As the 10th edition of Kalam, the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet, wound to a close, Ustad Shujaat Khan started tuning his sitar.
The night was sultry without the hint of a breeze. But the marble arches of the Victoria Memorial glowed buttery gold in the night while pigeons, disoriented by the light, fluttered around. Shujaat Khan settled down on the grand marble main steps, preparing to play Raag Tilak Kamod.
Before he launched into the music, he thanked everyone who made the literary festival possible — the organising team, the curator of the Victoria Memorial, the sponsors.
And then he said he was especially grateful to the audience gathered in front of him.
“Hum artist ke liye shrota Khuda hotey hain (for us artists, the audience is god ),” he said.
Two years of a pandemic have underscored that truth.
One for the album
I’ve been part of the Kolkata Literary Meet for 10 years and have the coffee mugs, scarves and tote bags to prove it (Impressively, there have been no design repeats yet). The history of any literary festival will be remembered for stellar sessions and odd surprises. I remember the delight of interviewing mother and son duo Leila and Vikram Seth on stage; I recall Imran Khan getting up from his seat and deciding to address the crowd directly, leaving his moderator marooned; I will never forget the snaking queues of children waiting patiently to greet Ruskin Bond year after year. There have been Booker winners and Pulitzer winners, even Nobel laureates. There have been indelible moments sometimes onstage, sometimes off — Yann Martel talking about Life of Pi on a boat cruising the Hooghly, Gloria Steinem on an afterparty tour of an old jute mill, Rituparno Ghosh interviewing three of Satyajit Ray’s leading ladies, Sharmila Tagore, Madhabi Mukherjee and Aparna Sen; Farida Khanum resplendent in pink leaning against a pillow and singing Aaj jane ke zid na karo. All of them worthy of a festival highlights album.
But we rarely pay tribute to the audience. The lit fest audience is a special breed. There’s always the man (and it’s usually a man) who does not have a question but a comment (and a very long one at that). When the moderator finally interrupts and asks if there is a question, he nods and says, “Yes. Do you agree?” There is also the audience member who takes the mic and forewarns, “I have two comments and a question.” Or that other festival favourite, “I have a two-part question.”
Festival folklore
There is the fashionable lady who spends the Javed Akhtar session taking selfies from the second row and the nervous college student who has brought her question typed up on a piece of paper to read out aloud or is so overwhelmed that she is getting to ask a question to a film star crush like Ayushmann Khurrana, she can only squeak (Sadly, that does not happen too often to writers). There is the autograph seeker who accosts every person with a delegate tag for an autograph. Sometimes he forgets and accosts that writer twice in one hour (and I speak from experience here). Or asks the author’s name after taking a selfie. I’ve met a woman who struck up a friendly conversation and then tried to give me the Koran and the kindly gentleman who told me that I was fine but he had come expecting to see my namesake, Satyajit Ray’s son. All of them are part of festival folklore.
But we’ve also taken them all for granted. After two years of Zoom festivals, the most memorable part of an offline festival is seeing the audience return to its seats. This year I’ve been watching the audience more carefully. I noticed autograph seekers have had an upgrade. Some are using those old traditional yellow postcards as autograph books, others have pre-printed handmade paper autograph pages. “We get them specially made and printed,” the autograph seeker told me. I found it amazing that they put in that much effort.
At the recent Kalam festival, someone said, “Oh look M is back. Now it feels like a real lit fest.” M had been a fixture at all kinds of bookstore events and literary festivals for years. He rarely asked questions but he was always there sitting near the rear. After two pandemic years, it was a relief to see him again, a little greyer, a little stooped, but still marking his place. We’ve smiled and nodded at each other. But now I am actually more curious about him than about the award-winning author on stage. I know why the author has returned. I want to know why M has come back. His presence had once been amusingly predictable, even eccentric.
But now that loyalty feels oddly humbling.
Sandip Roy, the author of Don’t Let Him Know, likes to let everyone know about his opinions whether asked or not.
