The Internet Personified: JLF Diary
That's the Jaipur Literature Festival where I was all of last week
Hey there,
If you had been at JLF, we’d probably have missed each other. The crowds were heaving—-heaving—every year I go, I’m surprised, like people still want to come to this? The folks who flock to Diggi Palace (the venue, which I have literally never seen outside of the literature festival) can be divided into two categories: the Gawkers, and the Session Attenders. Sometimes these two overlap: a gawker can want to attend a session, and a session attender can want to take a selfie at one of the marked “selfie points.” Apart from the Selfie Points (which featured large cardboard cutouts with a backdrop of something generically Rajasthani—a Hawa Mahal type structure or like, desert dunes or something) a popular choice for backdrop was just by a little roundabout on the drive up to the main palace building. Paper flags fluttered attractively in the air—I feel like I’m not allowed to write a JLF diary without mentioning the bunting—and young people stood around in the pleasant January sun, arms around each other, grinning. #zeejaipurliteraturefestival2020 #friendslikefamily zipped out of their phones and into the internet.
This, of course, created a bit of a bottleneck because the prettiest bit is also by the front gates, where people are pouring in, and also an intersection from where you can go in four different directions, so after smiling indulgently at them for two days, I got tired of the people taking pictures and took great pleasure in walking right in front of their cameras a couple of times.
The crowds are now stretching all the way back to the main road, and all of that section of Jaipur is bottlenecked and diverted and traffic jammed for those five days, which I guess led to the talk everyone was having about how this was the last year of the literature festival at Diggi Palace. The palace just isn’t built for that kind of traffic, the road leading up to it is too narrow, the location is too central to not inconvenience everyone travelling around it. It’s sad for someone like me (who doesn’t live in Jaipur, who doesn’t need to commute around there in January) because Diggi Palace is charming, and has grown over the years, to feel like a familiar loving place. This is my fifth or sixth time attending the festival (second time as a speaker, twice as a journalist, twice as general public), and apart from a few small changes, everything is exactly the same. I can lead the way, like I’m back at my old neighbourhood, just a couple of lefts and rights and there we are. Maybe the organisers will manage to magic something for next year so Diggi Palace can remain, but rumour has it that the whole thing will move somewhere else now.
***
Anyway, obviously another elephant in the room is on the subject of sponsorship. Look, Zee is pretty terrible, as a news channel. They keep stoking rumours and fuelling right wing hate. And the Jaipur Literature Festival is pretty great: thoughtful sessions, great speakers, excellent infrastructure. How do you keep both those things in your head when you’re thinking about the ethics of the thing? Do you say, “Okay, the sponsors are awful, but I also went and spoke at the Times Lit Fest, which is not much better, and I use Amazon pretty frequently, and at this point, I am grateful to be able to see so many writers I’d never heard of as well as (YES, VERY SELF-SERVINGLY) be able to talk about my own books with so many people who had never heard of me before?”
Maybe it would help if I thought of the festival as a sort of Robin Hood, taking money from the very rich, to give to the rest of us, a week of cultural experience for free that we wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else. There were some right wing sessions, but they were balanced out well by the left wing ones. Makarand Paranjape was being odious but then people like Ravish Kumar (finished his book in one day yesterday and it is SO INSPIRING) and Rana Ayyub talked to crowds that were SWOONING with approval. You know? I don’t think right wingers need any more space to talk to be honest, but if you must “represent both sides” etc then it’s good to have a panel where there are one or two voices of reason.
People brought up Shaheen Bagh and the CAA protests and the current administration all the time, across panels. (I too launched on a whole thing re: mythology and Hindutva and how Hindutva cannot claim all the stories because they belong to everyone who lives in this country etc.) But then some anti CAA protestors were removed from the venue according to a video I saw posted on Twitter. But then I heard that was because there were pro CAA protestors coming as well so there would’ve been a clash at any rate which might’ve been hard to control in such heaving crowds. So, there are things you agree with and things you don’t. Mostly, I like what they do, and that includes years that I’m not invited as a speaker also so this is not entirely a selfish thing. It’s nice that the event of January is a literature festival. It’s nice that it’s free. It’s nice that it’s accessible to so many different people (including wheelchair access and assistance.) (Also they’ve uploaded a lot of the sessions online, so if you’re feeling FOMO, you can catch up.)
And the sad fact of the matter is, the good guys don’t have enough money to splash out for all of that.
***
Networking is a weird word, huh? It sounds so much grimmer than it is, which is essentially, just going up to new people and saying hello. I tried to do this this time, I wanted to meet more people, both for “networking purposes” but also for just generally meeting more people. It’s hard to be a writer because some of your job involves you staying in your head a lot and ignoring the outside world and yet, there’s some of your job that involves hustling so you can pay your bills, so you can get back to staying in your head and ignoring the outside world. When you start calling it “networking” then you’re already not having fun, so I decided on the word “schmooze” which is not only great fun to say, but is also a nice sound to make when you’re standing in the middle of the author’s lounge area, clutching your coffee, looking around to see whose conversation you can sidle into. schmoooooooooooooze.
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I also went to: two publisher parties (Harper Collins and Penguin), one literary agent party (Mita Kapur of Siyahi throws a grand bash every year at her home), two parties at the Taj Rambagh (the opening and closing night dinners), one debrief drinks session at Bar Palladio (pretty, but terrible food) and one “quiet” evening in where all my friends pooled their whiskey resources and hung out in a hotel room gossiping. The grandest party was the Penguin one, in a very fancy palace called the Sujan Rajmahal and like literally THOUSANDS of candles carpetting the lawns and good wine and excellent lamb chops. The funny (ha ha not weird) thing was how fancy the setting was and how scruffy most of the guests. Writers and editors are generally awkward introverted people, not used to being grand, especially when it’s cold outside.
Okay, there’s my news! Back to our regular programming.
I reviewed Keshava Guha’s book Accidental Magic for Open, and eh, did not love it.
the link list!
Loved this essay on Instagram. (I mean, an essay ABOUT Instagram not an essay actually posted ON Instagram.)
Also loved this first person narrative about a journalist who went to Iran to just write a normal story, and found himself detained there for several weeks.
A great takedown (and a terrific argument against) the book American Dirt.
Please watch Faye D’Souza (who I met briefly at the festival!) do an excellent thing at the Spoken Word festival recently.
Have a great week!
xx
m
Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you?Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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