Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has a paunch. Booker Prize winning novelist Kiran Desai has slender legs. Travel writer Rory Stewart is super tall. Jon Lee Anderson is a bear. Vikram Seth is so short. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has a lovely smile. Jung Chnag looks like an old money lady from Old Shanghai. Karachi’s HM ‘Home Boy’ Naqvi’s wife is beautiful. Im spotting all of them.
Friends, Im writing from Jaipur Literature Festival. I know, I know. A few weeks ago Id said that I wont go to the Jaipur festival but I didnt get the visa to attend the Karachi Literature Festival, which is taking place next month. So, better be in Jaipur instead. Four-hour drive from Delhi, the Pink City is the capital of the desert state of Rajasthan. The city has as many palaces as Delhi has tombs, but Im only interested in spotting famous authors. Indias biggest literature festival, the five-day carnival has 223 authors from 20 countries.
Having a good time, Im keeping the focus on blue sky and beautiful people. And unlike last year, Im staying away from post-colonial-post-modern-post-everything literature. There is so much action elsewhere: Orhan Pamuk standing at a quiet corner with girlfriend Kiran Desai; novelist Manju Kapur walking around aimlessly; author Jung Chang longingly looking into the eyes of husband, author Jon Halliday; Pakistani novelist Ali Sethi exiting in an auto-rickshaw with an unidentified woman. One memorable sight in the first day of the festival was of a woman reading a novel outside the stables of Hotel Diggi Palace, an 18th century mansion that has been hosting the festival since its inception in 2006.
In the limited space I have, I will try to give you some sense of what is happening here, by talking of a few anecdotes and one great chicklit session.
The festival had started on a boring note. The opening ceremony dragged. Attended by Rajasthans Chief Minister, the inaugural speeches were dense with phrases like Your Excellency. The speech of the chief guest, Dr Karan Singh, an ex-Maharaja (of Kashmir) and an ex-politician, would not stop. He first spoke in Hindi, then in English. Both times he boasted that he had read Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann and T S Eliot when he was still a child. Very snobbish.
The same evening, a rumor spread that JK Rowling, author of Harry Potter novels, was sighted during the opening ceremony. She was said to be hiding behind turbaned musicians, who were on the podium. Today is the festivals last day and no signs of Rowling yet.
During a session on Urdu language in which film lyricist Javed Akhtar was mourning its decline, a friend from Karachi was so besotted by his eloquence that she exclaimed, Im so happy that Im an Urdu speaker. She said that in English! (She lives in Clifton).
On the third day, a great crowd collected to hear J M Coetzee. A reclusive South African author who rarely grants interviews, Coetzee, 70, has a lean body, white beard and a haunting voice. Introduced by author Patrick French, he read out his short story The Old Woman and the Cats. About an hour later, as he was signing copies of his books, the queue grew so long that the last person in the line had to wait for more than an hour for his turn. Coetzee rarely raised his head while signing the copies. However, when I reached his desk, the novelist raised his eyes, shrugged his shoulders, took the copy of Disgrace from my hands, signed it and while returning the book said, With pleasure. My day was made.
While I did attend sessions by Pakistanis like Ahmad Rashid, it was an American woman I enjoyed the most. She came, laughed, growled, flailed her arms, groped for words and gave relationship tips. The high-heeled and perfectly manicured Candice Bushnell, the author of Sex & the City, was a hit on the penultimate day of festival. In a session moderated by Delhi-based chicklit novelist Ira Trivedi (our Moni Mohsin), Bushnell had a somewhat sobering message to Indian girls most of whom, according to Trivedi, are virgins before their marriage. Be a person first and a gender second, said Bushnell. Experience whatever you can. Get a job, earn your money, make your choices, work hard, be disciplined its a delayed gratification but itll work. And marriage? Marriage is wasted on the young. No one should be married before turning 35 or 40. And since this is South Asia, Bushnell shared her wisdom about arranged marriage. The idea of having to marry someone you dont know is a kind of slavery. My worst nightmare was of having to live and interact with someone you dont love.
Conscious of the fact that she is twice the age of Trivedi, Bushnell said, Youre 26, Im 52. I know what its like being in your age. Youll have too much drink and then something would happen. At my age, it wont happen. Despite her success, Bushnell has regrets in life. When I was in my 20s, I wish I wasnt that worried about men. Pakistani girls, are you listening?
In a few hours from now, Ill be attending a session by the Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid. It is the festival’s last day. I met Hamid last year in Karachis literature festival. At that time, he had snubbed me when Id requested for an interview. This time I would introduce myself as a Pakistan Today columnist. Lets see how he will react.
Mayank Austen Soofi lives in a library. He has one website (The Delhi Walla) and four blogs. The website address: thedelhiwalla.com. The blogs: Pakistan Paindabad, Ruined By Reading, Reading Arundhati Roy and Mayank Austen Soofi Photos.
