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Jaipur LitFest 2017: The Good, Bad and the Ugly.
The grandest literary festival of them all" is how Jaipur Literature Festival is perceived, both by national and international communities. It was meant to be a confluence of writers, aspiring writers, critics, pundits, thinkers, journos in fact literratis of all hues; a public celebration of literature! Literature, a domain, which otherwise conjures up pictures of some individual intellectual pursuit, it was an innovative and welcome platform for people who liked to lead their lives in the company of books, to have that one chance to come face to face with the contemporary writers or hear some discussion on a newly released book of an author they had loved for some time, or even participate in the debate or see how a new author was being celebrated or even lynched by an erudite critic. Just the kind of thing that could inspire a budding writer to use his pen a wee bit more or free another one from a dozen year old writer's block. Or simply, motivate people to read more books! At a commercial level, it may even have been designed to promote sale of books. All of them were very laudable objectives, considering the dumbing-down of an increasingly young society, which grew up reading the phantasmagoric Harry Potter, to the exclusion of every other genre; or the further narrowing down of their vision due to the constant presence of a hand held electronic device, which promoted attention spans of 30 seconds or 140 "characters"!
The first few chapters of JLF were full of anticipation. It held the promise of an event that would actually achieve its objectives and become globally recognised as a signature event, celebrating both readership and writing, while promoting a debate on the same. It was in its infancy and the small number of people that did gather at Diggi Palace seemed lost. One was patient enough to give the programme directors the chance to live through a reasonable gestation period before the full potential of the event could be realised. As it did, eventually.
I returned to JLF after a hiatus of many years. While in Delhi during the last 8 years, I heard a lot of my friends and colleagues always planning to be in Jaipur for the LitFest. They would, maybe, spend half a day at Diggi Palace then move on to the city and do the usual touristy stuff. Often times I wondered, how did these guys find the inspiration to attend the LitFest when they hadn't done any serious reading in at least the preceding decade or two of their lives, if not more! But each to their own, so I would shrug my shoulders and in a nonchalant manner give my inputs as required!
Returning to Jaipur last year I looked forward to JLF 2017. When the programme calendar arrived I was impressed with the line up of writers, talk show hosts, interviewers and it all seemed like a good week ahead of me! The topics selected for discussion seemed relevant, had a sense of contemporaneity and promised to run through a great cross section of views and interpretations of literature they were based on. There was an eclectic mix of history, romance, economy, mythology, that omnipresent Bollywood and of course Dalit and colonial commentary, thrown in for good measure. With barely suppressed excitement, I started ticking sessions I thought I would enjoy.
Alas, it was not to be! Events of such nature have to have the right mix of ingredients and getting together so many resource persons is only one part of the process. A key ingredient would be the audience, for it is they who create or destroy the ambience. What constitutes an audience, why should a particular kind of audience be encouraged to attend and another discouraged; a seriousness of purpose must guide those who attend the event. But, what did one see at Diggi Palace? Star struck teenagers, young adults, fading social climbers rooting for a Rishi Kapoor or even for The venerable Sadguru, all in the same style. It was very clear why the majority of the audience was there: to capture that selfie moment, to use that picture with the "purrfect" pout for a status update! "OMG u ver der at JLF?" "LOL did u c d cool dude wid d curly locks? " I could imagine the responses and how many "likes" that selfie was meant to generate. But I meander, for what could I have against this, considering this is the dominant culture and language in urban India. Sigh!
By the way, since these young people are such a critical component of the present social milieu--something has to be written to attract them genuinely. After all what do we expect from literature? To say something about the present paradoxes and anomalies, in whatever form writers find best, either by fantasizing about it or by criticizing it. Maybe this will give a certain direction to this jumpy generation!
To come back, the anticipated excitement remained just that. Three or four times I tried to find a session with great speakers, an intent audience and invigorating discussion! But it didn't exist. The speakers, writers, critics etc were as good as they can get and came with great credentials, but I found the jostling crowd too frivolous and only interested in the glamour quotient of the individual on stage; after his or her own, that is. There were just too many people, too little place to sit and common spaces taken up by the constant coming and going of group-visitors from schools, making manoeuvring between different session areas so difficult. It's good to presume that the kids' presence was an indication of their interest in literature, but Informal conversation with some of them revealed just the contrary: that they were there to have fun, a much needed break from curriculum, had no idea which writers were present, even what they wrote and didn't understand why the schools had insisted on their participation!
With so much space taken up by non serious participants, is it any wonder that the serious ones felt cheated? The level of discourse had to go down, as it did!
Just as an example, on a very mediocre QnA session of East India Company, a star struck young lady was interested in knowing when Shashi Tharoor would make his Bollywood debut and against which heroine would he prefer to be cast! The guy squirmed and blushed, for that was certainly not why he was there, and refused to succumb to a very persistent fan. But, similar questions were seen at other talk shows too. It was almost like the bastardisation of the event! What was happening to the character of the event?
At another level, what with the palace bursting at its seams, it seemed that a disaster was waiting to happen! That it hasn't so far, is no guarantee that it won't in the future! The structures at the palace are relatively old and the thought whether the terraces with evidently weak parapets, can take on such large numbers of crowds, sent shivers down my spine. One little mishap, and the whole place would turn into a graveyard!
So the event, in addition to being in serious danger of losing its character, is also a disaster waiting to happen. A stampede, a roof or a pandal collapse..... anything could go wrong with catastrophic consequences, as the Diggi Palace has limited carrying capacity! The event has become too big to be housed there! It needs to unhinge from this compulsion of sticking to a heritage site and move to a bigger, more open, modern space where people can sit and enjoy five days of their engagement with the world of literature, without bothering about the crowd!
Let this serve as an early warning. Either JLF moves out before anything serious happens or circumstances will force them! Also, a few concerted measures are required to bring the event back on track. For example, keep a special day for school children in organised groups and they can have their fun. On their day, bring in litterateurs, social commentators, thinkers who write and understand the complexities of the emerging generation and convert it into a celebration for the Young Indian! Something useful might emerge from this, after all, for literature does owe a certain responsibility to society. No one is saying you divide the crowds in water-tight silos, just create a day where genuine interest prevails over frivolousness. One more way to attract serious participants, and ensure a significant brand value for the event is to start charging a fee! Not a small fee, but a good amount!! The event should not be allowed to degenerate and loose its sheen at any cost. I love literature too much to see people using this event in a "use and throw" tissue paper sense! Come for the day/s, take a selfie, ask a mundane question, eat a pizza and get out! No it can't be Just a Mela! Love for Literature is a serious thing, it is a life long commitment, and the romance of it has to be maintained. Toms, Dicks and Harrys of the world have to be discouraged from participation! And so what if this sounds snooty! Literature is about intellectualism and masses need to know that everything is not a democratically earned right!
The grandest literary festival of them all" is how Jaipur Literature Festival is perceived, both by national and international communities. It was meant to be a confluence of writers, aspiring writers, critics, pundits, thinkers, journos in fact literratis of all hues; a public celebration of literature! Literature, a domain, which otherwise conjures up pictures of some individual intellectual pursuit, it was an innovative and welcome platform for people who liked to lead their lives in the company of books, to have that one chance to come face to face with the contemporary writers or hear some discussion on a newly released book of an author they had loved for some time, or even participate in the debate or see how a new author was being celebrated or even lynched by an erudite critic. Just the kind of thing that could inspire a budding writer to use his pen a wee bit more or free another one from a dozen year old writer's block. Or simply, motivate people to read more books! At a commercial level, it may even have been designed to promote sale of books. All of them were very laudable objectives, considering the dumbing-down of an increasingly young society, which grew up reading the phantasmagoric Harry Potter, to the exclusion of every other genre; or the further narrowing down of their vision due to the constant presence of a hand held electronic device, which promoted attention spans of 30 seconds or 140 "characters"!
The first few chapters of JLF were full of anticipation. It held the promise of an event that would actually achieve its objectives and become globally recognised as a signature event, celebrating both readership and writing, while promoting a debate on the same. It was in its infancy and the small number of people that did gather at Diggi Palace seemed lost. One was patient enough to give the programme directors the chance to live through a reasonable gestation period before the full potential of the event could be realised. As it did, eventually.
I returned to JLF after a hiatus of many years. While in Delhi during the last 8 years, I heard a lot of my friends and colleagues always planning to be in Jaipur for the LitFest. They would, maybe, spend half a day at Diggi Palace then move on to the city and do the usual touristy stuff. Often times I wondered, how did these guys find the inspiration to attend the LitFest when they hadn't done any serious reading in at least the preceding decade or two of their lives, if not more! But each to their own, so I would shrug my shoulders and in a nonchalant manner give my inputs as required!
Returning to Jaipur last year I looked forward to JLF 2017. When the programme calendar arrived I was impressed with the line up of writers, talk show hosts, interviewers and it all seemed like a good week ahead of me! The topics selected for discussion seemed relevant, had a sense of contemporaneity and promised to run through a great cross section of views and interpretations of literature they were based on. There was an eclectic mix of history, romance, economy, mythology, that omnipresent Bollywood and of course Dalit and colonial commentary, thrown in for good measure. With barely suppressed excitement, I started ticking sessions I thought I would enjoy.
Alas, it was not to be! Events of such nature have to have the right mix of ingredients and getting together so many resource persons is only one part of the process. A key ingredient would be the audience, for it is they who create or destroy the ambience. What constitutes an audience, why should a particular kind of audience be encouraged to attend and another discouraged; a seriousness of purpose must guide those who attend the event. But, what did one see at Diggi Palace? Star struck teenagers, young adults, fading social climbers rooting for a Rishi Kapoor or even for The venerable Sadguru, all in the same style. It was very clear why the majority of the audience was there: to capture that selfie moment, to use that picture with the "purrfect" pout for a status update! "OMG u ver der at JLF?" "LOL did u c d cool dude wid d curly locks? " I could imagine the responses and how many "likes" that selfie was meant to generate. But I meander, for what could I have against this, considering this is the dominant culture and language in urban India. Sigh!
By the way, since these young people are such a critical component of the present social milieu--something has to be written to attract them genuinely. After all what do we expect from literature? To say something about the present paradoxes and anomalies, in whatever form writers find best, either by fantasizing about it or by criticizing it. Maybe this will give a certain direction to this jumpy generation!
To come back, the anticipated excitement remained just that. Three or four times I tried to find a session with great speakers, an intent audience and invigorating discussion! But it didn't exist. The speakers, writers, critics etc were as good as they can get and came with great credentials, but I found the jostling crowd too frivolous and only interested in the glamour quotient of the individual on stage; after his or her own, that is. There were just too many people, too little place to sit and common spaces taken up by the constant coming and going of group-visitors from schools, making manoeuvring between different session areas so difficult. It's good to presume that the kids' presence was an indication of their interest in literature, but Informal conversation with some of them revealed just the contrary: that they were there to have fun, a much needed break from curriculum, had no idea which writers were present, even what they wrote and didn't understand why the schools had insisted on their participation!
With so much space taken up by non serious participants, is it any wonder that the serious ones felt cheated? The level of discourse had to go down, as it did!
Just as an example, on a very mediocre QnA session of East India Company, a star struck young lady was interested in knowing when Shashi Tharoor would make his Bollywood debut and against which heroine would he prefer to be cast! The guy squirmed and blushed, for that was certainly not why he was there, and refused to succumb to a very persistent fan. But, similar questions were seen at other talk shows too. It was almost like the bastardisation of the event! What was happening to the character of the event?
At another level, what with the palace bursting at its seams, it seemed that a disaster was waiting to happen! That it hasn't so far, is no guarantee that it won't in the future! The structures at the palace are relatively old and the thought whether the terraces with evidently weak parapets, can take on such large numbers of crowds, sent shivers down my spine. One little mishap, and the whole place would turn into a graveyard!
So the event, in addition to being in serious danger of losing its character, is also a disaster waiting to happen. A stampede, a roof or a pandal collapse..... anything could go wrong with catastrophic consequences, as the Diggi Palace has limited carrying capacity! The event has become too big to be housed there! It needs to unhinge from this compulsion of sticking to a heritage site and move to a bigger, more open, modern space where people can sit and enjoy five days of their engagement with the world of literature, without bothering about the crowd!
Let this serve as an early warning. Either JLF moves out before anything serious happens or circumstances will force them! Also, a few concerted measures are required to bring the event back on track. For example, keep a special day for school children in organised groups and they can have their fun. On their day, bring in litterateurs, social commentators, thinkers who write and understand the complexities of the emerging generation and convert it into a celebration for the Young Indian! Something useful might emerge from this, after all, for literature does owe a certain responsibility to society. No one is saying you divide the crowds in water-tight silos, just create a day where genuine interest prevails over frivolousness. One more way to attract serious participants, and ensure a significant brand value for the event is to start charging a fee! Not a small fee, but a good amount!! The event should not be allowed to degenerate and loose its sheen at any cost. I love literature too much to see people using this event in a "use and throw" tissue paper sense! Come for the day/s, take a selfie, ask a mundane question, eat a pizza and get out! No it can't be Just a Mela! Love for Literature is a serious thing, it is a life long commitment, and the romance of it has to be maintained. Toms, Dicks and Harrys of the world have to be discouraged from participation! And so what if this sounds snooty! Literature is about intellectualism and masses need to know that everything is not a democratically earned right!
