Jaipur Lit fest

Outlook has an interesting piece on the recently concluded literature festival.

Everything that could go wrong with the Jaipur Literature Festival went wrong, right at the start. The split between the two halves—Bharat versus Global India—turned into a messy divorce, with a division of the spoils: chairs, tents, lights, mikes, guests, readers and agendas. Heated battles were fought well into the opening day between the trio of festival directors on last-minute inclusions like Fatima Bhutto and Aamir Khan. And several panels were left headless, thanks to speakers not showing up. ICCR's Pavan Varma, so far even-handed in supporting both halves of the festival, pulled out suddenly, but not before delivering a devastating exit line: "Litfests are usually an incestuous dialogue between Indians who write in English and Englishmen who write in English."

And then the bad news: the chief star, Gore Vidal, whom the organisers were banking on to draw in the crowds, turned tail at Colombo airport. The story goes that Vidal, already put out at losing his baggage when he arrived for the Sri Lanka litfest, was sorely tried by the questions put to him by Indian journalists there: "Are you a writer?" asked one; the other tried a minor variation: "What books have you written?" It was a taste of India Gore apparently didn't fancy. A last-minute appeal to Vikram Seth, who was in Delhi, begging him to rescue the festival from certain doom, was tried and failed. Understandably, the organisers opened their five-day festival with all the optimism of those at the scaffold.

Hope flickered when the keynote speaker, Nayantara Sahgal, more known for her connection to the Nehru-Gandhi clan than for holding sway over a hallful of writers and readers from across the globe, struck an unexpectedly successful chord with her audience. But by the second session, it was back to incest: American academics Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph talking to local academic Rima Hooja, with a handful of other academics listening in. Jaipur's student readers scattered out of Diggi Palace faster than the hired crowds at a political rally. Nor could William Dalrymple's conversation with British writer Miranda Seymour, scintillating though it was, lure them back.

It was left to ageing film star Dev Anand to rescue India's biggest litfest from collapsing under the weight of its hype. The crowds reappeared as silently as they had departed, sitting stoically through a laboured literary conversation between the matinee idol and comely poet Tishani Doshi on his autobiography, Romancing with Life. But even their patience began to wear thin; a woman stood up to ask if they could conduct the rest of the session in Hindi. The answer was 'No'; Tishani couldn't speak in Hindi. Again, the ageless hero to the rescue: he switched effortlessly from English to Hindi, holding the packed audience enthralled with a steady, ceaseless stream of well-rehearsed cliches. Clearly, the litfest was taking off, even if it wasn't in the direction the organisers had in mind.

In theory, "throwing in a bit of stardust" is always good for a litfest, as the festival's directors kept repeating to their critics. It helps pull in the crowds who will (hopefully) stay on to hear the lesser-known writers. In practice, the crowds held on firmly to their right not to be bored: they turned up in large numbers for Dev Anand and Aamir Khan, but didn't for the Ambarish Satwiks. Fatima Bhutto was mobbed, but even the festival's bookshop hadn't heard of John Berendt (of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame). Ian McEwan was luckier—the film based on his novel Atonement, which was premiered at the festival, received seven Oscar nominations just before he arrived.