Bruce Palling travels to the colourful Jaipur Literary Festival and is impressed by the long list of prestigious authors, the hugely enthusiastic participants… and the free curry
The more insular residents of the West probably imagine that half the Indian population is illiterate, while the remaining hundreds of millions spend their time gyrating in slums to the anodyne tunes of Bollywood musicals. When it comes to functional illiteracy, however, there is quite a lot we in the West have to offer.
I still recall my fruitless attempt to find one of the world’s most celebrated novelists in a large bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, the original home of the modern book festival. ‘Do you sell modern first editions?’ I enquired. ‘What are you looking for?’ came the curt reply. ‘Evelyn Waugh.’ To assist his rather basic RAM in processing this information, I noticed that he carefully wrote down on his notepad ‘Evil and War’, which to judge from his demeanour, was a perfectly normal request in his shop at least.
In India, this would never happen – instead it would be ‘Sir, will you be needing the Penguin paperback edition or the somewhat more expensive but sturdy Everyman’s Library series?’ Or to take another incident – when was the last time a beggar accosted you on the M4 from Heathrow and tried to flog you a Booker prize-winning book for half price?
Well, the Indian equivalent happened to me just the other day as I flew into the functioning anarchy otherwise known as Delhi International Airport. No sooner had I settled into a hopeless traffic jam, partially created by the chaotic digging of the new Metro, when I was offered a vacuum-packed hardback of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger for less than £3. Later I was admonished by literary friends for buying a bootleg item and also told I was lucky the pages inside actually had ink on them.
Still, it dovetailed neatly into the purpose of my visit, which was to attend the annual Jaipur Literary Festival, held at Diggi Palace, just a few hours south of Delhi in the capital of Rajasthan. The train journey down showed how all-pervasive the piracy industry is. In the next-door seat, there was a passenger watching a bootleg DVD of Slumdog Millionaire on his laptop – a day before it had even been premiered in India.
I was slightly gritting my teeth about attending the festival as I imagined it would have all of the usual literary figures performing in tents to many of the familiar chattering-class groupies. Given the explosion of literary tourism in Asia, I imagined it might be along the lines of ‘If it’s Wednesday, it must be Jaipur; Thursday, Galle; and next week, Bali…’
William Dalrymple, Simon Schama and Vikram Seth Photo: Aradhana Seth
Well, thankfully, I was wrong on all counts. For once, this actually delivered the message on the wrapper – it was indeed a festival, with festooned buildings, colourful drapes, performing artists, hundreds of people milling around and more than enough entertainment being offered simultaneously to keep the most jaded participant amused. Oh yes, and there were 160 authors too, ranging from Thomas Keneally, Simon Schama, Patrick French and Colin Thubron to local superstars such as author Chetan Bhagat, editor-turned-novelist Tarun Tejpal, William Dalrymple, Vikram Seth and Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan. And unlike the Hong Kong and Shanghai literary festivals, which are dominated by expatriates, there was hardly a European to be seen among the thousands of Indian participants. The only Western tourist I observed had a baby boy on her knee, so I assumed she was an Embassy wife here for a day out. In fact, it was actress Julia Roberts, who had heard about the festival while staying with Bubbles Jaipur – the Maharaja – and came along anonymously to see what all the fuss was about.
Nick Coleridge impressing the local schoolgirls
And it wasn’t all highbrow either. There was Tina Brown attempting to tell the packed audience about the joys of creating a new website (www.thedailybeast.com), though judging by the post-talk questions, she was more renowned here for her memoir on Lady Diana Spencer. And who could miss Condé Nast managing director Nicholas Coleridge being pilloried by strident Indian feminists for daring to use thin models on the cover of Vogue India? (‘Well I am sorry to have to tell you that our readers have a distinct preference for beautiful, slender, six-foot tall models rather than ones that are ugly, short or fat.’)
Pico Iyer Photo: Aradhana Seth
This was a far cry from the traditional literary festival, which first came into existence in the spa town of Cheltenham in the late Forties. After that, literary festivals were spin-offs either of music or arts festivals, such as Edinburgh or Adelaide, before they took hold in their own right with the launch of the Hay Festival in 1988. The problem with the traditional literary festival is that it is usually just a vehicle to sell books and the closest to any excitement is when the author fluffs his lines while reading an extract of his latest work.
Perhaps the apogee of the celebrity side of literary festivals was when Hay spent £100,000 to have Bill Clinton speak in 2001. By contrast, in Jaipur no one was paid a fee and, more to the point, the entire festival was free to attend. To cap it off, excellent Indian cuisine was served to thousands of participants free of charge and superb live music was performed into the small hours every night. Instead of relying on entrance fees, the Jaipur Literary Festival has managed to shame or cajole institutions like the company that built the Delhi-Gurgaon Freeway into becoming major sponsors along with the usual suspects such as the British Council, the Rothschild Foundation and Oxford University Press. The revelation for many participants was the quality of the new Pakistani writers, such as Mohammed Hanif, whose novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes explores the dictatorial rule of General Zia, along with Daniyal Mueenuddin, who writes for the New Yorker and Nadeem Aslam, author of Season of the Rainbirds and Maps for Lost Lovers. Hindu zealots had threatened to burn any bookshops that stocked Pakistani literature in the wake of the Bombay terrorist attacks but fortunately the organisers decided to ignore such bombast. Sadly, Ahmed Rashid, the foremost expert on the Taleban and Central Asian Jihad, cancelled his appearance in the wake of such threats but promises to return next year.
What made the entire festival so memorable was the enthusiasm of the participants – and the fact that virtually every event was standing room only, with Punch and Judy style video boxes outside the palatial main hall so hundreds more could watch outside.
The organisers, including local author William Dalrymple, were slightly taken aback at the success of the festival, the fourth one so far. It was more than three times larger than the previous year and next year promises to expand into the seven-acre grounds behind the rather quaint gardens of Diggi Palace. And it was not just literary groupies from around Asia – hundreds of schoolchildren were given free tickets and apart from soaking in the lectures and events, they swamped the startled participants for their autographs.
What was especially heartening for me was to see a homegrown event like this rival or even out-perform the more commercial international literary festivals. The Hay Festival just had one in Colombia and is launching new ones in Beirut and Nairobi this year. They have the expertise and clout to roll them out wherever there is a literary culture. Yet Jaipur, which attracted more than 20,000 participants, is an endearingly ramshackle not-for-profit event that promises only to get better, despite no international input, save for the authors themselves. Note the date in your diary – 20 to 24 January 2012. I’ll see you there.
More info on the festival at http://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/
Bruce Palling travelled as a guest of The Ultimate Travel Company (Tel: +44 207 386 4646; www.theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk) which arranges tailor-made trips to the Subcontinent and elsewhere.
(This article about the 2009 Jaipur Literary Festival first appeared in The Spectator Business magazine)
(This article about the 2009 Jaipur Literary Festival first appeared in The Spectator Business magazine)
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