The weekend wasn’t looking special devoid of any plans whatsoever, so I
let my beauty sleep run its course and then some more ,finally stumbling
out of the bed half past nine on Saturday morning. Groggily leafing
through the day’s newspaper as I do most days till the sleepy stupor
leaves me, I caught sight of the write-up on Kovalam Literary Festival
.The 5th annual edition was happening on Oct 6th and 7th and was being
held at The Kanakakunnu Palace , a grand old palace originally belonging
to the Travancore royalty and now under the Kerala government ,used
mostly for exhibitions, seminars and such like these days that stood in
the leafy heart of the Trivandrum city .
The stupor gave way to sudden imaginary bulbs glowing above my head as I read the following –
“The two-day event starts at 10 a.m. with human rights activist Binayak Sen delivering the K.C.John Memorial Lecture. ”
“10 a.m.” stood out in bold as I glanced at the clock that said 9:35 and
between the time I looked back and forth at the write-up and the clock a
couple more times, an exciting train of thoughts had warmed up and was
stirring up a racket within my brain , debating between the heavenly
pleasures of lazing around on an off-day morn and dashing off to listen
to the man I’ve been reading about for a while now. To my surprise , the
second option won and with “Binayak Sen” ringing in my mind , I rushed
through the morning rituals and was out of the house in no time . Time -
9:55 a.m
“Were the literary people and general intelligentsia sticklers for
punctuality? Or were they like politicians who were always late? Since
they were always criticising politicians, chances weighed more heavily
towards the former.” Thoughts ran amok at 10:15 a.m. while I waited in
an auto rickshaw stalled at a traffic light, my own two wheeler being so
old and badly out of shape that taking it out was high risk for self
and other wayfarers. At the entrance to the palace grounds , the huge
gates stood open and my rickshaw winded up its curvy path passing
overheard banners that announced the 5th Annual Kovalam Literary
Festival ,a bolt of excitement shooting through me – the first event of
the sort I was attending! “Will there be real authors ? That’s what the
write-up promised “,I thought rubbing my hands in glee.
A TV camera crew sped past in an SUV ,more lined the way and a few
people with microphones and coiled wires in their hands stood scattered .
As I got out of the auto , I saw important-looking people alighting a
white mini-van and talking pleasantly among themselves , none very
Indian looking .Hiding any traces of nervousness, I walked to the Multi
Purpose Auditorium ,familiar from many college fests ,hoping the all
important lecture wouldn’t be over by then. It hadn’t and neither had
the proceedings for the day begun at 10.30 a.m. as people milled around
patiently, the gathering dominated by news people and I wandered over to
the book sellers arranged beside the venue. Tables of neatly stacked
books stood gleaming as sunlight bounced of shiny book covers from the
huge open windows behind them, manned by polite people wearing official
tags. The collection was not huge but had all the titles that had come
out recently, was popular and being talked about – in short they were
just the thing for a bibliophile with a wish list.
The titles from the ‘Recent’ section of my wishlist jumped out at me and
in no time I had quite a stack in my hands .Reminding myself of
Flipkart and the handsome discounts they offered , I let go of some of
them from my stack and was left with two books I couldn’t bear parting
with – the Kerala Literary Academy Award winning Benyamin’s
‘Aadujeevitham’, freshly translated into English under the name ‘Goat
Days’ though I bought the Malayalam version and ‘Around India in 80
Trains ‘ by Monisha Rajesh – a brilliant first book by the author who
toured India on its rail tracks and brings us a delicious desi
travelogue. A beautiful small hardbound pink book titled ‘Rumi’ caught
my eye and I was trying hard to suppress my smile reading the beautiful
first poem in it when I overheard bits of a conversation from right
behind me . A petite small white woman in a frock said in heavy accent
,” I quite love this book’s cover. Isn’t this your new one? And what
about this here ? “. A white man in a black kurta with silver hair
replied cheerfully ,”No ,not that .But this is mine ,and this is mine
and this is mine .. “, pointing to stacks of books of different titles
,the third time pointing to the stack from where I had picked up “Rumi”.
I looked at the book cover again . Rumi ? Hardly . The full title of
the book read “Rumi:A New Translation” and the author was Farrukh Dhondy
!
Presently , there was a tap at the microphone and an announcement that
things were about to get started . I moved into the audience section and
took up seat where I could get a good view of the stage ,while the
auditorium filled up quickly with TV cameras with zoom lens on high
tripods ,big microphones, news people with scribble pads, young people
who looked like students of literature or journalism ,and stereotypical
images of literary people – women in cotton saris with oversized bindis
or wearing salwar kameez ,sporting Diana cut and men in long kurtas -
fleshy ,gleaming people with sharp eyes and beak nose. I wondered how
them who talked about non-conformity and swore by originality, had the
same dress sense ,wore chunky jewellery and heavy kohl ,and sported
cloth hand bags . Perhaps , lit fests were to authors what red carpet
premieres were to actors and they were merely propping themselves up for
the viewing pleasure of readers and journalists .
I shifted focus back to the stage as the guests came on the dais for the first event –
Fifth Annual K.C.John Memorial lecture by Dr.Binayak Sen. ‘Are the poor
getting poorer’ .In discussion with Ilina Sen and Vrinda Grover .
Dr.Binayak Sen,the human rights activist who worked in the naxal
affected areas of Chattisgarh , spoke softly and declared the topic
redundant as it was a foregone conclusion and that the real situation in
India was that of famine settling in slowly but steadily over the years
.He quoted statistics on India’s alarming levels of malnutrition both
among children and in the adult population. He also talked about the
need for food security and the plight of facing food shortage on the one
hand while food rotted away in govt storehouses on the other.He spoke
without passion but in an even tone,with supporting facts, like a man of
science .He concluded his speech by welcoming the many Israeli writers
attending the fest ,but reminded them that the people of Palestine
deserved justice.
Ilina Sen ,his wife and an academic who currently heads the Department
of Women’s Studies at the Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University
(MGAHV) , spoke next and took the discussion one step further from food
security to food sovereignty . She spoke of how the system of producing
food in one part , storing somewhere else and then transporting it and
delivering it to people in entirely different parts of the country was
inefficient and bound to fail . Food sovereignty will enable communities
and local populations to meet their food needs themselves and was the
way to answering the disturbing shortage of food faced by large parts of
the country .She also talked about the abundance of local farming
knowledge that indigenous people had which was getting ignored by the
authorities in their scramble to promote high yielding seed varieties
which demanded high fertilizers and how these traditions needed support
and nurturing .
As that informative and socially conscious session came to an end , I
hardly had the mind to leave though I was overstaying my own time limits
and the next event was announced -
The Evolving Indian Novel : Farrukh Dhondy , Timeri Murari ,
N.S.Madhavan,Nilanjana Roy , C.P.Surendran .Anchored by Suresh Menon .
There was no delay and the speakers promptly came on stage . After a
brief introduction by the anchor , the writers were invited to read from
their books to the audience and it started with Nilanjana Roy .The name
was familiar to me through the good reviews she had garnered for her
first book in The Hindu’s Literary Magazine –‘Wildings’ , a tale on the
cats of Nizamuddin in Delhi. A pretty lady with a prettier voice, she
read out rather sweetly from her book and the short passage about a
cat’s thoughts and description of the settings was interesting. Next to
read was Timeri Murari , the author of the much acclaimed ‘The Taliban
Cricket Club’ .He preferred to read standing up , adjusting thick
glasses and read slowly in heavy British accent like a professor to his
students . The protagonist was a girl who had played cricket in India a
long time ago and was living in Afghanistan now under the strict Taliban
regime- Rukhsana ,the journalist .The Taliban had just announced their
decision to promote cricket in Afghanistan and men were going to be
screened for it .If they were selected , they woud be sent to Pakistan
for proper training and then would have to return to the country to
teach cricket at home and also play cricket for Afghanistan’s national
team. Women , of course , will not play . The passage ended with
Rukshana’s brother Jahan saying that this was their one chance to get
out of the country , his cousin mourning ,”But we don’t play” , to which
he replies , “We don’t , but she does”. He went back to his chair amid
loud applause and I made a mental note to try and get hold of this book.
Next to speak was C.P.Surendran , a dark bespectacled man who reeked of
arrogance . He checked with the audience if he could be heard properly
and complained that he hadn’t been able to hear any of the previous
readings . He announced he was known for causing offence to other
people, the passage he was going to read might offend and to just “put
up with it”. In his mind, he must be the high priest of the unsung art
of offensiveness,I thought . I did not catch the title of the book but
the passage was of a drunk woman getting raped in a local train by a
drunk man . The very act tottered between consensual and forced as the
woman was drunk and even when she protested, her protests were not
strong enough for the man to need to apply any extra effort on his part .
The passage went into a detailed description of the organs involved,
the sequence of unfurling of events ,the sounds and sensations , and
brought to life a very graphic depiction of the scene. He must have
expected the audience to shift uncomfortably in their seats at the
brazenness, but as I looked around, people hardly batted their eye lids,
leave alone look ashamed . Defeated , he retreated .
Farrukh Dhondy took up stage next but was unarmed with any of his books ,
so he expounded on ‘Evolution of Indian Novel‘ and opined that too much
was getting written and published because of the mad race among
publishers and novel in India was becoming something akin to Bollywood.
N.S.Madhavan continued insightfully about the same subject and said that
the medium of novels was dying a slow but natural death .He compared
the novels at the beginning of their evolution to the current ones ,
saying the early ones which included Russian literary novels where
treasure houses of the authors’ original thoughts and how this was
replaced by mere conversation and no grand thoughts in today’s novels.
He also made another interesting comparison between writing in regional
languages and Indian writing in English – In the entire Malayalam
section of the Trivandrum Central Library , there would be hardly two
coconut trees but in Roy’s ‘God of Small Things’ ,there would be ten
coconut trees every twelve pages – he observed. By far, N.S.Madhavan had
been the most riveting speaker and garnered the loudest applause from
the audience .
While the readings were underway , I had noticed a skinny dark girl
wearing a delegate tag .She looked familiar but there was no way to find
out who she was. I checked my copy of ‘Around India in 80 Trains‘ for
the author’s picture to confirm my suspicion , but the book did not have
one .The proceedings on stage had pulled my attention back and I left
it at that .Promptly after N.S.Madhavan’s talk , I gathered my stuff and
hurried out ,having over stayed by an hour and a half and headed home
.’Aadujeevitham‘ being prised out of my possession by a very relentless
dad , I settled down with the second new buy of the day and boy , was I
absorbed ! Monisha Rajesh had written a sparkling, witty travelogue
riding the Indian railways, good naturedly pointing out India’s
idiosyncrasies with delicate understanding . On Sunday night I casually
googled the book , by now addicted to it , and the results threw up the
familiar face of the dark girl again ,whose firsthand account was more
like a girl friend’s narration of her travel tales to me now. Whether to
throw up my hands in desperation over the missed opportunity of getting
a much-loved book signed by its much-loved author ,or smile contently
at getting the opportunity of at least spotting an author for the first
time ever in my life – I still do not know !
PS: Monish Rajesh , your first book is an absolute blast . It’s a must-read , people !
