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| Sunil Sethi: Lit fest - A hook-up with books | | The fifth literature festival in the Pink City got off to a slow start but not through any particular fault of its own |
| Sunil Sethi / New Delhi Jan 23, 2010, 00:18 IST |
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The fifth literature festival in the Pink City got off to a slow start but not through any particular fault of its own. Fog-bound in Delhi, several flights failed to take off, depriving opening day of some of several star guests including Girish Karnad, who was due to make the inaugural speech, dissident Nigerian novelist and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuk, the beguiling Queen Mother of Bhutan. Traffic snarls on the Delhi-Jaipur highway held up scores of others. Bureaucracy acting up elsewhere — especially at Indian missions abroad — ensured that some distinguished literary visitors failed to get their visas in time.
The eminent African-American scholar, critic and writer Henry Louis Gates, who is a Harvard professor, was one such casualty but the funniest story I heard concerns the bestselling British novelist Louis de Bernieres (author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and many other scintillating works of fiction) who, apparently, submitted his visa application in London in a recycled paper envelope. The envelope had the name of a magazine printed on it, so the Indian High Commission, in all its wisdom, mailed his passport back to the magazine from where he finally extricated it.
But no one was really minding the chaos caused by inclement weather and red tape. Jaipur is at its sunniest best and the Lit Fest has become bigger, brighter, more wide-ranging and ambitious than anything in previous years. Festival organisers, William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale, have pulled in more guests (up from about 160 in 2009 to over 200 this year) and raised more sponsors (the festival budget has grown from Rs 1.8 crores to Rs 2.2 crores in a year.) Festival producer Sanjoy Roy estimates a growth of about 30 per cent annually in coming years before the festival comfortably settles down.
Of course, the world of literature and books cannot be solely quantified in money terms, though funding is necessary to find new guests, novel themes and an audience more composite than a bunch of bookworms.
The literary segment of the Indian film industry, for instance, has lent its full support. Poet and filmmaker Gulzar is always a hit at book events but, in addition, actor Om Puri is present to promote his biography, and Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar to share memories of her father, the late poet Kaifi Azmi, based on a new English translation of an Urdu memoir by his wife Shaukat Kaifi. Indeed, one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking discussions I attended on opening day (to a house bursting at the seams) was moderated by actor Rahul Bose with the famous British playwright and novelist Michel Frayn and fiction-writer Esther Freud on the topical subject of what goes wrong — and can go right — in film adaptations of writers’ works.
Book publishers and booksellers, too, are presenting a cohesive front at a festival that seems to have grown organically. Instead of a series of small, cramped and individual stalls, they have handed the book sales franchise to a single distributor in one large, well-decorated, library-like tent. This improves efficiency, guarantees titles by participating authors and book-signing sessions, and potentially reduces shop-lifting.
There are some other optimistic touches. Ram Pratap Singh, owner of the beautiful 18th century haveli, the Diggi Palace, that has been host to the Lit Fest since its inception says that he was doing meals for 400 participants last year; this year he’s feeding a thousand, including subsidised lunches for 200 schoolchildren.
But perhaps the most encouraging comment came from Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, who now edits the web-paper The Daily Beast. Tina believes that the rise of the digital media will eventually finish newspapers and magazines. I asked her if the same would happen to books “No, never,” she said whipping out her Kindle, “As a result of this gadget I find I am reading more books than ever before.” Tina who was a delegate at the Jaipur Lit Fest last year is one of its sponsors this year.
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