Novelist Anita Nair was a speaker at the first edition of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival in 2008 and has seen it grow, with mixed feelings, from ‘elegant yacth’ to ‘magificent ocean liner’
Do you get to spend time with readers?
Hmm...
Do you sell a lot of books?
Hmm...
Do u meet other writers?
Yes.
Can’t you just email? Why go all the way?
I stared at my hairdresser. He did have a point. Why do writers go to lit fests? Actually, why do writers from all over the world wait for an invitation to the Daddy and Mummy of all lit fests — the Jaipur Lit Fest? There is only one reason: it is one of the best run festivals with a splashy mix of the intellectual and commercial, the grim and the gorgeous and the list of delegates reads like a who’s who. If you are on the JLF list, then you must be seriously someone being the sub-text.
In the first few years, it was the sort of lit fest where the Diggi Palace owners hung out with you and had long conversations about this and that. The writers were fewer and the spectacle not so spectacular. There were words and music and casual meetings with a great or two. I even made a friend or two. But as the festival grew and its fame made it de rigeur for authors to want to be there, the elegant yacht turned into a magnificent ocean liner.
Nothing wrong with ocean liners if you are the cruise going sort and want everything ship shape. Not if you are the true seafaring sort though and get a rush from smelling the salt of the sea and feeling the spray on the face.
But it would be naive to expect time to stand still. And if there is a part of me that wishes that the festival had stayed small and intimate, there is another part that rejoices that JLF is part of the school beat now. Schools from across India now think it is important to take their senior students there. This is the same part of me that finds it both humbling and surprising to discover an ardent reader who has planned this trip as though it were a pilgrimage so he can merely breathe in literature enhanced air and meet a favourite writer.
Perhaps this is the real reason why writers keep returning to JLF. (I have been there four times in 10 years). Seeking a validation of what, on good days, seems a blessing and, on bad days, a curse, and on all days inexplicable. That thing that makes us dissect an emotion or experience rather than feel or live it. If it makes writers feel fettered, then here you feel less alone in your aloneness. Each one is chained to their talent and we are all galley slaves, even the literary superstars. And there is no dearth of them at Jaipur. In fact, in recent times, JLF is the Madame Tussaud of Lit Fests. Everyone is a celebrity and the rest caricatures.
The academic and the academic-turned-writer, the literary critic and the literary editor, the big publisher and the indie small press, the celeb and the recluse writers, the critics’ darling and the booksellers’ pin up, the agent on the prowl and the beady-eyed wannabe somebody, the groupie and the bibliophile....sometimes as I sit with my khullar of tea pressed to my cheek or while skulking in the authors lounge, it occurs to me that if you sit in one place long enough at JLF, the entire world will walk past you.
So if one spots the eager networker, the overdressed socialite and the hipster who is there because, how can you be a serious networker, socialite or hipster if you are not at JLF with your iPhone 7, Ferragamo bag and man bun, then I try not to be too annoyed at them crowding the place. Who knows they might actually buy a book and read a page or two?
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 "Anita Nair")
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