outside it. The festival proposes a relational consciousness—neither atomized individualism nor abstract universalism—where the boundaries between human and non-human, nature and technology, algorithm and emotion blur into coexistence, obligation, and reciprocity.
Anchored in the resonant thought-worlds of Donna Haraway, Narayana Guru, and Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, this edition advances a dense ethic of relation. Haraway’s call to “stay with the trouble” refuses dominion and innocence, insisting on situated response-ability and multispecies alliances that do not harm, exploit, or erase. Narayana Guru furnishes the ethical core of non-harm, dignity, and radical equality, articulating a social and spiritual grammar that rejects hierarchy and reconstitutes bonds through compassion and justice. Basheer offers the everyday technique of this ethic—an intimate realism that nurses one’s joys and wounds, holds contradiction with humor and tenderness, and crafts sanity within turbulence. Together they propose a method: stay, do not harm, and live intimately with experience.
This edition unfolds as a contemplation on kinship across scales—between persons, species, technologies, and histories—and asks how we might inhabit the world through care rather than conquest, reciprocity rather than hierarchy. As ecological, political, and technological crises converge, the festival becomes a garden of reflection and response: an open terrain where art, literature, and thought converse on what it means to be human amidst the more-than-human. To become kin is not to seek comfort but to embrace interdependence, building relations that are porous, accountable, and enduring.
Our language focus this year—Spanish, as spoken across continents and cultures—extends this inquiry beyond nation and toward relation. Language resists containment; it migrates, transforms, and remembers. We turn to Spanish as a polyphonic commons, a living medium through which diverse histories of encounter, rupture, survival, and reinvention continue to sound. In choosing language over nation, “Me–You–We” affirms a world without rigid borders, where imagination becomes a practice of kinship and translation a form of care.
The festival convenes thinkers, makers, and readers to rehearse this relational ethic: to stay with the trouble without harm, to honor equality without erasure, and to cultivate sanity and joy within the world’s complexity. “Me–You–We” is an experiment in living together—critical, tender, and durable.
--- Bandhu Prasad~Aleyamma, Shelly J Bella, Eesha Jila Ikbal and Molly Varghese
Trivi Art Concerns