Desi lit fests, at last count, were inching towards 100. Considering that India is made up of 29 states and seven UTs, are our current litterateurs speaking more than they are writing?
A nouveau genre of its own, literature festivals come at us as purist intellectual assemblies of austere means or gaily packed OTT extravaganzas with Band Baaja Baraat. Either type looks down upon the other, while surreptitiously eyeing the sponsor list. They all say the same: ‘Ours is different.’
Closer to date fests feverishly start name-dropping. Some think up cash awards to dig out reclusive authors, some hand all a trousseau worth of goodies. Participating authors will mail up a storm, asking their bios and pics be replaced with this, no that.
Festivals have a few staple names repeated year after year, the ladki-wallahs and the ladka-wallahs organisers cannot say no to. Newbie writers, festival virgins, attend every session wide-eyed while foreign types, imported to justify festival’s ‘international’ tag, fight jet lag.
Nowhere is the hierarchy of writers more apparent than at lit fests, when lesser known writers will force their books on Big Names, books left behind in the authors’ lounge or Big Name’s hotel room. At least one author will lose temper because his/her books are not in the bookshop.
Actors are mobbed at lit fests though the compliment is not returned when writers stray into film festivals. Bhasha writers may think fests jalebi; pretzel all lit fests, says translator.
Volunteers frantically hunt for authors supposed to be on stage an hour ago. Some authors get sozzled even as they dismiss the wine as plonk and throw up in pretty washrooms. Sometimes participants have to attend each other’s sessions as there’s nobody else. Some drink on stage and tee-hee their way through sessions. Some will take a car, never to be seen again.
Writers tend to opt out if name of panel/panellists are not up to the mark, their mark, fearing it is the company they keep and not the books they write or the words they say that best describe them. A writer will ask to go solo, then whine when no one turns up.
As for the audience, they are happiest when they get to ask questions at the end of each session, and can slowly tell us the story of their life till someone hits them on the head. Only those on stage are allowed to ramble.
The history of lit fests probably dates back to our great oral tradition of storytelling, but the future suspects controversial quotes cooked up for festival TRPs.
And just when all began to go quiet on the festival front comes this new right-left thing. Festivals are taking the right turn? Sponsoring and programming to be divided along ambidextrous lines; right hand should know what left hand is doing.
At a recent festival somewhere in the South the stages were named ‘Right Wing’ and ‘Left Wing’, but these stages were to the right and left, respectively—and most boringly.
Writer is festival director, Bangalore Literature Festival, and can be easily accused of all of the above.
shinie antony
@shinieantony