Jaipur Literature Festival

January 24 - 28 was the Jaipur Literature Festival. I wasn't sure exactly what a literature festival entailed: it turned out to be a series of lectures and interviews by a range of authors and it also turned out to be really fun. The entire house went on Thursday to see the featured speaker, the Dalai Lama. He spoke to the crowds about inner peace, inner strength, and inner self-confidence. He talked about his most recent book, Beyond Religion, where he presents the thesis that all of humankind is bound to one another through moral obligation, whether or not one follows a specific religion. He was incredibly enjoyable to listen to, and he had the BEST laugh.

 After the Dalai Lama I saw Shashi Tharoor, an Indian politician who used to be Undersecretary at the UN and now works in the Indian Foreign Ministry. He spoke about Indian foreign policy issues, and the hour session focused almost entirely on Pakistan, with China getting a few minutes and the United States getting a 2-minute shout out at the end. It was interesting to hear his perspective and opinions, although I wished I knew more about Indian history and the India-Pakistan conflict in general in order to appreciate it fully.

On Friday, I went for the morning session and saw Andrew Solomon, author of a new book called Far From the Tree. Coincidentally, I read a review of his book a few weeks before I left for India, and I was curious to hear him speak. The book focuses on children who have "horizontal identity", as opposed to vertical identity, from their parents. This means children are radically different from their parents in some way: deaf children born to hearing parents, autistic children, severely disabled children, etc. Mr. Solomon's session was interesting but rather shallow, in my opinion. His underlying thesis is that parents and children and still able to love each other despite this incongruity in identity, but I wish he had spoken a bit more about the challenges instead of just the feel-good takeaway. He has a chapter in his book about parents of children who commit crimes, which I think would be incredibly thought provoking  but he didn't mention it at all.

Monday was my favorite day at the festival. (I didn't go over the weekend because I was in Agra.) The first session I saw was a contemporary Indian author, Jeet Thayil, in conversation with a classic Indian author Balchandra Nemade, discussing writing as a form of rebellion. Mr. Thayil was so compelling I immediately went and bought his book, Narcopolis, which won the DSC Literature prize (the prize awarded at the festival) and he signed it for me. He was incredibly friendly, and he used to live in New York, so we bonded over that.

Balchandra Nemade and Jeet Thayil

The next session I wanted to see was about women's voices, but the entire panel was in Hindi so instead my friend Rani and I went to go get some chai. We were sitting by the front lawns where we had seen the Dalai Lama speak, and were casually listening to the speaker there at the time. His name was Vikas Swarup, a name I was not familiar with, but it turns out he is the man who wrote the book on which the movie Slumdog Millionaire is based! (His book is called Q & A.) He was a wonderful speaker, and during his segment, his newest book was unveiled. Called The Accidental Apprentice, the book sounds quite good and is going next on my list.

Vikas Swarup 

After that accidental lecture, Rani and I found seats for the final session called Imagine: Resistance, Protest, Assertion.  It was a panel of notable Indian women (and one Pakistani woman) reading excerpts of their choice, some of their own writing and some of the writing of others. The readings included parts of The Handmaid's Tale, Punjabi poems by Nirupama Dutt, The Purple Sea by Ambai and a few others. The session ended with a spoken word piece by Maya Rao (http://mayakrishnarao.blogspot.in/), written in response to the December 16th gang rape in Delhi. It was ten minutes long and the audience was riveted the entire time. At the end, the moderator just said "There is nothing left to say." and that was exactly right.

From Left to Right: Namita Gokhale, Aminatta Forna, Nirupama Dutt, Maya Rao, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Ambai