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A festival is born

From 7,000 visitors in 2008 to the four lakh expected this year, the Zee-Jaipur Literature Festival has grown from small beginnings to being a mega carnival of ideas that has put the city on the global literary map. Gargi Gupta talks to Sanjoy Roy, one of the main organisers, about the incredible journey and how it all started

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Zee Jaipur Literature Festival is where the who’s who of the literary world descend. Writer Vikram Seth was among those who made his way to Diggi Palace during the festival’s second edition in 2009
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Less than a week to go before the 2017 Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) and the Teamwork Arts’ office in south Delhi is abuzz with energy and the amiable banter of 50 or so people, many of whom have worked together since the festival’s inception in 2008. After all, it’s a logistical feat to put together this ‘Kumbh Mela’ of literary festivals, now in its tenth edition. There’s the issue of arrangements to manage the swelling crowds in a space that’s proving, with each passing year, too small to take in the numbers (3.5 lakh last year); the scores of award-winning authors, poets, playwrights, academics, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, actors, chefs, musicians, etc invited; and the intense scrutiny of the media, lying ever in wait for unguarded comments that can be blown up as ‘breaking news’. The imponderables are many and potentially disastrous.  

But Sanjoy K. Roy, JLF producer, founder-MD of Teamwork Arts and the man at the centre of all of the activity, looks unflappable as always. “It was an accident of circumstances that threw us all together,” he says as he looks back at the 10-year journey and recalls the events that led to the inception of JLF.

Since 2002, Roy’s company had been mounting one section of the Jaipur city festival started by the Jaipur Virasat Foundation (JVF). In 2006, the festival expanded to include a literature segment and JVF founder Faith Singh (who, along with husband John, pioneered the revival of Rajasthani textiles and handicrafts; they were also the founders of Anokhi) invited William Dalrymple, Namita Gokhale and Pramod Kumar KG among others, to curate it. Diggi Palace was the venue of this segment.

By 2007, however, the Jaipur city festival was floundering for lack of funds and John Singh asked Roy to step in. Roy suggested a separate festival. “That’s how Namita, William and I started JLF.”

That first year, it almost didn’t happen. “It was in November 2007 that I got a call saying will you do it. When is it, I asked, and they said January. You guys are nuts, I said,” recalls Roy. But it was even later, on December 3, at a dinner at the British High Commissioner’s residence, where Roy was present along with Faith Singh, Dalrymple and Pramod Kumar, that the decision was taken to go ahead. “Namita called Surina (Narula, wife of HS Narula of the DSC Group, which was the Festival’s title sponsor in its initial years) who said of course we’ll help and gave Rs20-25 lakh. We raised the rest and did the festival. I remember standing outside Durbar Hall at 9.30 in the morning on the first day, and wondering if anybody would land up,” says Roy, laughing.

He needn’t have worried. That first year, the festival received 7,000 visitors and the numbers have grown exponentially since. Last year, 3.5 lakh visitors walked in through the gates of Diggi Palace in the five days of Zee-JLF, and indications are that the number will be closer to 4 lakh this year.

Storms galore

It has not always been smooth sailing, especially with the many controversies that have dogged the festival. The alleged denial of permission to Salman Rushdie to attend the festival in 2012 (Rushdie had come to the first edition in 2007), and the furore in 2013 following sociologist Ashis Nandy’s comments on corruption and caste — over which Roy nearly found himself arrested — are two of the most incendiary. This year, the controversy mills have already been at work over the inclusion of two Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) members — Manmohan Vaidya and Dattatreya Hosabale — as speakers.

In his defence, Roy points to Tarun Vijay, RSS ideologue, and Murli Manohar Joshi, minister in the earlier NDA government, being on the Zee-JLF podium in the past. In fact, Roy recalls, Vijay had been booed by the Jaipur audience when he said something against the constitution during his speech. “Leila Seth was in the audience and refuted him. Anupam Kher then got up and supported Seth,” he smiles.

“Internally, we had a huge debate on it (whether to invite the RSS),” admits Roy. “But the festival is not reflective of our points of view, it’s much larger than us individuals. Our point is, people must be able to make up their own mind.”

If in recent years the Festival has seemed happily free of controversy, it’s the result of a carefully devised strategy to direct media attention away and to the Festival’s substance — books, ideas and authors. But if controversy has ceased to be a headache, then others have taken its place. Demonetisation, for instance, has caused the Festival to lose many of its long-time sponsors. “In December, we lost Google, Ford and Dove, because of the ongoing impact of demonetisation,” says Roy.

It’s Diggi again

The squeeze in sponsorship has meant that the organisers have had to push back one much-needed initiative to the next year — the shifting of some Zee-JLF sessions to a nearby, larger venue at the Maharani College.

Anyone who’s been to Diggi Palace during Zee-JLF in the past few years will agree that the crowds are becoming impossible, and overshadow somewhat the pleasures of hearing the sessions. Surely, given this, and the petition filed last year in the courts seeking a government stay on Diggi as the Festival venue (it was dismissed), has Roy considered shifting Zee-JLF out of Diggi?

“There’s a constant debate about moving to a different venue,” he admits. “This year we even went looking at the Jaipur Convention Centre. It had loos, hotels, lots of parking, access — but no character. We could be anywhere in the world.”

And the fun

Putting together a festival the size of Zee-JLF is not without its excitement. For instance, Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa and her husband lost their visas to a storm. “Abulhawa had sent their passports for visas and the Indian embassy couriered it back. The Fedex delivery man left it on the porch, there was a storm and the passport blew away,” says Roy, laughing. Or the other time when an author sent off his passport in a used envelope without scratching out the address on it, and the passport and visa got delivered to a jeweller instead!

It can also be a learning experience. Roy, for instance, hadn’t known that the Dalai Lama’s favoured way of greeting people was to rub noses with them. And so every time the Dalai Lama, one of the star speakers at the 2013 edition of the festival, approached Roy, he’d move his face away. “I thought he wanted to kiss my cheek. It was hysterical.”

And a lot of fun too, such as when Roy got a call asking whether he’d like to invite Oprah Winfrey to the Festival. “Would I care....,” Roy says sotto voce, “Of course we would. So we sent off an email saying we’d love to. Basic negotiations are done and then an email comes in asking, will you provide her with an interpreter? I sent back an email saying we have more English speakers than in America. The next email comes asking, will you provide her a chair?... Then came a third email, how will you pick her up? So I wrote back, saying elephant or camel. The email comes back: would she need to train?”

Needless to say, Oprah was floored by the way her session went in Jaipur, and at the response of the crowd. As surely will Paul Beatty, Richard Flanagan, Sir David Hare, and all the other star speakers who’ll take the stage starting Thursday.

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