Jaipur Lit Fest

I've been putting off the Fest report for many days now, initially out of tiredness and later due to inertia because I knew the post would be long and time-consuming.

With each passing day, the report that I will write gets shorter. So, I better pen it down today.

Well, I was so very glad to attend the Fest. It was an awesome opportunity provided by the British Council. I had gone there on a bursary offered by it. That meant that I did not spend a single coin to attend the Fest. My to-and-fro travel was paid for, my hotel accomodation was paid for and my food there was free! The hotel was just a three minute walk from Diggi Palace, the venue of the Fest. That meant that we could stay back till as late as we wanted for the music and the dinner without any worries. That was great!

I wrote 'we.' I knew no one in the Fest to begin with. That was not an issue at all because of course, one always does befriend people wherever one goes. That happened in the first five minutes of reporting at the Reception Desk. The lady in charge of the British Council bursaries introduced me to the other bursaries and I instantly gelled with three of them- Manmeet (Delhi), Karthika (Chennai) and Niharika (Chennai). For all the five days of the Fest, the four of us hung together as a group. They were new friends, so I didn't feel bound to alter any of my plans in accordance to theirs. I attended or did not attend the events as I liked. But at the end of the day, there was this comfortable group to explore the markets and enjoy the dinner with and have walks and joke-sessions with. The group added much fun to the Fest and made it all the more memorable.

Now for the Fest.

First of all, it was very well organized. And, very posh. One thing that I've been telling everyone who asked me about it was that 'I saw the elite side of Indian Literature.' I'm familiar with the poorer side. The Saahit Sabhas of the Punjabi poets and writers are austere events with negligible attendance by the general public. On the other hand was this fest. People dressed richly, queues for food at Rs 500 per plate, celebrities flitting in and out, abundance of foreigners, sophisticated English- complete with the "Ooh"s and the "Aah"s and the "Darling"s and the "sweetie"s. It was a different world altogether.

On the second day, after attending an afternoon session on 'Social Activism in the Arts' which most people attended because Shabana Azmi and Rahul Bose were on the panel, I had just walked out of Diggi Palace in rebellion (not that anyone noticed, of course) with the idea of just going back to the hotel and sleeping and sleeping and shutting that fake world out. I had enjoyed the previous day but by that time- the second day afternoon- my mouth had begun to ache from speaking nothing but English. I didn't like feeling that I needed to speak English there and if I didn't do that, I would just not be considered worthy enough. That day, I realized in full force- I had only vaguely thought about this on occasions before- that I do use English as a tool to prove that I 'belong.' Hear me speak at a mall or a CCD or a rich hotel- I'll be speaking English there. That day, because I resented all the show of sophistication that was going on before me, I realized how I too often take part in that charade. All of us bursaries spoke to each other only in English, whoever met anybody in the Fest communicated only in English. I didn't like that.

Another thing that I didn't like that day was the excess focus on celebrities. Not by the organizers but by the people. Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Rahul Bose, Om Puri and Girish Karnad were there and their sessions were the most heavily attended and what I found really puerile was people jostling for their autographs. "The Lit fest isn't about autographs!" I ranted before my friends that day.

My mood and opinion improved the next day.

From 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening each day used to be a whirlwind of sessions. And each day would give me so many overwhelming new thoughts that I kept yearning for my blog. There was so much I wanted to record! The cafe at the Diggi Palace however charged an obscene Rs 100 per hour. So, I controlled myself and just saved what was on my mind in the drafts folder of my cell. Here's one such thought, 3 messages long, made on Jan 23rd (3rd day of the fest) at 2:19 pm, as I sat waiting for the 2:30 session.

'There's so much to learn. So much. I am emotional, I am overwhelmed right now. I am feeling like a writer and can see myself attending the fest as a writer and giving my viewpoint on issues. But what will I say? Thats wat I need to work on. Greatly. My one mission this year. And what's making my nostrils quiver is that this project starts right now!'

This was indeed my greatest takeback from the Fest. The realization that there was so much to read, so much to know! And that, I knew nothing!

There were so many writers whose names I heard only when I attended their sessions and then discovered that they were held in high esteem!

I was on a special lookout for young writers. Writers in their twenties. Writers who had just had their first book out. Basically, writers like myself. I wanted to compare myself with them and see how I would fare. Yes, I am conscious of how silly such a comparison is, yet subconsciously I always do it.

So, the youngest writer I found on the block was Ali Sethi. His novel 'The Wish Maker' was published in the summer of 2009 to critical acclaim. I discovered him on a panel discussion on the 3rd day, 'In a Tough Neighborhood.' He spoke quite intelligently about the political and social situation in his country, Pakistan. And, he is just 26! I was mightily impressed. Of course you can easily guess what I asked myself as I heard him- "Can I speak as knowledgeably in two years time? I must!" Then, that evening, as I was discussing him with my friends- each one of whom I realized was equally impressed by him as seemed to be most of the girls in the Fest- Karthika said that she had read somewhere that he was 1984 born. What? I exclaimed. After coming back home, one of the first things that I did after coming online, was to check Ali Sethi's birth year. So, he is not even 26! Just 25, just an year older to me and already so intelligent. You can imagine how pressurized I felt!

Then the other young writer I was impressed with was Shazia Omar. She is a Bangladeshi writer, must be around 30 (thank god!) and has published one novel. I first saw her in the same panel discussion as Ali Sethi- In a Tough Neighborhood. Before the discussion started, as I saw her take her seat, I disapproved of the body-hugging spaghetti top that she was wearing. "Where does she think she is sitting?" I thought. But when she started speaking, I only noticed how intelligently she spoke. She won my admiration for that.

This is the other takeback from the Fest. I've discovered that there is no one 'lekhak style.' Lekhak style is my term for the artsy, intellectual look. That is the style that always makes me go "Wow!" and that I've tried to emulate for years now, often- as hindsight has taught me- with disastrous consequences. When after college, I did a wardrobe overhaul for the corporate job ahead, many of my college friends- who used to keep mum in college- now heaved a sigh of relief and said that I looked much better! In my dictionary, lekhak style meant 'smartly careless dressing.' Silly me, I only kept clutching the 'careless' part and never quite reached the 'smart' bit. In this Fest, I saw lekhak style in full abundance. The women really added so much color, so much glamor to the fest! There were women in saris, in skirts, in skirts and overly long crumpled kurtas, in jeans, in kurtis, in suits, in turbans (!)...and all of them could be classified under the lekhak style. In college, I used to think that one could either be a Beauty or a Brain and I definitely wanted to be the latter. After college, my thinking slowly grew less radical. But in the Fest, I absolutely adored the Brainy beauties I saw. They were intelligent women who were also gorgeous. The lekhak style is less about what you wear, I realized, and more about how you feel. If you feel you are an intellectual, it will show through. You do not have to be deliberately careless about your looks to emphasise that point.

I attended this Fest as an observor, an outsider. I was a nobody. I knew nobody. In all the discussions that I attended, there was only one in which I asked a question. It was to VK Karthika, Publisher and Chief Editor, HarperCollins. She was a panelist on the discussion 'The Myth About Short Stories' and had said that one reason why the publishers were not really keen to publish novellas and short story collections was that the readers did not think them as value for money- the novellas were priced almost the same as a novel but were much shorter, and a short story collection usually had only one or two outstanding stories. So, when the panel was thrown open to the audience, I asked her the question that I've pondered over for more than an year now- why aren't the English books priced cheaper? In India, an English book that sells 5000 copies is termed a bestseller. I asked her why didn't the publishers think of making the English books more affordable to the general public. She replied that if they were to price the books any lesser, the writers would not be able to earn their bread and butter. The target readers of the English books were generally affluent. "It's not a price-sensitive market," she said and added that an English novel still comes cheaper than a Domino's pizza.

I do not agree to that point but will detail my thoughts some other time.

Another thing that I had specially wanted to blog about was the literary snobbery to Chetan Bhagat. I had read about it many times but in the Fest, saw it for myself. One of the last panel discussions of the Fest was on the state of Indian Publishing. The panelists were Ravi Singh, Ed-in-Chief of Penguin, VK Karthika from HarperCollins, Urvashi Butalia from Zubaan and Amitava Kumar and Vikram Chandra, both writers. Amitava sniggered about Chetan Bhagat's mass appeal and made comments about him not being a writer at all. I actually felt offended by his facetious tone, as did many people around me. Karthika however spoke up in Bhagat's defence when her chance to speak came. She said that the success of Bhagat showed that there was a demand in the market which no one had even thought there was. The other two publishers on the panel too defended Bhagat and Amitava was much mellower after that.

So, that's the end of the blog post. The Lit Fest gave me a first hand experience of the world of literature and deglamorised and de-romanticised it, which is a good thing (Writing a book has already deglamorised and de-romanticised the process of writing for me). I found that the writers were just people like me, albeit much more knowledgeable than me. And so, plugging that knowledge gap is my goal this year.