dailyO
Art & Culture

Can this be a controversy-free Jaipur Literature Festival?

Advertisement
Jairaj Singh
Jairaj SinghJan 22, 2016 | 20:04

Can this be a controversy-free Jaipur Literature Festival?

It's the morning of the day two of the Jaipur Literature Festival and Margaret Atwood is to go on stage in about ten minutes. Outside the venue, men and women are queuing up to go through separate security checks. Not surprisingly, the women's line is unusually long and the men's is non-existent.

- The only excitement it seems since the day before is that Kajol is set to come. [groan] Avoid the crowd, Saturday is going to be hectic.

Advertisement
margaretatwoodjlf-ne_012216075745.jpg
Margaret Atwood during her session at JLF 2016. 

- Acclaimed Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, 79, is a charmer and a joy to meet and listen to. Her voice is warm and honey. Her wry sense of humour has everyone clapping with joy. "We have such a cool prime minister," she says, at the session. "We can't get used to it. Usually the only cool thing about Canada is the temperature." She goes on to call Justin Trudeau, "cool, hip and sexy". And on her new book, The Heart Goes Last: "Canada's too difficult to set real dystopias in - it's too shrieking nice." She also spoke about working on a graphic novel - just how cool is she? - to promote bird conservation, for this she's created a superhero Angel Catbird.

- Don McCullin, billed as one of history's greatest war photographers, spoke about how in war "anything is possible. You embrace the dead, sleep with the dead... when you come back you're half dead yourself". He also was always conscious about the "moral intrusion" when capturing visceral scenes. He described a photograph he took when walking into a house, where a man had just been killed, and was lying in a pool of "warm blood". "I can still smell that blood," he says. Building a name in photography on deaths is not a comfortable thing, he says. "There's a danger is glamourising in war. I do not do that. Hollywood does."

Advertisement

- Marlon James looked quite beleaguered on the press terrace. He was overheard telling his publisher, "Do I have to stand in the sun to do another f*****g interview?" A journalist couldn't help snigger: "Isn't he from Jamaica?"

margaretatwoodjlf-ne_012216075954.jpg
Day two at JLF 2016.

- Stephen Fry arrived yesterday and tweeted: "India is just about my favourite planet. How could anyone not love it as a place to visit?"

- Gujarati poet Sitanshu Yashaschandra in a session titled "Bhasha: Freeing the Word", says he rejects the fact Indian regional writing being categorised as "Bhasha Sahitya" - the term is not inclusive. You know what that even means? he asks. "It means language of literature. Tell me then, what do world writers write in then... dancing or painting?" He also won applause when he said, "Poetry is like watching a Gujarati woman wearing a pallu up close: you see a little, and leave the rest to be imagined."

- Jerry Pinto in "How Not To Write a Poem" entertained the audience with great reverence, without giving one straight answer. A beautiful quote emerged: "My life is least lonely, sad, horrid when I am writing. Another way of saying, I'm happiest when I write."

Advertisement

- In a conversation with Hebrew writer David Grossman, journalist Jonathan Shainin reminds the author how when they had met earlier, he had mentioned that writing is a lot like when you first have sex, and get addicted to it, and discover new emotions that come with it. "What happened when you stopped writing for a year." "No," he says. "It was not like not having sex for a year. [grins]"

- An elderly Sikh gentleman was spotted on the Front Lawns being dragged by his wife by the elbow for a session. The man suddenly stopped and stomped his feet, and said, "Mujhe Barkha Dutt ko nahi sunna hai."

- In the morning, a news report quoted festival co-director as saying, he hopes there's more coverage on the Jaipur Literature Festival and no controversies. Two days have passed, three is upon us. Can JLF pass without a controversy? The next few days will tell us.

Last updated: January 23, 2016 | 22:01
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy