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Writer's block
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ANURADHA ROY on the beginning of India's first literary festival.
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Galaxy of star authors at the International Festival of Indian Literature.
ON the first morning of the Writer's Retreat at Neemrana, a fort-hotel a 100 odd kilometres from Delhi, the parakeets swoop, chatter, preen and squabble overhead as writers and critics assemble in the ancient terrace below. This is the beginning of India's first literary festival, organised by the ICCR, and it is, quite literally, a roll call of writers.
"Ved!" shouts a stentorian voice and a slightly bemused Ved Mehta taps his way with a cane towards it. "Khushwant!" the voice yells again; and then "Amitav!", "Pico!", "Sitangshu!", "Nabaneeta!". Each one is to troop up to the Voice, collect a room key and repair to inspect the medieval grandeur of their rooms. When Ruchir Joshi's name is called his right hand shoots up in obedient memory of school trips to the zoo as he shouts, "Present, Sir!"
This Retreat, the opening part of "At Home in the World", India's first literary festival, has begun what will probably develop into lifelong vendettas. Some writers — a tribe readers fondly imagine as too other-worldly to be mired in matters so base — have been publicly squabbling in Delhi over who had better claims to being among those thus Retreating. With Government organising the festival, being at the Retreat, for many, has become a curious form of State recognition. How will Government choose, they ask? Will one-novel-wonders be left out? What if that one novel is The God of Small Things? In the end the ICCR came up with a somewhat arbitrary list of people, ranging from accomplished writers to ambitious academics. Some of the Chosen, like Krishna Sobti and Arundhati Roy did not come; others were left clawing at the gates. Ironically, with the Government's own Sahitya Akademi literary festival from February19 — 23 coinciding with this one, writers like Vijay Tendulkar had to make a choice.
The festival has been structured into a series of seminars on a variety of topics, with some of the writers as panellists and one as moderator. The first of these, with Pico Iyer as moderator, discussed questions of national identity. Iyer spoke of ideas and illusions of India, of the mundane in one locale becoming the exotic in another. Shashi Deshpande was vehement she was a writer who just happened to be Indian. To Ved Mehta, this was a diasporic age in which identities were fluid. Despite an interjection by Nayantara Sahgal reminding writers that in times of war and exile national identity can become crucial to writers, the general consensus subverted establishment expectations of their "Indianness".
I have not been to other literary festivals, so I asked some of the assembled whether such proto-academic, hothouse seminars were the norm at literary festivals elsewhere. "Oh no," one of them said in despair. Amitav Ghosh and Mukul Kesavan described literary festivals they had attended at Cheltenham and Toronto which are public celebrations of the written word. The event is open to all; readings and discussions by authors of their own work can be attended by buying a ticket. But at Neemrana, all was made private.
All of the festival is not happening in Neemrana, far from the inquisitive eyes of readers. As expected, some of it is in Delhi. People in other Indian cities might ruefully contemplate "national" identity as they see practically all important State-sponsored cultural activities happening in the capital. Within the capital, the public sessions, again structured around a series of seminars, can be accessed by the uniquely Delhi system of patronage and passes. College teachers, students and readers are scrambling for those elusive passes: there aren't too many going around. For general consumption there are two sets of readings in Delhi colleges. If it is partly the aim of a literary festival to enthuse new, young readers, these two readings don't look like setting them on fire.
Yet it is not as though there has not been long, hard work behind the festival, the first attempt at which was derailed by the 11th September attacks in New York. Many writers like E. Annie Proulx, Nadine Gordimer and Amy Tan dropped out as a consequence. Still, the idea was not abandoned; it was postponed and reinvented as a festival focused on writers connected with India. Corporate sponsorship and individual help from various quarters was enterprisingly sought, going against government norm, and the festival finally emerged from the ashes.
The nearby ranges of the Aravalli begin to loom out of the sunset. The parakeets have fallen silent. The first of the seminars is over, and the poetry readings that followed it. Sonal Mansingh is putting on her make up somewhere in the fortress for a dance in the evening and V.S. Naipaul is sitting by Khushwant Singh listening to a scurrilous limerick about why "writers never fart". On a stone bench by the parapet, U.R. Anathamurthy is talking books with Amit Chaudhuri as Vikram Seth obligingly poses for pictures nearby. It is in these little nooks that the first festival of Indian letters is coming to life. It is new, it is slightly unsure, but it is happening, and with it, books and writers have for a time displaced cricket and money as talking points.
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