Shailaza's Blog

Tag: Jaipur Literature Festival

  • A Bengali Flower

    She is a Bengali by birth but she loves Jaipur. She sings Rabindra Sangeet, enjoys Durga Puja but is equally at home with the customs of Rajasthan and the urbanity of Delhi. She is an avid traveller and has visited almost all continents of the world. Author, critic and poet Malashri Lal’s life journey has been a symphony of change and she has revelled in all the challenges that have come her way.

    Though today she is known across the world as an eminent author, Malashri Lal is still a simple Jaipur girl who loves coming back to her roots every now and then. She loves the city and its people that make her feel right at home. Though Delhi is where her hearth is, Jaipur is where her heart is. Excerpts from a free wheeling tet-e-tat with this Jaipurite:


    You studied in Jaipur, then you went to Delhi. What was your experience like?
    I continue to believe that my home is in Jaipur. Though my blood lineage is Bengali but I identify Jaipur as my home. I have been here since childhood. Even though Delhi has been a happy relocation for personal reasons and work, Jaipur still retains as much of a loved pull, almost like a Maika (parent’s home) despite my parents not having been there for years. The city, the friends, the people all of them being very special for me.


    When you moved from Jaipur to Delhi, what was the change like?
    The first thing I noticed about Delhi was that it was very impersonal space. When I moved to Delhi after my marriage, we were living with my in-laws. So there was no sense of loneliness or non-belonging at home but the city didn’t seem like a friendly place. So, I didn’t know my way around in Delhi so since I was keen to teach, I started looking at jobs in Delhi. This was early 70s so there were jobs a plenty. All the big colleges were advertising, now ofcourse I know them by name but at the time I didn’t know any of these colleges. So to find my way to a place in old Delhi from where we were (my father-in-law was Air Chief Marshal P C Lal, so we were staying at the air house) seems like such a scary thing to do, unknown roads, unknown people, rough language on the roads, auto drivers who drove rashly. I came from a protected environment at home and in a very affectionate social environment of Jaipur, so the contrast of this impersonal, immigrant city, where survival seemed to be the most important ambition in anyone’s life seemed very strange indeed. So, I did go around, I had to deal with it. I was very lucky that I got a job offer from Jesus and Mary College, the day I went there for an interview. I found JMC a remarkably hospitable and warm place. I still remember it was a hot summer afternoon. I had no idea where JMC was (it was in the middle of Chanakyapuri). The auto rickshaw driver also had no idea where JMC was. When I got there, I was late for the interview and I thought I had already ruined it. It was a beautiful building with a lovely garden. I walked up the steps and there was this old nun, dressed in white standing there with a smile. She said, ‘Welcome my dear.’ I apologized and said, ‘sorry sister. I am late.’ She said, ‘it doesn’t matter. You are not late. You are here and that is what matters. She brought me a glass of water. She sat me down and told me to not to get tensed about anything. So I sat there for half an hour till I was called for the interview and enjoyed the sense of warmth and affection even though I didn’t know the people there.
    And when I went in for the interview, everyone was courteous and gentle. I came out of there saying praying and promising to myself that if they offered me a job, I would take it. Some well known colleges of Delhi University (I don’t want to name them offered me a job and those offers came later also but the day JMC called me that evening or the next morning and asked me if I would be willing to work for them, I said yes. I stayed there for twelve years and I was very happy there. And JMC was a cocoon. Some of my best friends are from JMC even now though I just spent 12 years out of my 45 years of teaching. Then I moved to the main department of English in the post graduate wing. But the contrast was the affectionate, warm, personalized world in which I had grown up in Jaipur and the rather rough impersonal and I would even say brash world of Delhi.


    You have seen Jaipur and Delhi changing over the years. How do you find the change in both these cities?
    I don’t think Delhi has changed very much. It has just become bigger, more impersonal, more brash, more materialistic. I don’t think it has changed at all. It is a city of immigrants and I have understood it better. There are no affections and I believe there is a sense of suspicion of the stranger. So, whether you live in an apartment building or a neighbourhood, people have not friendly because they have no idea who you are and where you come from. Jaipur on the other hand has also grown a lot but my Jaipur is still the Jaipur of my school friends. I meet people through them so I don’t have a sense of strangeness or non-belonging at all. And even physically I have nothing to do with the Jaipur that goes beyond the older areas of Civil Lines or C-Scheme and Bapu Nagar, Tilak Nagar or the University because all my friends and their friends and their children continue to have a long-term relationship.


    How was your time in MGD? What were you like as a student?
    MGD was most wonderful thing that happened to me. When I was very young, I was not a very healthy child. So, I was constantly in and out of school till the age of 7. My paternal grandmother who was a widow and lived with us. She used to teach me at home. Her name was Jyotirmaye Mukherjee. She was a school teacher in Burma. My grandparents had emigrated to Burma which was a part of undivided India at that time. My grandfather was the headmaster of a boy’s school there. My grandmother was one of the first graduates of the Kolkata University. My grandfather passed away quite young at the age of 45. My grandmother decided to bring up my aunt and my father, who were teenagers at the time, on her own and chose not to come back to the family fold in Kolkata. She taught me what has become the core of my feminism that you don’t have to fight obvious battles or be aggressive. She wore white ‘than’, a crisp white sari as Bengali widows do. Though she was a very good-looking woman, she never wore any make up or jewellery. My grandmother and father migrated from Burma to Delhi after the war and bombing of Rangoon (my aunt had already married and moved away by then). They stayed with some relatives in Delhi. My father who was not married by then worked with Delhi Cloth Mills for a couple of years. He then appeared for the Indian Civil Services Examinations (those days there weren’t any written examinations, only interviews) and was instantly selected since he was a brilliant history student. When he was asked if he was okay with being posted in Rajasthan, he said that it didn’t make any difference to him because he didn’t know India at all as he had grown up in Burma. So, in the year 1950 or so, he along with his two Bengali friends and one Sindhi friend were selected in the first batch of IAS and posted to Rajasthan.
    I was a superbly good student as a result of the foundation provided by my grandmother who taught me all subjects. I was not even fifteen when I graduated from school and was awarded a gold medal. I wasn’t a naughty student at all. I loved all the subjects except the sports period. In fact, the joke was that I would run away from the sports field in the sports period! The head of the school was an English woman named Ms. Luter who had migrated from Burma. She and her secretary Ms. Emma were very fond of my parents. Ms. Emma would occasionally cook Burmese delicacies for my father. They were just very good friends.


    Who was your favourite teacher in school?
    I loved my geography teacher Ms. Meenakshi. She would sit with the globe and show us countries and their photographs. It was then that I developed my love for travel. Fortunately, I married a man who was equally interested in travelling. We have large cupboard which houses souvenir teaspoons from each country that we have visited. There is strict rule in the family that you can only put a souvenir spoon in the cupboard if you have visited the country personally. Now over the years, my son also started collected teaspoons and now the cupboard has 400 teaspoons from different cities which are catalogued extensively. We have travelled to Alaska, most of Europe, Canada, lots of Australia and America, Africa and New Zealand. Except for South America which we have not visited, we have been to every other continent.
    ….To be Continued

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on Thursday 25 April 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.

  • THE KING OF ROMANTIC WRITING

    Durjoy Datta has ruled the world of romantic novels since 2008. All his books have been bestsellers in the teen world. This engineer turned writer is now also writing for movies and serials.


    Judging by the crowds of youngsters following him at the recently concluded Jaipur Literature Festival, if Shah Rukh Khan is the king of romance in movies, Durjoy Datta can be called the king of romance in novels. Since 2008, with his first book ‘Of course I Love You Till I Find Someone Better’ he has been ruling the hearts of millions of teenage readers, especially girls.
    An engineer by education, Durjoy tasted success at the age of 21 while in the final year of his college. Slowly as each of his books started topping the bestseller lists, he decided to turn into a full-time writer with a specialization in romance. On reading his books, one would expect the author to be the traditional chocolate faced hero, however Durjoy Datta is quite different from the common perceptions. He is soft-spoken guy who believes that romance is the only pond he’d like to circle.
    Some excerpts from the tete-e-tat:

    Shailaza Singh in conversation with Durjoy Datta . To watch visit https://youtu.be/h-DJ8jcLJ8Q

    From the time you published your first book in 2008 to today, how have you evolved as a writer?


    I think at that time, I was a teenager and had a different perspective on romance. After my first book was declared a best seller, writing became a means to earn money. But over the years, I have started enjoying writing and the kind of freedom I get with it. Hence, I would like to safeguard my career as a writer.


    Why do you only like writing romance? Why don’t you experiment with other genres like fantasy or mystery etc?


    To be honest, earlier romance used to be the main theme in my novel but now it has become incidental. I have also written mystery novels, but my books are still sold as romance novels since my strong point is romance. I know what the limit to my talent is. For me, it is the easiest to make the characters fall in love with each other. Even in television shows, you can do it for 6-7 seasons. In India, you cannot write fantasy unless it is backed by some mythology. I am just waiting that someone sets a precedent and I will hang on to it and write my own fantasy novel.


    From a college boy to a married man and now a father. How has your writing changed with the changes in your life?
    I think now I cannot write about teenage romances or young romances the way I used to. I am 37 years old. I can only write what I feel strongly about otherwise it will look artificial and put on. When I am writing a book, I look forward to constructing a good story. All of my earlier writing was touch and feel-I just wanted to know what the characters feel like. Now they are more in-depth. In my book, The Boy who Loved which was published in 2017, the story of the boy was set in 1999. So for the story, I had to travel back to 1999 and remember how I was in that time. My latest novel When I Am With You is about a single mother who is also an entrepreneur and is dealing with a new relationship as well.


    So, what kind of a person were you in 1999? How has the world changed from then to now?
    Frankly speaking in 1999, I was just 12 years old. At that age, I was really intimidated by women. In those days, even if you had a crush on someone, you couldn’t talk to them or express your feelings . But today, the society has shifted. Earlier it was all cloaks and daggers but now we can have open conversations about most things. Now people can express themselves. I remember in those days, there were two different worlds of girls and guys where each had their own groups. They had clandestine messages which if discovered by the elders could wreak havoc. Now the barriers have broken down even in the interiors to a large extent.


    As a person who specializes in romance, you must have read a lot of romantic books in your young years?
    Actually, not at all! In my childhood, most of my reading has been dictated by my parents. Book reading was compulsory at bed time and no romance was allowed. I used to read Enid Blyton, John Grisham, Stephen King. After a while, ,my parents tried to introduce me to Salman Rushdie’s work. Initially I didn’t understand what he was talking about but then after a while I could relate to the books. In fact, I did not even know romance as a genre. Most of my introduction to romance has been while writing for television where you can create two extremely likeable characters and then make them fall in love and continue for the next 1200 episodes.
    People say with the social media and Kindle, paper books are not going to be around for long. What are your thoughts?
    I remember hearing about it in 2008. People used to say that with the introduction of tablets and smart phones, books won’t last for long but now it is 2023 and books are still here!
    Are you on social media? Has social media taken over books?
    Earlier I was on social media and when I used to get into my Instagram account, I used to spend hours swiping. I used to think that if I am doing this, my readers would also be doing this. But lately I have started noticing that many people have dumped Instagram and have started reading books. I really got hooked on to the social media when I became a parent. Parenthood is extremely boring- at least for the first few years. So, Instagram helps you to reconnect with your child in a different way. For example, when I see my daughter doing something cute, I record it and post it. When people find it cute and like it, I go back and look at that 15 second clip to see what is cute in it. This way I use my followers as a dopamine fix. But then this used to take over my life because I used to then think about what should be the next video to maintain the same likes. So, I pulled back. Now I am on social media just to sell my books.
    What is the difference between writing for television and writing novels?
    The difference between writing for television and a novel is a lot. Writing a book is a solitary exercise. There isn’t much money unless your book becomes a best seller. But in case of television, the money is huge and the feedback of the writing is almost instantaneous. For example, if I publish a book today, the feedback will come after six months but in case of an episode, the feedback comes the very next day through the TRPS. That allows the writer to change his ploy if the TRPs aren’t good or the audience isn’t enjoying the story.


    So, how much does TRP impact writing for television?
    Actually TRP ratings are the life blood of television. The fact is that on television, a show cannot survive if it does not have high drama. Trends also dictate the show. For example, five years ago, there was this huge trend of getting animals on the show, so everyone followed that. Every show that you see on television starts with a very noble thought. They have a social issue they want to tackle through a story. But eventually every one has put on so much of money, that they try to get as much traction as possible.
    I remember Kuch Rang Pyar Ke Aise Bhi was perhaps one of the only shows in the history of television that went for so long because everyone involved in that show believed in that show. The interesting thing is that though it did not have the usual saas bahu drama or those stories of reincarnation etc and it was a very progressive show, it still did not get good TRPs. Despite that the producers, the writers and the creators kept giving the show time so that people could see its value. And people saw its value. It is one of the highest watched shows on YouTube. A lot of people go back and watch the show. But it did not get the traditional TRPs.
    Do you think this kind of TRP governed shows are impacting our society?
    Of course, there are conversations about this everywhere. For example, on social media a lot of people talk about toxic boyfriends but toxic husbands have been a theme on television for like years. Now its like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don’t want to show such a thing but when you show it, your show works and attracts TRPs. That really impacts me since I am so emotionally invested as a writer. Here book writing is way better because by the time the book comes out and actually makes an impact in a year or two, you are a very different person. Also, once the book is read and the reaction comes, I cannot change the book as per the feedback by the readers.
    Do you doubt yourself at times?
    There are times when I am afflicted with crippling self-doubt because honestly I had not expected that my first book would be published and would become a best seller. You see the difference between the kind of books I read and write is huge. I got published at 21 when I was reading books that were leagues and leagues ahead of my book. Then when people say that they have read and liked my books, I start wondering if they have read the really ‘good’ books.
    Had you not tasted success in such a young age, would you have continued writing?
    I have would have continued writing in some form or the other. Before I started writing books, I had a very successful blog. Lot of my blogger friends advised me to write. Had the book not worked, I would have continued writing and would have found another way of leveraging my writing.

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on February 21st, 2023. You can also check out the video of the interview on https://youtu.be/h-DJ8jcLJ8Q

  • Was Jaipur Literature Festival really a Festival in 2023?

    In response to my article ‘From Jlf to It can be anywhere conference’ a reader argued that this was the best JLF in all these years. The reader’s letter along with my response. Please refer to the previous blog post for the article.

    By Rakshat Hooja

    How is it a festival without celebrities?

    I am actually neither a fan or a friend of the organizers ( though we know each other – and hopefully may become friends ) but this was the best organized festival of its “18+ years” 

    My first point why I would never even consider going back to Diggi Palace Hotel is that the sound was audible in all the venues. In Diggi Palace Hotel, you had to strain to hear even in Durbar Hall. 

    About 270 sessions, no overrunning in any session of note. Authors would get stuck in a venue in Diggi and not be able to reach the next venue for their own session!

    Another counter to S’s article there were atleast 5-6 private sessions per day for the Friends of the Festival ticket holders which were not listed in the general schedule and shared only with the FoF – (the Rs 13000 lady) with private book signing, and there were only 10 -12 people in the session.  No idea where that lady was going to feel she did not get exclusive access to authors.

    There was also an exclusive pool side area available to the FoFs which was such an oasis from the crowded festival venues. But somehow one foreign family and I seemed to be the only one using it. 

    The Jaipur Book Mark also took place year and was open to all Media – the excellent sessions were interactive with audiences of under 30. Really good. The media just used the venue for the all day snacks outside. Never saw a media person at a session! 

    Regarding bathrooms – the bathrooms outside the media lounge always had a line for the ladies while the gents was always empty. The participants seemed equally divided so not really sure what was happening there! 

    I hope Arbit will consider this a letter to the editors and publish it with its grammar and punctuation mistakes as it is typed as a quick immediate reaction.

    By Shailaza Singh

    Where is the spirit of the festival?

    It is understandable that the long-time fans and friends of JLF would not have liked the article ‘From JLF to It can happen anywhere conference’ which was published on January 24
    ,2023.
    However, despite some voices of dissent, I maintain my stand that this year’s JLF wasn’t the JLF that Jaipur has grown used to. From the time of its inception in Diggi Palace Hotel till today JLF has been proclaimed as the ‘greatest literature festival’ in the world. There are different versions of JLF all over the world which are based or inspired by the original JLF.

    Once, while addressing a gathering at Ashok Club in Jaipur, Sanjoy K Roy, the co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival was quizzed on what criteria does he select the venue for the many versions of JLF across the world. At that time, rumours were rife that JLF will be shifted out of its original home in Diggi Palace Hotel. He replied that he was constantly looking out for venues with a lot of heritage value and a feel-good factor. He said that for him it was important that the venue was a place which had its own history and stories that could house and integrate the spirit of the festival.

    While it is understandable that owing to its location or other factors, it may have increasingly become difficult to house the rapidly burgeoning crowds and manage the logistics in Diggi Palace Hotel, however, that should not mean that the festival should be held in a business hotel like Clarks Amer, which hardly has any heritage value attached to it. It is just another hotel with white walls and can hardly match up to the cultural and historical legacy of the festival. What happened to Sanjoy K Roy’s idea of heritage or the feel-good factor that was such an integral part of his plan for JLF? Even if one would argue that Clarks Amer has excellent facilities, I beg to differ. The washrooms had queues, the interviews with the authors were difficult to record since the entire media section was housed in a hall where sections were created by mere plywood walled ‘rooms’ which had no sound proofing and hence if you were conducting an interview with another author in one of the ‘rooms’ amidst a press conference in the main hall, only God can help you with your recording or interview as you strained to hear what the author had to say above all the din. The food that was served was merely ‘sustenance’ as many people described it. Simply including dal, batti, churma or gatte ki sabji does not transform hotel food into authentic cuisine of Rajasthan which is another integral part of the legacy and culture of Jaipur.

    The point is when it comes to Jaipur, there is no dearth of heritage and yet modern hotels or venues that could have been logistically and economically possible venues for a festival of this stature which has been taken to the different parts of the world mostly on the basis of its heritage value and the city and the culture it represents. Funding doesn’t seem to be a problem with JLF with government ads being published in its brochures and numerous sponsors in its kitty.

    The fact of the matter is that one does not hold a music festival in the middle of an industrial area where the sounds of lathe and other machinery will simply kill the music and the atmosphere which a music festival creates. Similarly, a purely business hotel like Clark’s Amer cannot be the venue for a festival which prides itself on being such an ambassador for art and culture for the world. Just like a beautiful painting cannot be put in just any frame, JLF needs a venue which creates the ambience it speaks of.

    As far as the crowds are concerned, people have always wanted to go out and explore different things. Gathering a crowd is not a difficult thing to do. Put a three-legged man or anything different or strange in the middle of the Panch Batti in M.I. Road and you can get a crowd there too. Even flop movies or movies of Govinda or David Dhawan have the ability to attract crowds but that does not mean that they are classics or they should be recorded in history as works of art or representatives of the culture of any place.

    The question is not about the crowds or celebrities or even food; the question is about the spirit of the Jaipur Literature Festival. Where is the JLF which breathed art and culture and created an atmosphere where people could imbibe the centuries old ambience of Jaipur City? Where is the JLF where you felt that you have entered into a parallel world of literature where stories came alive and you could actually not just talk with the creators but also meet them and understand them as living and breathing humans and not just stars?
    JLF 2023 is merely an event where sessions happened, books happened and authors came but the festival did not happen.

    These articles were published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit section on January 26, 2023

  • From ‘Jaipur Literature Festival’ to ‘It can happen anywhere conference’

    Once upon a time, in the land of kings, came an yearly festival that was adored and revered by all. It was about books, stories, authors, food, heritage and much more. But then the great storm of time blew in the land and all that remained were the authors, books and blank white walls.

    ‘Abhi to mandir bana hai aur murat ki stapna hui hai. Pran pratishta abhi baaki hai’. (The temple has been built, the idol has been installed. But the life spirit is yet to come). These were the words spoken by Padmashree Pushpesh Pant, the well known historian and a self- confessed foodie. The venue was the sixteenth edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival at the Clarks Amer Hotel in Jaipur.
    Last year, was the first time that JLF had been forced out of its original home in Diggi Palace Hotel and that too in the heat of March where people sweated profusely while tredding on the hot sands.
    This year, the God of seasons has smiled and the balmy winter sun has embraced people with open arms in the grounds of Hotel Clarks Amer. But has it remained the festival that it once was?

    There was something that happened to you as you entered Diggi Palace for the Literature Festival. The old world charm of the building and its surroundings transported you to an era of Shakespeare or Dickens or even Enid Blyton or the old Jaipur where you could expect some royal person to welcome you or perhaps even imagine the tales of the lore. The walls of that place served as a perfect backdrop to the stories that were being narrated because the Palace itself housed a treasure trove of stories, an integral part of the heritage of Rajasthan. If you were more adventurous, you could probably smell a mystery or intrigue brewing amidst those green grounds or those ornately decorated rooms.. An interview with an author became an intimate affair peppered with stories as you sat listening to their anecdotes in one of the smaller anterooms or a tucked away corner.

    If you were lucky enough, sometimes, as you shuffled through the jostling crowds you could bump into a Javed Akhtar or Gulzar or a Manisha Koirala or any such small or big celebrity. With some of the others, you could hope to say a hi at lunch or dinner. That was the literature festival we had grown to like and love, where anyone regardless of their caste, creed or income could enter freely to listen to the written word. A festival where a common man could meet a celebrity sans the forever present bouncers and body guards and relive, retell and perhaps treasure that one experience of meeting their idol for the rest of their lives.

    I won’t be surprised if the person visiting the literature festival today would probably scoff at this narrative and even end up joking that perhaps I am undergoing a past life regression. Today’s literature fest has donned a new avatar. It has shedded the skin, bones, the blood of the pichla janam and has now become a full blown sheher ka mela albeit with a heart of steel. There is music, there are performances, there is drama but all wrapped in plastic casings. You can see them but you cannot touch them, let alone experience them. Or may be the entire festival is a buffet table set with ungarnished but seemingly good food.

    Despite an entrance fee of 200 INR, the literati crowd has vanished and has now been replaced by selfie clicking fans. They aren’t interested in books or authors. Instead, they are just looking for a good selfie time. While walking around the literature festival venue, I initially almost felt guilty for disrupting these selfie masterpieces which were almost at every nook and corner but then after encountering a dozen or more with a hastily muttered sorry, I stopped apologizing for walking through their selfies and just walked away ignoring their glares.

    On the first day of JLF, a strange incident happened. After lunch, I decided to visit the washroom for obvious reasons. However I found there were almost ten people waiting for their turn in that bathroom. I went to a floor above and discovered more ladies waiting their turn in this bathroom too. Someone advised me to try the next floor but when I went there, the floor was seemingly almost under construction or renovation ( could not ask anyone since there was no one around). Ultimately I reconciled to my fate and went back to the original washroom on the ground floor to wait for my turn. I had never faced this predicament in Diggi Palace for they always had a bevy of mobile bathrooms for those natural urges. Not that I am comparing or complaining. We should all learn to control our natural urges!

    The crowds that thronged Gulzar’s or Sudha Murthy’s sessions were huge. Though it seemed as if her songs were adlibbed, people were still dancing to Usha Uthup’s songs. Many queued to get their books signed by their idols and perhaps that was where the fun was. In some sessions, people were busy scrolling their phones while the speakers droned on. Or perhaps that’s the new way of subconscious listening to enable better understanding.

    I remember a dialogue from the movie ‘Band Baja Barat’. In a scene where Anushka Sharma and Ranveer Singh are trying to find a caterer for their wedding, their friend advises them ‘ Shaadi mein sabse zyada logon ko kya pasand hai? Khana! Woh saari sajawat bhool jayenge par khaana yaad karenge’ (people will forget everything about the wedding but they will remember the food that was served). Though this literature festival isn’t a wedding function per say, it is no less than one either. In the earlier days, one could expect to be introduced to new delicacies of the Rajasthani cuisine which made the literature festival an attraction for the lovers of food too. Today’s reality is quite different. There were those customary versions of sev matar or paneer or bajre ki rab which are perhaps as common place as a chola bhatura but it was no longer a food fest of the yesteryears. It was food, and food is for pure simple consumption, not for experiencing eclectic flavors. Veena, a home maker from Jaipur who visited the festival on Sunday said, ‘The food is so ordinary. Namak bhi kam hai (the salt is also less) We could have had better food in a restaurant. To think, we paid about 13,000 rupees for an entire day’s package. We did not even get to meet any celebrities during lunch. This is really a different festival. We weren’t expecting it !’

    But then, people from Delhi or Punjab or apna Jaipur did not visit the literature festival to eat food or experience that wee bit of Rajasthan. They had come to listen to authors like the Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah or Shashi Tharoor or Deepti Naval or the plethora of other authors who had descended on the city. Most of them including Sudha Murthy, Shobha De professed their love for JLF in no uncertain words. They even said that this venue has more space and is much better than the old home of JLF. Perhaps they were right after all. The books were in the bookshop, the authors were on the dais, it was business as usual, what more could one ask for?

    The culture was dusty and forgotten

    On my way to the different venues of the literature festivals, I saw this little board which said ‘I love culture’. It was lying in a corner, dusty and forgotten.

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on January 24, 2023