Shailaza's Blog

Tag: jaipur literature festival 2024

  • When Poets Cook

    Maria Goretti is unlike any Bollywood wife that you may have heard about. Though she is the wife of the celebrated actor Arshad Warsi, this mother of two believes in making her own mark in the world, with her books about poetry and food.

    Maria Goretti with her children

    When one is readying to interview a person who is a celebrity in her own right and belongs to the Hindi film industry, one tries to prepare for all sorts of scenarios (maybe she will not have time or not grant the interview or will have some qualms etc). However, Maria Goretti believes in singing a very different tune. She is not only married to the celebrated actor Arshad Warsi but is also a celebrated VJ, dancer, actress, TV show host in her own right but when she starts talking you realize that she believes in being as simple as the food and poems she writes about.
    We caught up with her on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024.

    What makes you write? Do you have a particular time that you write in?

    I don’t know how it came about when I first started writing. But now writing is almost like an out-of-body experience for me. So, I cannot really say that I write at this particular time or that time. It’s just something that I do and it’s become part of my life now. It doesn’t matter where I am. I could be in a completely crowded room and I will just get a few thoughts in my mind about something and I would want to put it down because it needs to be said maybe not to anyone, just to me.

    Maria Goretti with Mandira Bedi

    How did you start writing poetry?

    It was very similar to how I started writing. It just happened. When I was a child, I used to write poetry but then lost touch with it. When my children became older, I started getting some time to pursue my own passions. I started blogging and cooking. I used to write poems about experiences or whatever used to catch my fancy.

    With her husband Arshad Warsi

    Is it tough to write a poem?

    No, I don’t think writing poems is a tough job. For me, it is the editing that is tougher because you edit your work, you scrutinize each and every line and you end up hating everything. I realized that I would sit and just write a poem sometimes from start to finish and then I would revisit it maybe two or three times after that. I would make a few changes in it. But when I was doing the book, it was the most difficult thing for me to do.
    I think I read them so much that I just didn’t like them anymore. As a result, I redid half the book while I was editing it.

    How do you think a poem helps?

    I don’t know whether a poem helps anyone else, but it definitely helps the person writing. So, I think a lot of times when you read something, something in it may or may not resonate with you, you know, because I think most of the people who write poems, it comes from a very passion-filled part of your soul. I think it comes from a space that is, that is having probably an outpouring about something that you’re listening to, something that’s going on in the world, something that has probably affected you, affected the people who are around you, a movie, a situation in life. I think, I think most poems are about life in different stages. And I feel, for me especially, when I meet people and if they have read my book, and some of them come up and tell me, ma’am, that piece was really nice, it really talked to me, I feel really wonderful about it. You know, there is an oneness that happens when you read poetry.
    There’s a feeling of, okay, I know that feeling, and I know that place, or I have felt like that before. And I think that’s very, that’s very satisfying.

    As a child when you read a poem, did it really affect you?

    At the time, it did not affect me. I have been reading poems since childhood and have even recited some on the stage. But I don’t remember being touched by it. But today when I read, it is different for me, because there is no compulsion to me because I’m reading it by choice.

    So today, when you read somebody else’s poem, what happens to you?

    Sometimes it touches me. At other times, I think of what the author was thinking when he was, or she was writing it. And sometimes, of course, it leaves you with nothing, because you probably are not yet open to receiving whatever the poem is trying to tell you.
    I think a poem is an art. It’s like looking at a painting. Some people get it, some people don’t. Some people wonder, what is that speck? Why is it so expensive? I could do that or I could have done that.

    You have also written a cook book. What is food to you?

    I think food is art for the person making it. I think food is art for somebody who understands it and for somebody who loves food. More than everything else, it is a binding force. I always feel that when every time I cook or I am doing something for my friends, nobody may be talking about the food, which is the least important, but there is a gathering that happens.

    Some people are enjoying it, some are laughing, others are talking to each other, who are having probably more or you must have this because I tasted it. You know, it does that. I think food brings people together and I think that is beautiful.

    Should everyone regardless of their gender know cooking?

    I think everyone should be able to fry an egg if they are non-vegetarian and everyone needs to be able to make something for themselves (not counting Maggie here), that they live on and not be dependent. My 19-year-old son has been cooking since he was four years old. He makes his food, which I don’t like very much. I want him to sit at the table and eat with everyone else.

    What is the kind of food you like to eat?

    At home, I have my parents living with me. So, there is one kind of food made for them. And then there are my teen kids who look at the food and are like, Ugh! What is that? And then there is me in the middle. So, I am constantly juggling between, Oh my God, why don’t you like that? That is so tasty and that’s good for your health and they look at me like, that’s old people’s food. But having said that, I love clean food. I am somebody who actually changed the way I look at food.
    I would say 70% of the time, what I love to eat is the kind of food that Ayurveda tells you to eat. Nice. You know? I have learned that, I would say I got changed in my head because I love doing a cleanse for myself once in a year. And I remember that when I first went to an Ayurveda place, I tasted the food and I was quite amazed at how simple it was and how beautiful it tasted. And that brought about a huge change in the way I cook.

    What’s your favourite dish?

    I am a pasta lover and I love a simple aglio olio pepperoncino. I also like dal chawal.

    So, how are you able to wear so many hats like an author, a chef and a mom?

    Easily. But I take that back. Being a mom is not easy. I think the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life is being a mom. Because it doesn’t, you don’t have a manual of what is right, what is wrong. You’re just winging it all the time. Sometimes you hit the jackpot, sometimes you’re absolutely wrong. When I’m absolutely wrong, I say sorry.

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 17 July 2024

  • West is not the best

    Through out the history, the Europeans have proclaimed their civilization as the best. They believed that they were born to educate an illiterate world and they were the ones who invented and discovered everything. However, Professor Josephine Quinn believes the western civilization’s achievements were nothing more than borrowed patchwork from different civilizations.

    When Josephine Quinn, a professor of ancient history at the Oxford University and the author of the book ‘How the world made the West- A, 4000-year history’ said that the racial hierarchies and colonial expansions of the 19th century were a result of this civilizational thinking that made Europeans believe that they were a supreme race born to bring civilization to the ignorant world, people at the Jaipur Literature Festival were spell bound. She argued that societies of the ‘West’ cooked up their material and conceptual world using the wheel from the Central-Asian steppe, poetry from Persia, legal codes from Mesopotamia, mathematics from Babylon and India, Mongolian stirrups, gold from sub-Saharan Africa, maritime skills from the people of the Levant and the far north, and Asian religion. The founders of ‘Western civilisation’ didn’t limit themselves to any hemisphere, geographically or intellectually, and without their intermingling’s the mongrel culture we have inherited would have been infinitely poorer and less dynamic.
    Talking to Professor Quinn is like jumping into the pensieve of memories in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. When she speaks, you feel as if you have stepped into a time machine that will take you back to where it all first began. She was visiting the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024 and I had the opportunity to interview her.

    No matter, what kind of history you read, each culture seems to be saying that they came first or their people discovered or invented everything or even created the first civilization. What is the truth?

    (Laugh) That’s great, I think as a historian you end up realising that the idea of coming first never works because then you always, there’s always so much of stuff from earlier. Even if we just stick to human history, what we actually have records of, it’s only the last tiny, tiny minimal proportion of what’s going on. The stories people are telling each other, the wars that are happening, there’s so much that is only preserved, interestingly, in places which retained an oral culture for a really long time. So if you go to places like Australia or Polynesia and so on, where oral traditions remained the main way of passing on memory until really the last century or two, that’s the kind of place where you can begin to see stories that are reaching back tens of thousands of years in some cases, where you begin to see climate change from the Ice Age coming up into the myths that are being told and so on. But I think apart from that, and again it’s a very big picture, if you’re looking at sort of ideologies and the lights people give the world and so on, I think it’s impossible to say that any particular place or thing comes first, because from the very beginning people are interacting with each other, they’re interacting across it. I know it very inconvenient for the leaders of modern nations, but people just didn’t organise themselves neatly into those same structures in the past.

    But I read somewhere that there was a woman called Eve and she was in Africa. Is that true?

    So, the truth is all humans are interrelated, which means that on some level we all share the same ancestry. The idea of, I think what you’re talking about is mitochondrial Eve, who was this character created by scientists who working on DNA couple of decades ago to describe the fact that everyone is interconnected. The theory was that you could connect it all back to one person who would have been in Africa. Today, the studies on DNA have progressed quite a lot further than that and quite recently, scientists have discovered that is we’re actually all interconnected.

    I mean the way people say is everyone is everyone’s 11th cousin within quite large geographical areas. So, you probably don’t even need to go back as far as Eve to find people who everyone alive today are connected to each other.

    Generally children find history very boring and you are into ancient history. How do you find it interesting? Why are you in this profession and what makes it interesting for you?

    Actually, when I first went to university I was a languages person, I was doing classical languages, I have done a lot of modern languages before that and I never expected to be in history. In fact, I had given up history at school because it was so boring. At that time, there was an experiment going on in British schooling system where they introduced us to very local history. But I wanted to know about the whole world and I was being forced to learn about interesting but local stories but I wanted to know a much bigger picture than that.

    It was only when I started studying in the university that I realised it was possible to do a kind of history that told you about people who were nothing like you. In school, the idea behind teaching us local history was so that they could help us to relate to people who came from the same place as us but what I suddenly realised at university through amazing teachers and great courses that actually what’s more amazing are the people who aren’t like us, the people who bring something new and different and that’s why I love teaching about Greece and Rome in the Classics Faculty at Oxford.

    I absolutely love teaching my students about the Greeks and Romans. Sometimes my students tend to think that the Greeks and Romans are quite similar to us-they kind of imagine that a Roman senator might be rather like a British politician or something. But I tell them that they were nothing like today’s people, these were very strange and different people. I think that’s so important for children at school in particular to learn that all these categories that we think of as being completely natural, whether it’s sexuality, nation, ethnicity, all sorts of preferences, were seen completely differently in the past and the people thought differently, saw themselves differently. I find that so liberating and the idea that you can say to kids, you think that the world you’re brought up in, that the categories you encounter, the way that your parents, your teachers live their lives, it gives you the parameters, you can only make choices within them, am I going to be you know go the majority way or do whatever is the kind of minority alternative and so on. I want to say to them you can completely rethink your lives, look at these people who are utterly different to you, see the world in completely different ways, you can take that and make the world you want to.

    Has the idea of God evolved through the history? Has the human mind evolved through the ages?

    I have yet in my career as a historian to see any evidence that the human mind has evolved over the ages (laughs), I’m afraid, I mean I wish it was different but I really don’t think so, I do have moments of revelation where, for instance, where you can see that the context has changed and this maybe explains a little bit about religion sometimes.

    So there was a moment when I went to visit some colleagues who were digging on a site at the island of Lemnos in the northern Aegean Sea. It’s a beautiful Greek island, very deserted, importantly for this particular anecdote, quite remote and there’s not a lot of towns on Lemnos. It wasn’t the tourist season at the time. I remember going out the first evening, the sun had set, the stars were out and they were everywhere.

    I wasn’t just seeing the Milky Way, which you don’t see very often in England, or many places these days, but it was, the whole sky was carpeted with stars. In a way it wasn’t stars in the sky, it was stars and then tiny bits of black space in between them. A thought struck me that if I lived in a world before the invention of electricity and every time I looked in the sky after the sun went down, I saw this, then I might be maybe a little scared but also just very impressed with whatever it is that is creating that fact for me and this was a revelation for me because they I realized why all societies develop some kind of religion. I think the idea that there is something very powerful and strange beyond our reach and that’s just not available. But these days, we don’t even have time for these kind of revelations unfortunately, so in that sense the human mind has devolved.

    Did the mythic island of Atlantis exist in the ancient world?

    No. The truth is that the story of Atlantis was made up as a myth and it’s a very deliberate one, not a myth that grew up in time but was actually written down by the philosopher Plato in the 4th century BC and he specifically says, I am using this as an example, imagine if there was an island like this, so from the very beginning, it was supposed to be a non-existent thing, this enormous island in the Atlantic. He was using it to do some thought experiments about what if there was this kind of place that worked this sort of way, sort of utopian idea, but then what happened was people loved this idea so much, they wanted it to be real and so people started to say, well, what island was he thinking of and everyone forgot that he actually had specifically said this is not a real place, this is an imaginary place. So, I do, I love when people kind of try and say, oh, we finally found Atlantis, you know, this volcano or this, that and the other. It’s like, well, brilliant, but if you do then the person who made Atlantis up knew nothing about it. But it’s been such an interesting idea since, I’m so glad that he made it up and also that some people have kind of taken it more seriously than he intended because it’s very revealing what people say about Atlantis, where they imagine it, how they imagine it.

    When you study history as a subject, do you see any human behaviour repeating through out the ages?

    Yes, and then of course, one wants to leap to the very negative things, like somehow, we still managed to have war and so on, even though we have many examples of it not being very helpful.

    But on a positive note, I think there is a universal desire for connection and that is something that you can see over and over again in different societies, that no matter what the really physical barriers often to contact, to meeting other people and that kind of thing, the technological barriers and so on, people continue to overcome them. So, now there are many fewer physical or technological barriers to travelling around the earth and people want to go into space and people are imagining there might be aliens and so on to meet. So, I think there’s a that kind of desire to constantly expand the human horizon. I think it’s that something that repeats.

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on July 6, 2024.

  • The Kiwi Who Landed in Japan……..2

    Simon Rowe is a New Zealander who has fallen in love with Japan and the Japanese culture. His love affair started in the 90s and shows no sign of abating.

    What made you migrate to Japan?
    Japan in the 90s was a very mysterious and closed country. The yen was very high. They wouldn’t allow the freelance writers and you had to have a visa sponsored. I really wanted to go to Japan not just because it was such a mysterious country but also for financial reasons as I could sell a lot of stories of Japan. So, my mother was the one who really helped me because she was reading a Sunday newspaper. She found an advertisement that was for English teachers in Japan. I applied and they accepted. I had to teach seven hours a night time and they sponsored my visa. So, day time I was writing and night time I was teaching. But if you are clever you can actually use the teaching as a way to learn about the culture because you get the students to talk about their culture. So, they get good lessons and you get a lot of material for your stories! So, you are getting the good oil for your writing.


    When did you meet your wife?
    I met her in Japan in 1997 at a party. She liked travelling but not back packing. I introduced her to back packing and we travelled everywhere. Then we moved back to Australia. We had kids and moved back to Japan. She is a yoga teacher now. Her teacher who is a Japanese person lives in Delhi.

    The bar depicted in Mami Suzuki


    Why do you like about Japan?
    I feel at home in Japan because there is a strong sense of community. We have the children’s association, PTA and soccer association. I have two kids. My daughter is 16 years old and my son is 12 years old and a soccer maniac! At home, we are constantly switching between Japanese and English just like you switch between Hindi and English without even being conscious of it!
    How did you learn the Japanese language?
    I used to go out to the bars and restaurants. Bars are the best place to pick up the language because everyone is relaxed and they will talk to you if you are alone and a foreigner. In my city, western Kobe, they are very social people. It is a quiet city which is famous for Himeji Samurai Castle. So every day, hundreds of tourists, get off the train and walk to the castle and then walk back to the train and they are off. It is a lovely place because it has room to breathe and has beautiful people.


    What is your relationship with writing?
    Oh! I had started reading at a very early age. I read books like Jaws, the National Geographic Magazines, Prison Escape stories. So, I had a sense of a story and then growing up in New Zealand you have sense of adventure and you are outside all the time. So, once you have lived the experience and have stories and adventures, then it is not difficult to write. So, I told my students to go out and have an adventure and then write about it. In the last 6 years, I turned to writing fiction because travel writing became too mundane and then we had articles like ‘the ten best places to have coffee in Rome’ or ‘the five best mountains to climb’. So there was really no story telling involved. For us Kiwis, telling stories is a part of our culture. Writing is really storytelling. Writing fiction gives this amazing freedom to create anything you want. That is really enjoyable.

    What do you like about the Japanese lifestyle?
    Everything is very well organized and predictable in Japan. However, if you look closely, it is really like this double-edged sword. I like the fact that everything is predictable. The trains will run on time, the people will never be late, the customer service is the best in the world. They are very patient people. You expect things to happen because that’s the way it always happens. Therefore, you don’t waste time or get angry or irritated. However, by the same token, it can be a bit confounding when they stick to the schedule and the rules. The etiquettes, the rules and the manners are something that requires many years to learn. You cannot just charge in there and do what you want. Like I was in a train and there was an earthquake. The train stopped for about an hour and nobody said anything. I closed my eyes and all I could hear was people breathing. So, you have to be sensitive to the Japanese culture. The thing about the Japanese people is that they are very social and they love drinking and socializing. But they are very good drunks as compared to Australia. In Australia, drunks can fight and kill each other but in Japan even when they are drunk, they look out for each other. When they get drunk, they get noisy, they laugh a lot, they play instruments and then they go home and sleep. They are very nice natured and super welcoming people with almost zero crime. For an outsider, Japan may appear to be too strict, formal and structured but once you get to know it, it becomes one of the best places to live because there are no surprises. You have to have an open mind and it is all about give and take. Like for example, for me as a foreigner, it was difficult understanding why we needed to give a gift to someone who has given us a gift or why certain customs exist. Now, I have come to appreciate all these customs and rituals.


    Do you like coming to India?
    It is my third time in India and first time in Jaipur. In 1992, I came from Katmandu and went to Agra. This was the time of the Hindu Muslim riots. I saw the Taj Mahal the next day and then there was a curfew and no body could leave the hotel because of the riots. It seems funny that I came the same time that the Ram Temple- Babri Masjid issue happened. It seems strange that I am coming back now when all is settled. It brings back a lot of memories. The first two trips were miserable. I got sick and I saw a man die in a very bad way. He put his head on the railway tracks. These things rather depressed me and I couldn’t enjoy myself. I was on my way to Jodhpur. Afterwards, when I was going to the airport, I asked a young boy to get me filtered water, which he didn’t. He got me normal water and I fell sick again.
    This time though it has been wonderful. Everything has been amazing. I am having the best time. I am enjoying the Indian people, the chefs, the taxi guys, the writers, the poets and the volunteers. They are not afraid to give their opinion. In Japan they don’t do that because there is this sense of maintaining harmony where you don’t have to upset anyone by giving your opinion. No one talks politics. So, I am really impressed. India has really changed but I can’t say the same for the tuk tuk drivers! They are the worst when it comes to driving and the money

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on April 4, 2024.

  • And The Oscar Goes To…..Kai Bird

    It is often said that there is a right place and right time for everything. The well-known author Kai Bird probably understands this truth more than anyone else. His book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which he co-authored with Martin Sherwin was published in 2005 but it was only after eighteen years that the world sat up and took notice of this Pulitzer Prize winner.

    You are up next,’ said the PR person who was managing the interviews. I stood up from my seat and made my way to the front area of the press lounge of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024. I was about to interview Kai Bird, the legendary much-talked about co-author of ‘American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer., a book which did not only received the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 but also has been the subject of the movie Oppenheimer which has been coveted as one of the best films of 2023 and has won five Golden Globe Awards, seven Academy Awards amongst others. I saw Kai Bird talking to another journalist. ‘He looks tired’, I commented. The PR lady said, ‘He has done about twenty interviews!’

    Kai Bird with Chris Nolan


    ‘Twenty interviews! Isn’t he tired? Would he able to give more interviews?’ I asked. ‘Of course! Don’t worry, he is one of the most patient people I have ever known.’
    Soon, the ongoing interview got over and it was my turn.
    I greeted Kai and asked him if he would like a breather before we commenced our interview. ‘No problem. Please continue,’ he said with a smile which never left his face for the entire duration of the interview.

    Kai Bird with his wife


    Sometimes, he laughed when he found the question or the answer funny. His simplicity was endearing. It was hard to believe that this was the man who along with Martin Sherwin had written such a historical novel which was the very reason for the movie.


    He was the man that the Christopher Nolan recently thanked publicly in front of millions as he accepted the Oscar for the best director for Oppenheimer and said, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, thank you for the 25 years you put into the book that this film is based on. I thank you Kai for trusting me with your work and Marty, unfortunately he left us before I was able to show him the final script, but Kai your constant reassurances once you saw the film that he would have approved meant the world to me.’ He even acknowledged that he had picked up whole packages of the dialogue straight from the book and said. ‘we are standing on the shoulders of giants.’

    Kai Bird at Jaipur Jal Mahal


    Some excerpts from the conversation that followed.


    Your book has received so much of success with all the awards and accolades. How does success change you?
    Kai Bird smiled. He said, ‘You know this book came out eighteen years ago. It was well reviewed and sold modestly but it obviously never got on to the best seller list. It was only in 2021 that Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer read the book and decided to turn it into a movie. And now suddenly after eighteen years, it is getting all this renewed attention, much larger readership and many more people are buying the book. It seems a little surreal all of a sudden.


    How did you react to all this attention?
    Well, its lovely. But I actually think that it is better for me as a writer that this happened this year (2024) rather than 2005 otherwise all this success would have diverted me. Since 2005, I have written a memoir, a biography of a CIA officer, presidential biography of Jimmy Carter. I am afraid I would have been diverted from all this work.
    So now has the win diverted you?
    Yes (laughs), I should have been working in New York on my new biography but instead I am in Jaipur doing interviews.
    But do wins lead to a lot of expectations? Do you think about how your next book would be received after such a stupendous response?
    No, wins don’t affect me in that way. I write my books for myself, out of my own curiosity, my motivation, to figure out what really happened.


    As a biographer who is writing about other people, do you get into the heads of your subjects to understand them?
    No, I don’t think biographers need to get into any one’s head or know what they were thinking. We have letters and evidence from letters, from the stories Oppenheimer told his friends, narrated or written down. You know biography is like a good novel but written down with footnotes (laughs). And those are my choices about what looks interesting in the other person’s life. You cannot write everything about any person.
    Having studied in different parts of the world including India, how has it shaped you?
    You know I went to high school in Kodai Kanal in Tamil Nadu, India since my father was a US foreign service officer. I went to school in Egypt, Beirut. So, I have a slightly odd perspective on the world, very unamerican (laughs).
    What is your perspective?
    Oh, I see the world as a very large place and a very small place at the same time. I have never hesitated to travel and I don’t have any fear of travelling. I see the world is a complicated and its bigger than just America (laughs)
    But living outside of America and studying in different schools in different parts of the world, did children ever single you out for your different appearance or different manner?
    Well, like I said my whole childhood was spent living outside of America. So, when I went back to America to go to college in 1969, it was a very strange experience. I felt out of the place, I felt like a stranger. I was eighteen years old but I didn’t know how to drive a car. Most eighteen-year-olds in America have been driving for two years by then. I didn’t know how to use a telephone or payphone. Vietnam war was still waging. First thing that I had to do on reaching America was to register for the draft (army). I was opposed to the Vietnam war and actually a year later I got arrested for blocking the doors of the draft induction centre in Minneapolis in protest of the war. I spent a day in prison and had a trial too. So, it was a very strange time coming back to America, amidst all this. I didn’t understand America.
    If I were to ask you which place do you have the fondest memories of in your childhood, what would be and where would it be?
    I have great memories of my school years in Kodaikanal (Kodaikanal International School, Tamil Nadu) . It is a very surreal, beautiful place amidst the mountains, at a height of about 7000 feet. I was a teenager studying and since I was there, I took this opportunity to travel all over India. When I was eighteen, I flew into Katmandu. I played tourist for a week. Even after that I went to Katmandu many times. In fact, I lived there from 2007 to 2011, because my wife had a job with the World Bank and she was posted there.
    Any memories of your childhood that you particularly remember?
    Well, I wrote my childhood memoir called Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978 It is all about my childhood in the middle east during the conflict between Arab and Israel. I lived in the Middle East during the ‘56 war, ‘67 war. In 1970 my girlfriend was hijacked by the Palestinian Guerillas. I lived during the’ 73 war. The memoir talks about my childhood and also conveys a lot of history.
    I remember my dad told me that when I was five years old, my parents and me were at a very posh, boutique hotel in Jerusalem. On the next table, an Arab woman announced that she would give a million dollars to anyone who could solve this Arab Israeli conflict. So, I reached over to my father’s coat cuff and said, ‘Daddy, we need to win that prize!’ So I think I have been trying to win that prize ever since (laughs).
    So, what do you feel about the current wars?
    It’s a tragedy but it is stupidity! Its like we human beings are so crazy and these wars are costly in terms of the blood and also the treasure. Its insanity.


    Have you ever felt that you have imbibed the personality of Oppenheimer in any way?
    No! he is a very different personality. I never picked up a pipe or started smoking cigarettes or tried to learn quantum physics.
    So, how do you feel about the movie Oppenheimer’s win? How do you think will this win impact the upcoming movies?
    I am thrilled that Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” has won seven Oscars—and I hope this encourages Hollywood and Bollywood to tackle big, serious historical stories and biographies. Obviously, it proves that there is an appetite out there for consequential historical narratives.
    Speaking of Bollywood, what is your favourite Indian movie?
    Well, one of my favourites was “Gandhi”—a major bio-pic about a serious subject. 

    What are you working on next?

    My next book is a biography of Roy Cohn, the lawyer who advised Trump from 1973 until 1986 when he died of AIDS.

    This article was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on March 23rd, 2024

  • The JLF that wasn’t

    It came, it happened and it went. This year’s JLF had all the right ingredients, the authors, the sessions and the venue. But then it still wasn’t the JLF we had all grown to love. Somewhere, the spice seems to be missing.

    ‘It has been one of the most spectacular festivals ever. We had very few drawbacks. There have been no dramas, no controversies. The authors have been astonishingly good,’ said William Dalrymple, author and director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. I wonder why he said that? Was it because the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024 has transformed into a ghost version of what it was some 4 years ago at Diggi Palace Hotel?
    The very words ‘Jaipur Literature Festival’ bring to my mind’s eye the very first JLF that I had attended in 2017. As they say, ‘the first impression is the last impression’ and so I was imprinted for life. The decorations and the entire look of original home of JLF, the Diggi Palace Hotel was about a celebration of not just literature but culture too. Not just the speakers or their books, but the atmosphere itself felt as if one had been transported to a magic land where nothing else mattered. You could fetch yourself some tea or coffee or some snacks and sit down and listen to the literati conversing about life, politics or anything else under the sun. Or you could just hop across to the lunch area where you would be sure to spot or bump into the likes of Shashi Tharoor or Shobha De or any other such stalwarts busy conversing with people or just enjoying their food. It was a setting which made the common folks believe that they could also hold intelligent conversations with all those ‘big’ writers and perhaps create a memory which would last them a life time of dinner parties and coffee conversations. Every year, as I would step into this world of JLF, I would leave behind my professional and personal woes at the entrance and enter into the wonderland that promised me intriguing tet-e-tats, interesting rendezvous and tasty memories. But then nothing lasts forever, does it? A thing of beauty is never a joy forever, is it?


    On the first day, as I drove into the gate of the make-shift parking of the Clarks Amer Hotel, I was stopped by a traffic police man and his assistant. He said, ‘the parking is full.’ I looked around, the parking was quite vacant except for a few cars. Besides those, there was an empty section had a board that read ‘festival vehicles only’. ‘There is a lot of space,’ I replied pointing to the empty spaces. ‘No, those are reserved for the other guests.’ I could see an empty space right in the front of the parking lot. ‘How about that space?’ I asked. ‘That is the colony’s space. We can’t park there.’ After a lot of discussion, he finally said, ‘okay, I will give you a space but it’s quite sandy. The vehicle which was parked there yesterday, got so mired in the sand that we had to call a crane and there are a lot of shrubs and thorny bushes, so your car tyres may get punctured but that will not be our fault’. I was getting late so I agreed to park, praying that I or the car tyres don’t meet the same fate. I chatted with him after parking my car and he told me that apparently there was some clash between the hotel management and the residents who believe that the parking lot belongs to them.
    I made my way to the entrance of JLF where volunteers were busy checking the attendees passes and guiding them to the venue of the festival. The minimum entrance fee was 200 rupees and upon the payment, those passes with the QR code were then sent to the attendee’s mobile which was then scanned by these volunteers. Someone had once said that knowledge should be free, which it was in the JLF of the yore. But today, things are different. However, youth activist and film maker Puneeta Roy feels differently. ‘I feel that this basic entry fee of 200 INR is just to discourage the selfie takers, the people who used to come to the festival just to take selfies or roam around. Moreover, now since no one can enter without an online registration, we at the Lit Fest are able to know the exact number of visitors at the literature festival at any given point in time. Now we see that the crowds that are coming in are a little more aware and there seem to be more readers.’


    However, Prashanth Kumar, a new attendee had a different take on the matter. ‘This was the first time I was attending JLF. I am from Hyderabad but I have been living in Jaipur for the past three years. I had heard a lot about it over the years so I was expecting that it will be a place where there will be books and authors I could interact with or talk with. However, in Clarks all I could see were these tents where some people were speaking on the dais while the others were listening to them. To me, it appeared that they were busy promoting their books. I saw youngsters taking selfies or eating or shopping at the numerous stalls. It felt like a festival alright but not a festival of books.’


    From the entrance to the different venues like the Baithak or the Charbagh or the front lawn was a long walk, every morning. On some days, some of those wore a desolate look as the speakers droned on to a few listeners who were more interested in their phones than the discussion at hand. Of course, the more popular sessions like those of Gulzar or Amish Tripathi or Devdutt Patnaik did attract the crowds but then that was expected, wasn’t it?

    I remembered the days when JLF was at the Diggi Palace Hotel. It was as if the whole Diggi Palace Hotel had become the Literature Festival. Anywhere on the venue, you could bump into Rampratap Diggi, the scion of the Diggi Palace and his entire clan decked up in their traditional attire. As Puneeta Roy puts it, ‘When you landed at the Diggi Palace Hotel, the impression one got was that they had arrived at a ‘Thakur’ abode. The entire family and the staff were completely involved in the festival. We used to arrive weeks before the festival and train the entire staff to ensure that we could maintain that aura of the festival. Here though Apurva and his family are involved, that involvement is a bit more subtle. We tried training the staff earlier but then this is a very busy hotel and the staff has to not just cater to the festival but also take care of the check-ins and the guests.’


    Perhaps, that’s where the difference lies. In Diggi Palace, it was only about the festival whereas in Clark’s, JLF is just one of the many activities that happen in the hotel which is why the very spirit of JLF is missing here.
    The earlier version of JLF or rather the pre-covid version of JLF was not just about book but also about celebrating the culture and cuisine of Rajasthan and perhaps even India. This time , it was strictly the books, at least for the common folks. As a media personnel, the spread that was laid out in lunch was disappointing. Each morning as I made my way to the lunch hall, I passed a bhelpuri vendor who prepared a better fare than that in the Clark’s. However, there is a small consolation – every second dish had a dash of spinach or some green leafy vegetable- which meant that I have eaten enough iron to qualify in the iron woman contest! For those who had to buy their food from various vendors also faced a similar problem. There weren’t enough tables and chairs to sit on or to eat. Once, it even started raining while we were in the middle of our fare and there was no place to go! But that was not the case with the privileged class. Food in the authors’ lounge or the friends of the festival lounge featured an array of delectable cuisine, that could be only afforded by the rich and the famous. A far cry from the days of Diggi where everyone could enjoy the same delicacies with every one!


    Speaking of queues, generally in a hotel like Clarks Amer, one would expect easily accessible washrooms. But that too wasn’t the case here. The washrooms had long queues. On the positive side, the women folk have undergone some evolution of sorts. In the long serpentine queues, they were patiently waiting for their turns.
    Frankly speaking , JLF is still a coveted festival. For most folks, it means a wonderland of experiences and knowledge. However, the image that is still alive in the hearts and minds of its lovers is that of Diggi’s JLF and not that of the event that happens in Clarks Amer. As one attendee remarked, ‘experiencing JLF earlier and now is like watching Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam in her heydays and later watching her as she struggled with her heart disease and become a mere shell of the bombshell she was!

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on February 29, 2024.

  • @ Jaipur Literature Festival

    Shailaza Singh with Sharmishtha Mukherjee
    Shailaza Singh with Kai Bird
    Shailaza Singh with Nicholas Shakespeare
    Shailaza Singh with Devdutt Patnaik
    Shailaza Singh with Maria Goretti
    Shailaza Singh with Anand Neelkanthan
    Shailaza Singh with Amish Tripathi
    Shailaza Singh with Nancy Silberkliet
    Shailaza Singh with Albert Read
    Shailaza Singh with Malcolm Turnbull

    The last few days have been so much about meeting and talking to different stalwarts and authors at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024. These people are amazing!