A Carnival of Letters

For a first time visit, the Jaipur Literary Festival lived up to its name: a relaxed, though crowded, gathering of people who read, write and publish. As if to aid human effort, the glorious January sunshine came as heavenly benison for us fogged-out Dilliwallahs. Sessions were varied and spread across a range of informal venues, with star-gazing sessions with the likes of popular filmi folk like Gulzar juxtaposed against soberer ones on Rajasthani writing, Dalit poetry, travel writing and traditions of historiography in India. How often do you get to hear a Nobel Laureate like Wole Soyinka engage in easy chatter on his life, work and politics, while soaking in the sun on the quietly verdant lawns of a palace, in the middle of a dusty North Indian city? If this followed upon the belated but richly rewarding Keynote Address by a stalwart like Girish Karnad, whom you could catch up with later for an informal chat on aspects of theatrical experimentation in India, you were in veritable literary heaven! I  had gone with my own set of reservations about the reach of the event, but it was a pleasant surprise to see so many serious poets, dramatists, critics, and scholars participate in the fest: reading, speaking, releasing or signing their books, and mingling with the democratically diverse body of people who attended ( from local students and teachers to international delegates, mofussil media persons to power-dressed metropolitan editors, general readers/fans to academics) and clearly enjoying the experience.  

Some impressions that linger…An evenings devoted to Faiz Ahmed Faiz where his daughter Salima Hashmi shared memories, Javed Akhtar recalled a “fantastic” story about his first meeting in Bombay with the great Pakistan poet decades back, the young Pakistani writer Ali Sethi’s movingly recited some of Faiz’s best, far surpassing Shabana Azmi’s singing of the same…On other days, I was impressed by the poise of the Bhutanese Queen- Mother defending her Shangri-la, intrigued by the interventions of an earnest Christopher Jafferlot at a session of Dalit writing in French-laced Hindi, deconstructing the binaries of insider/outsider, and amused by a suave Sudhir Kakkar at pains to keep his discussion of the Kamasutra from slipping into the flippant, and worse, the titillatory, as some among the audience seemed determined to do!

True, there was a rather obvious showcasing of “Rangeelo Rajasthan”, with Diggi Royalty joining in the show, and a publicity overkill, but the achievements of the fest far outweighed these concessions to the market. Though the ‘free entry’ policy meant that there was hardly any place to stand at most of the sessions, the organizers refused to cater to any hierarchies in seating arrangements, a rare achievement indeed, considering that there were hefty-fee-paying delegates and enough VIPs to keep a similar event in Delhi suitably inaccessible. The crowds were for the most part self-regulating, there was no security, and the masala tea was as free as the sessions. That alone qualified it for the carnivalesque.

~ Maya Joshi