JAIPUR: The early session on the third morning of the Jaipur Lit FFest saw authors Priyanka Mattoo and Peter Godwin in an insightful conversation with Sayari Debnath on “Memoirs of Family, Loss and Exile”. It was about their different registers of loss and the process of memorialising them as they elaborated on their books and their writing processes.
Author and filmmaker Mattoo spoke about her book “Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones”, a narrative of her search for home, from Kashmir to Los Angeles and the places in between. Mattoo spoke movingly about how she and her family could never return to her beloved Kashmir – as it no longer existed.
In a largely similar vein, celebrated war journalist and author Peter Godwin shared nuggets from his book, “Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars”, which documents his life-story set between New York, London and Zimbabwe. Peter revealed that he has spent his life missing his Zimbabwean childhood, a longing that never diminished all through his life. He stressed that his book was a quest to understand the life of émigrés, exiles and refugees, and the multiple losses that make life both amazing and unbearable.
Other sessions dealt with nature, recipes, war, politics and history. One was by four debut authors and new-age vulnerabilities. “Quartet: Four New Voices’, presented by New Indian Express brought them on stage--Anisha Lalvani, Rupleena Bose, Nayantara Violet Alva and Atharva Pandit in conversation with Amrita Tripathi.
They discussed their challenges as first time authors, and how they manage to find their unique voice with contemporary topics ranging from the stories of women, love, betrayal, hyper modernist living, and murky world of crime.
Lalvani told TMS about her debut book, “Girls Who Stray” (Bloomsbury 2024), a crime-novel based on a true story, emblematic of inequality and delayed justice. Pandit’s book “Hurda” (Bloomsbury, 2023) is also a true crime novel based on a real incident of 2013 in a small village in Maharashtra, a murder mystery. Bose touched on a serious and critical theme -- of assault and harassment. In her debut book “Summer of Then” (Penguin 2024) she explores the inner lives of women through sexual, romantic, and platonic relationships.
Violet Alva found catharsis in writing drama-romance “Liberal Hearts” (Penguin, 2024), a coming of age story of two youngsters. “The themes deal with privilege, and class conflicts,” said the writer.