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RSS- Recently attended the Jaipur Literature Festival and I have to say it wasn't as fun as it was last time round. That doesn't mean the festival was bad; it's just that this year it was insanely crowded and I hadn't heard of or read the works of most of the speakers. Also, I didn't interview anybody this time round. However, what I did was attend a lot of sessions so that I can blog about what was discussed as opposed to posting one Q&A after another (as it is, the blog has too many of them).
- So anyway, that apart, I seriously think Sanjoy Roy & Co. should move the festival out of Diggi Palace. As scenic and traditional as it may be, it simply cannot accomodate the hordes of people who come there. And going by the popularity of the event, it's size will only increase in the years to come.
- Felt slightly bad for the organisers because a lot of the speakers, authors and invitees were stuck in Delhi and/or in their respective cities due to the dense fog and visa-related issues. Which meant that a lot of the sessions had to be rescheduled (especially on the first two days) and a lot of speakers had to double up as moderators of other sessions.
- By far, the most popular speaker at the festival was - not surprisinly - Chetan Bhagat who was mobbed by schoolkids and fans and was the subject of much discussion amongst presswallahs, delegates and every second attendee. That some not-so-nice things were said about him is another matter, but it was quite evident that most people were envious of the life he led. Even the session which he moderated had to be moved out of the Durbar Hall to the front lawns. And this, when he wasn't even discussing a page of his works!
- However, the showstealers for me were Vikram Chandra, Niall Ferguson, Lawrence Wright, Tenzin Tsundue (whose session had to be scheduled keeping in mind his court appearances!) , Geoff Dyer, Alexander McCall Smith and Tunku Varadarajan. Can't describe how brilliant they were. You just had to be there to understand what I'm talking about. Suffice to say that it was these gentlemen which made the trip paisa vasool
Will start blogging about the sessions as soon as I've filed my freelance assignments in the next few days.
P.S. Overheard at the festival: Two very popular authors discussing the finer nuances of masturbation. And that Chetan Bhagat's 'Teen Deviyan' session should've been renamed 'murder by Anjum Hasan' :)
Jaipur Diary: Short Note On The Litfest
'So when are you going to write your novel?'*
If there's one question which has been asked of me ever since I became a book reviewer, this is it. And by everyone I know. Friends, relatives, well-wishers, journalists, parents and absolute random people who I might have met at some of those boring book launches.
Which brings me to the point about reviewing and book writing: why do most people assume that, if you're a book reviewer, you're also an aspiring writer?
Perhaps it's got to do with the fact that some book reviewers in India are authors and vice-versa. Or maybe - and this is just a guess - there's this perceived notion that book reviewing enables to you to meet publishers, writers, critics who then help in cutting short the excruciatingly long process of getting published.
But ask any published writer of repute and he or she will tell you that book writing is an extremely arduous, ambitious, mind-numbing, finger-breaking, brain-frying process. From what I've heard over the past one year, it seems getting a hair transplant or undergoing plastic surgery seem less painful (unless of course you do a Michael Jackson and change the way you look every alternate day). And this is just the writing process I'm talking about. Getting published is a different ball-game altogether.
