When the Litfest Came to Town

The circus you missed, in nine easy snapshots

The fifth edition of the Jaipur Litfest has come and gone. An estimated 80,000 people tramped through Diggi Palace, ate overpriced snacks, quaffed machine-secreted coffee and Pushkari chai, and, if they were corralled in the delegate-and-media enclave, dipsomaniacal amounts of free wine. They also spent a lot of time queuing, and twice as much time complaining about it. They queued up for squishy cream cake. They queued up for kachoris. They queued up to get their books signed by their favourite author (as of twenty minutes before). They queued up to get into the rest rooms. They queued up to get out of them. They queued up around the block, and then some, to see their favourite prime time Santa, Oprah.

Apart from literature-as-game-of-patience (and contact sport, if free wine was involved), JLF#5 also offered plenty of literature-as-spectacle. One evening, I stumbled upon a gigantic stage festooned with lights, on which poet Tishani Doshi declaimed an “anti-love poem”. This was followed, in quick succession, by a teen prodigy and Limca Record holder who regaled the audience with a rendition of Kolaveri Di on his synthesizer, and performances by Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and an Egyptian jazz band.

JLF also provided a sumptuous repast of literature-as-intellectual-hors-d’oeuvres. A single day could include a fascinating dip into the archives of young Stalin via Simon Sebag Montefiore, Tom Stoppard being unstoppably witty and wise, listening to the quietly dazzling New Yorker author Katherine Boo explain the years of painstaking research that went into her brilliant new book on Annawadi slum in Mumbai, and the thrill of watching Ben Okri, Teju Cole, and Taiye Selasi eloquently eviscerate ill-informed moderators and insulting questioners.

Such as a lady who imperiously addressed her question to “the lady who debuted in Granta”: “How did you get into Granta?” “Why,” Selasi said sweetly, “I wrote a short story.”

“Oh,” said the irony-resistant questioner. “So you just e-mailed them?”

The question round is one (mostly alarming) way in which JLF flattens distances. The legendary publishing house parties are another. If you finagle an invitation to them, you can talk Brooklyn taco stands with your favourite New York author, or listen to another’s torrid flirtation in progress. Or, like I did, watch with horror and bemusement as a garrulous socialite lavished awkward compliments on author Mohammed Hanif’s exquisite wife, actor Nimra Bucha. She began with: “No wonder he’s straight!” I fled before she came up with a second.

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