The Young and the Literate

THE JAIPUR LITERATURE Festival (JLF) dis­tinguishes itself in scale and scope. It is a festival that robes itself in the superlatives; the biggest, the grandest; the noisiest. The 16th edition of the festival (January 19-23) lived up to its repute. Last year, the festival was pushed to March and given the rescheduling and pall of the pandemic, it basked in the intimate rather than the grand, the local rather than the international. This year, with over 350 speakers, it seemed to assert that it would have none of that ‘small is wonderful,’ and would instead go for big, bigger, best.

The festival opened for the second year at Hotel Clarks Amer, with all guns blazing, or more appropriately, with all dhols playing and conch shells blowing. The original venue Diggi Palace was the appropriate setting, for 14 years, when the festival could still be contained in the city. Hotel Clarks Amer has little of Diggi’s charm, but what it lacks in character it makes up for in capaciousness. And as the festival expands, a larger venue makes all the more sense.

At the opening ceremony on the morning of January 19, author and co-founder of the festival William Dalrymple said that this edition had brought together the winners of all the major prizes, such as the recipient of the Nobel Prize of Literature Abdulrazak Gurnah, to the Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, to the International Booker Prize winners Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell, to Katherine Rundell, the winner of the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.

These names certainly drew in the crowds and packed the venues. But as usual, it was Javed Akhtar and Gulzar who were the biggest draws. I overheard a woman on the bus say that she sat for three hours in the same front-row seat at the Front Lawns in anticipation of Akhtar’s session titled, ‘Talking Life’. Akhtar and Shabana Azmi were also the only speakers who had to be escorted around the venue surrounded by guards.

At the opening, Sanjoy K Roy, Managing Director of Team­work Arts, noted that over 80 per cent of attendees in 2020 were under the age of 25. This actually seems one of the most heartening aspects of the festival. By the weekend the throngs were thick and snaking, but it is the swell of youngsters that proves that the next generation knows their books. It is easy to be dismissive and accuse them only of faffing around, but the lines at the Full Circle bookstore at the venue and the queues for author signatures bookmarked their dedication.

Houston-based Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the author of 21 books, including The Mistress of Spices and The Forest of Enchantments clearly has legions of fans. During her question and answer session, young women readers rose to ask pertinent and insightful questions about the characters and plots, meanings and interpretations of her books. She signed books for more than an hour. A young reader who was waiting in line for more than 30 minutes to get her copy of The Forest of Enchantments signed said that she had read seven of Divakaruni’s books and that this was her absolute favourite because it seemed “astonishingly real” and helped her better understand her own life.

The top-selling books at the Full Circle store spanned a wide range from Amish’s War of Lanka to Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex to The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee to The Last Heroes by P Sainath. This variety just proves not only that the kids are alright, but that the next generation is a tribe of discern­ing readers.

The quality of questions from young readers stood out in many sessions, as one could spot their idealism and their discontent. Many asked speakers about how to stay off social media, how to stay away from the rat race. A session titled, ‘Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain’— Sathnam Sanghera in conversation with Emily Benn—threw up many relevant and impassioned questions. A schoolboy stood up to ask, “What do the British think of the British empire?” During a session with Shehan Karunatilaka, the Sri Lankan author who uses gallows humour to write on grim sub­jects, another young man asked; “How do you laugh in tragedy and not at tragedy?”

In previous years, one had often seen questions morph into long-winded comments and diversions. And while that too did occasionally happen this time around, there was a certain spark and fervour to the queries. It is always heartening to see young people who have both the confidence and enthusiasm to get their voice heard.

This year’s festival certainly had an A-list line-up, and a com­mon complaint was that listeners often had to forego an event of choice as it coincided with another. There were quibbles however that at times the scheduling changed, with little warn­ing, leaving listeners confused. The printout of the programme tends to be the favourite of all aficionados as it allows for high­lighting and note making, but the online programme proved more reliable, given the occasional changes.

LIKE ALL PEOPLE-packed venues, JLF is wonderful for human watching and eavesdropping. In terms of fashion, as usual, shawls and scarves held sway, the ill-fitting robe has now become a badge of honour, the boots, inching ever higher, continue to stand their ground. Hair dyes in unicorn colours now seem plebian rather than astonishing.

A student confidently told a friend that an imposing Worli art work had been painted by P Sainath. Heading towards a talk on numbers by Indian-American mathematician Manil Suri, one heard a lad tell his friend, “Arey, yeh science ke baare main hai. Tum­hare samaj ke bahar hai. (Oh, this is on science, it is beyond you.)” A speaker on stage kept calling Ira Arun (who was sitting in the audience) Usha Uthup, which left everyone, including Arun most confused. An author bemoaned to a listener, “Most reviews are only written from the point of view of the reviewer’s gaze. If it doesn’t meet that gaze, the book is deemed poor.”

Festivals are always about what happens at the venue and what occurs at the afterparties and the after-afterparties. Jaipur remains rather unmatched when it comes to refined opulence and royalty. With palaces and forts and hawelis providing the backdrop, it is little surprise that each venue seems out of a Jodha Akbar set, illuminated by thousands of candles and feted by rose petals.

At these cinematic settings, the main topic of conversation was more often food than books. Everyone wants to know what everyone is eating and where the ‘best’ this, and the ‘best’ that can be found. Hours of conversations were spent discuss­ing—the merits of laal maas of this hotel versus that home chef, the quality and origin of spare ribs at a buffet and the quantity of whiskey in cocktails.

Literature festivals are also odd beasts, because authors, by demands of their profession, are solitary creatures. And the pandemic only reinforced that. At times the festival reminds one of spring after hibernation. Most of the year around, the authors remain in their burrows, toiling and working away. But as the festival season approaches, they must abandon their studies for the shamianas. They have to leave the quiet and embrace the crowds. Ruth Ozeki, novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest, rightly identified this dichotomy when she said, “The writer is at home in her PJs, the author is on stage talking about that.” During the festival, the ‘author’ must take centrestage, but one can also glimpse the ‘writer’ in moments when they wander off to steal a snatch of silence and solitude, whether it is a smoke by the library or a pause listening to the blind flautist seated on a bench or to look up at a tree and stare at baby owls. At the end of five days, once the suits and sarees have been packed away, it will be time to retire the author and bring in the writer. It will be time to return to pyjamas, and the business of putting down words on a paper.

Abdulrazak GurnahauthorsbooksJLF 2023readersShehan Karunatilaka