Litfest Summary

I returned last night after a hectic but enjoyable trip to the Jaipur Literature Festival. Hats off to William Dalrymple, Sanjoy Roy, Namita Gokhale and their young team for organising such a huge event. As Jabberwock wrote on his blog, given the size of the event, a lot could have gone wrong but to the organisers' credit, everything went of without a hitch.

Although the event was quite a success, a few issues perturbed me. Firstly, given the scale of the festival, one the level of interaction with authors was either limited or, in some cases, never happened. For instance, I wanted to talk to Basharat Peer, about his book Curfewed Night, but he was constantly hounded by journos or school children seeking autographs, so the meeting never happened. Mohammed Hanif was very busy signing copies of his book A Case Of Exploding Mangoes and giving interviews to journos but I still managed to pin him down for a short interview (which I will put up soon). Secondly, since I was a participant I had to shell out Rs. 450 to eat lunch and dinner at the festival venue. I don't mind spending that much provided the spread is worth it. But, for simple Indian food, I think it was a bit too much. Lastly, I felt that audience questions after the book reading should've been given more time. For instance, after Shashi Tharoor's session with Shoma Chaudhary, only 15 mins were left for a Q&A session, during which Shoma used her prerogative as moderator to ask another question. I thought that was a bit unfair considering that it was a full house waiting to quiz the iconic author. Neverthless, I think it was an extremely enjoyable festival with authors as different as Thomas Keneally, Tash Aw, Daniyal Muenuddin, Vikas Swarup, Nandan Nilekani and Vikram Seth all at one venue. In fact, Vikas Swarup's session with William Dalrymple on Day 1 was thoroughly enjoyable. At one point William wondered aloud about who was running the foreign ministry considering so many of them were writing books. The Q&A after Hanif's session was also very quick-witted. While asking a question, an audience member mentioned Pervez Musharraf's autobiography to which Hanif's deadpan reply was "Wasn't it a good work of fiction?".  Vikram Seth quipped that it was unfair for his mother, Leila Seth, to displace him from the bestseller list with her very first book, On Balance. Complimenting these witty sessions were profound discussions and debates on diaspora, poetry, sanskrit, and Kashmir. As I was busy interviewing people, I couldn't them but from what I hear, they were well attended.

As promised, I have interviewed quite a few people I met at the festival. I'm yet to undertake the herculean task of transcribing the conversations but I'll give you a sneak peek. Siddharth Vardarajan of The Hindu spoke about the role of media, young people becoming political commentators and Obama's foreign policy among other things. Sam Miller, author of Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity spoke about his experiences in Delhi while Sanjoy Roy gives an insight into how the litfest came into existence. The heads of Penguin Books India and HarperCollins Publishers India talk about publishing in times of recession. There are a few more interviews which I can't recall right now (festival hangover, I guess).

There's much more to the festival than the above details. Shall write a proper and crisper post later in the week, after I am through with transcribing and posting interviews. For now, I must go and catch up on some much needed sleep and home cooked food.

(P.S. This is an on-the-spur-of-the-moment post, devoid of any editing. Was feeling terribly guilty about not blogging for quite some time now, hence decided to scribble something)