Books in real life

Literary festivals begin as small ideas, a couple of tents, a gathering of friends. And over the years,they acquire layers and textures, and a life less ordinary.

I’ll never forget my first appearance at a literary festival. It was in the village of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, in May 2006. I had just published my first book of poems — a process that took nearly a decade of my life and almost drained me of all optimism. It was a momentous occasion, not just because I finally had a copy of my book in hand, but also, because after many years of visiting Hay as a punter and a journalist, I was going as that most hallowed of lit-fest beings: the author.

 

Make no mistake about it, literary festivals are all about the authors: the Nobel Prize winners, the Pulitzer and Booker prize winners, the current big cheese and future big cheese — these are the bright lights that draw people to the festival. But in the process of drawing in crowds, if you’re a clever literary festival organiser (and quite a few of them are), you can bring attention to the marginal, the unknown, the obscure and the languishing, by simple methods of juxtaposition and mix-and-match. My experience is a case in point.

I was told that I’d be participating in a poetry gala. Great, I thought, sounds doable. Then I was sent the names of the other people in the gala line up, and two of the people on the list gave me sleepless nights for a month leading up to the event: Seamus Heaney and Margaret Atwood. The festival organiser assured me it was all going to be very democratic — each person was going to read for seven minutes, and the order would be alphabetical.

Atwood starts, Doshi next, and so on. Double great. Never mind that we had to read in front of an audience of 1,200 with big TV screens projecting us out into the crowd, but I had to go after Margaret Atwood, who would undoubtedly be doing her Margaret Atwood thing, i.e., being funny and clever and generally brilliant. My only consolation was that another young fellow-poet, Owen Sheers, had to go after Seamus Heaney — an equally difficult act to follow. Everything turned out fantastically in the end, the voices proceeded seamlessly one after the other, and the poetry gala was such a hit that they decided to make it a regular feature at the festival. The audience feedback was that of course Atwood and Heaney were brilliant, but so were all the new voices they’d heard and hadn’t counted on hearing, and off they went running to the bookshop to buy our books.

This, of course, is the main point of a literary festival: to introduce and promote authors, sell books, and create platforms for the unexpected. Some of my best festival moments have involved elements of luck and surprise: wandering into a session with very little knowledge about what it’s about and leaving with a new favourite writer from Japan, or some fascinating insight about memes. Even the legends are something else in the flesh: Wole Soyinka on the importance of challenging tyranny, Gulzar reciting poetry in Urdu, Christopher Hitchens telling a primarily Catholic audience that he’s never prayed for anything in his life, except once, for an erection! There are things you get in the real-life format that you don’t get with the book: the cadence, the wit, the gestures, the ability to shift from one subject to another with intelligence and depth. This is the magic that festivals have to offer.

Critics of the lit-fest complain that they are elitist, not intimate enough, blatant marketing promos and a waste of time. All these accusations are true, and all of them are false. Of course, you get the occasional patchwork panel where nothing of interest is discussed, of course you get writers who aren’t as charming as their work, and moderators who may or may not have read the book but insist on asking inane questions anyway.

Of course, there’s always politics. But festivals take time to mature. They begin as small ideas, a couple of tents, a gathering of friends. Over the years they accumulate layers and textures, and create their own special brand of audience — a process not very unlike that of writing a book. A successful festival is not one that just grows in numbers, but one that sees people return year after year. When you have repeat customers, be they writers or punters, bloggers or journos, you know you’re on to something good.

I remember thinking, after my dream debut, that I’d be forever spoiled. That nothing would match up to the thrill of that first poetry gala. Partly, it’s true, because first times do tend to have that kind of sway over you. But I have since been invited to festivals in Berlin, Segovia, Cartagena, Ubud, Galle and Jaipur, and each of them has resulted in new friendships and new ideas. I even went back to Hay the following year, somewhat demoted, back on my journalistic beat, and it wasn’t too bad — interviewing Jhumpa Lahiri in a circus tent and chatting with John Irving about the importance of the last line.

Most writers I know spend a lot of time with themselves. The nature of our craft implies that we are necessarily solitary creatures. For writers who aren’t averse to being social every once in a while, the lit-fest is a kind of boon. You get invited to beautiful places to chit-chat about your work and spend a few days in the company of people (sometimes, even heroes), who love books and honour the written word. How is that a bad thing? It’s a way to escape the confines of our sometimes-struggling creative worlds and to connect with a larger fraternity.

One of the most affirming experiences I’ve ever had at a lit-fest was in Jaipur a few years ago. I had never met any Indian writers before, and then, in the span of a few days I met Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta, Kiran Nagarkar, K Satchidanandan, Amit Chaudhuri, Jeet Thayil, Rana Dasgupta, and Urvashi Butalia. It was as if I’d been inducted into a clan. It wasn’t just the sense that this is what I’m trying to do, but also, this is what I’m trying to be part of.

[Tishani Doshi is a Chennai-based writer]