Day 1 – 21st January 2009
Opening Day
Jaipur, Wednesday: His Excellency, the Governor of Rajasthan, S K Singh, inaugurated the fourth DSC Jaipur Literature Festival in grand style today. The Governor and a procession of dignitaries entered the magnificent Durbar Hall at Diggi Palace Hotel to a fanfare of drumming and singing by Rajasthani musicians. Diggi Palace Hotel, which has hosted the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival since its inception, was packed with an enthusiastic crowd, gathered to celebrate the festival opening.
Festival Producer, Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Productions, said that this year’s festival would play host to 167 authors from all over India and the world, and celebrate both oral traditions and the written form. Sanjoy Roy hoped that the festival would be a ‘platform for new ideas, new thoughts and a vision to understand our world that is going through troubled times.’
Commenting on the occasion, Mr. Manhad Narula, Director, DSC Limited, said “It has been our great pleasure to be associated with the DSC Jaipur Literature festival for last three years. As a family and DSC Limited as a corporate, we have been deeply committed to literature as it is a force that can build and strengthen our social infrastructure. We feel literature is a powerful medium that can bring people from varied backgrounds and talent together and encourage useful discourse and debate”.
Mr. Neville Tuli from Osian, the presenting sponsor of DSC Jaipur Literature Festival said, they supported the literature festival because it ‘built platforms that encouraged the transition of creative individualist selfishness to humane collective selflessness.’ He emphasised that ‘wealth is there to serve creativity, not the other way round, and in today’s world, we need to serve the idealist as well as the realist.’
Festival Director Namita Gokhale welcomed the audience and said that the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival was the ‘most visible literary festival in India, with tremendous value because books and writers help us make sense of our world.’ She emphasised the importance of diversity and the value of individual vision, saying that ‘literature means unique voices, and shows us other ways of living and thinking.’ She said that the profound plurality and inclusiveness of India was reflected in this year’s authors, from historically marginalised voices to those of international renown.
In his keynote address, UR Ananthamurthy said that ‘in India we have always lived in an ambience of languages, a multiplicity of languages that brings a kind of richness that is not there in European literature, and it is to be celebrated.’ He added that ‘India is a country of many cultures and they have all enriched the main Hindi culture, and we must all live together.’ He also told stories of Sita and Krishna to rapt attention and lots of laughter from the audience, and urged that India’s many languages should be encouraged not only to survive but to grow, so that ‘India remains a civilisation.’
His Excellency, the Governor of Rajasthan, S K Singh, said he was attending festival, not in the role of governor but as a ‘half reader with deep personal respect for the organisers of the Jaipur Literature Festival and what they are trying to achieve.’ He supported the festival’s intention to keep the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival ‘at the level of common man, in support of writers who were in quest of something greater, that would make Ghandians and Nehruvians of us all.’
IN CONVERSATION: Vikram Seth in conversation with Sonia Faleiro
Festival Director, William Dalrymple welcomed renowned author Vikram Seth, praising him as one of the writers responsible for the range and quality of Indian writers at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival today. Vikram Seth, interacted with several enthusiasts and discussed the process of writing, as well as his own specific beginnings as a writer, interwoven with moving readings from some of his poetry. The prolific writer said he started to write because he thought ‘there must be more to life than my economics dissertation,’ and that it was not courage but ‘obsession’ that drove him to write.
Seth wrote his bestselling novel, A Suitable Boy over a period of six years, in his parents’ house. The book went on to make his name, but at the time, Seth was convinced that no one would buy it, since it was 1500 pages long and he was relatively unknown. He used his bed as his office, and often wrote by hand. During this time, he went through various periods of despair, but he was ‘riding a tiger and there was no way to get off it. I myself wanted to find out how the story ended.’ He considers himself lucky as he pointed out that some writers die before their books are recognised.
Vikram advised aspiring writers that ‘the three essential tools of any writer were a dressing gown, a hot water bottle, and whiskey if you can get it. And inspiration.’ He also urged writers to write only about that which was ‘absolutely essential to your soul. Life is short, so live by your own lights.’
ORAL TRADITIONS
The main module of discourse came in threefold structure – Ashok Vajpeyi quickly took the stage with his account of the oral tradition that is being performed in different parts of the country, as well as the world. This tradition does not signify the power of words only (for the written tradition also uses the same devise thoroughly)—but also extensively uses the primary ‘feeling’ of literature—we feel as we see an oral author performing. He cited the example of Hindustani classical music in this regard. The oral tradition is also democratic, and to specify this point he cited the example of Kabir, only one poem by whom is known to be specifically ‘created’ by him.
Shaktidan Kavia, the Sahitya Academy Laureate, takes on right from this point with his fervent recitation of several rural, authentic, and heavily dialectal poems about Rajasthan.
Vayu Naidu while traveling through an unknown village in Karnataka, Naidu came across a festival the language of which she couldn’t understand. But the raw power of the language thrilled her nonetheless, so much so, that the audience came to witness a translation of an episode of the Ramayana in English, brilliantly acted and recited by Naidu herself. ‘The Fact of oral tradition is that it is originated from original imagination’- Naidu concluded, hinting that the basic ‘originality’, the basic ‘feel’ of the oral literature always remains intact, even if it is translated into some other, alien language.
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FUNDAMENTALISM: Malise Ruthven, Siddarth Varadarajan and Basharat Peer, mediated by William Dalrymple
The panel discussed the way fundamentalism concurred and differed in different world religions and regions, with Siddharth Varadarajan urging more lively debate and discussion in all religions, including Hinduism, saying that the lack of clerical condemnation of the Gujarat massacres were an example of how Hindus too can be in ‘a state of denial’ about fundamentalism in their own religion. Malise Ruthven said Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign was successful in part because the traditional lobbying power of the Religious Right in America had been diluted by the democratising power of the internet. Basharat Peer said that advances in modern communication mean that religious knowledge was no longer reserved for scholars, and that this was leading to increasingly diverse interpretations of religious texts, which would in turn hinder organised fundamentalism.
JUGALBANDI: Gulzar in conversation with Pavan K Varma
The two writers discussed Raat Pashmine Ki, their work and lives. They talked of the importance of poetry translation, saying that ‘to translate a poem was like trying to transfer perfume from one bottle to another: it is possible, but some of the fragrance will be lost.’ Yet they both urged that this effort still made because ‘there is an audience who wants to read it.’ The enthusiasm of the audience was more than evident from the constant laughter and regular appreciative applause in a packed Durbar Hall at Diggi Palace Hotel, venue to the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival.
MOONLIGHT’S CHILDREN: Daniyal Mueenuddin and Nadeem Aslam
Two authors at the forefront of the new wave of emerging writers from Pakistan read from their work and gave a fascinating insight into life and writing during this time of political upheaval. Daniyal Mueenuddin said he had found the inspiration for many of the ‘colourful characters’ in his stories whilst living on his father’s farm in Pakistan. Award-winning Nadeem Aslam said his introduction to great literature was through Urdu literature, well before he knew about Shakespeare. Later, he read everything in the English canon to teach him how to be a better writer, which is one of the reasons his second novel took 11 years to finish. Aslam also said that Mueenuddin’s book was ‘the most important English language book about Pakistan at the moment, the first book you need to pick up, the most vital book’ and everyone to read it. When asked by a member of the audience whether he thought Pakistan had declined as a state, Mueenuddin replied, ‘that’s very easy. Yes.’
MY REVOLUTIONS: Hari Kunzru
In a timely talk about ideologies and attempts to fit the world to one’s own personal utopia, Hari Kunzro spoke thoughtfully of the challenges and curiosities involved in researching his book, My Revolutions, a novel about the radicalisation of a young man in sixties counterculture. The highly respected author said that he had wanted to explore what it really means to be a revolutionary in today’s world, to truly undertake the ‘terrifying’ project of remaking society. He said he thought that it was ‘the duty of the writer to imagine the world as other than it is’ but warned of the dangers in this too. Attempts to fit the world to an idea can lead to violence, such as in the recent Bombay attacks and even 9/11, but on the other hand, if there is no attempt to improve society, then there is only a passive acceptance of often unacceptable status quos.
FOUND IN TRANSLATION – 8 poets from India & UK. Presented by the British Council
In a creative twist, the session was designed to focus more on the basic ‘feel’ of different languages, most of the audience understood one or two languages maximum but that did not hurt the enjoyment of listening to a poem. Phonetically, one can clearly feel the lover’s anguish, the testimonial to a deceased, ill-fated mother, or a general sense of loss—all projected through Bengali, Mythili, Welsh, Scottish, English and Tamil poetry. There was also the effort to give the audience the chance of listening to the same theme in different languages. The concluding portion is specifically notable in this regard, where the Irish, English and Bengali poets all stood together, uttering the same line in the same rhythm, but in different languages.
SHAHAR DAR SHAHAR
The deep essence of a cultural and poetical beginning by Alka Saraogi, author of Kalikatha via Bypass, enlightened the audience with the flamboyance of Kolkatta.
The Hindi reading session brought together some of the famous regional poets of our country, who described some of their favourite cities through their readings. When a writer looks at a city, it is with a different eye as the city moulds him into writing vehemently about the city. A person may be concerned only about his rozzi roti, but through the eyes of the writer, we look at our city in a whole new dimension. And this formed the basis of the discussion.
Renowned poets like Govind Mathur, Satyanarayana and Udayan Vajpeyi was introduced by D.P. Aggarwal. Govind Mathur, took off and enraptured the audience with his poems, Mera Shahar and Seediyan. While Dr. Satyanarayana spoke about his love for the city of Navalgarh; Mathur, a resident of Jaipur, spoke of his love for the city, its culture and its present state. He said that there were two cities, a city of his dreams and the other of reality, one in contrast to the other. In his poem, Mera Shahar, the persona considers himself to be a stranger in his own city, questions his own existence and identity in his city. To him, it is a bazaar where we sell ourselves and sometimes others.