The day started slow for a change — the hysteria of an audience desperate to catch a glimpse of celebrity authors before they were whisked away by publicists and assistants seemed to have died down.
The day started slow for a change — the hysteria of an audience desperate to catch a glimpse of celebrity authors before they were whisked away by publicists and assistants seemed to have died down.
‘The smoking zone’
Crowds were left clearly disappointed when Mita Kapur’s new book, The F-Word, turned out to be about food. “I wrote this book in order to persuade my children to eat green vegetables,” she said happily, adding insult to injury. “You know what I love the most about this festival?” said a visiting teenager, puffing on a cigarette. “It’s not a no-smoking zone. My parents would never come here.”
The increasingly elusive authors had the media going into a collective panic attack. A reporter from a Canadian magazine attracted attention as she declared to a festival organiser that she was from “an international publication” and would “not be treated this way.” The organiser muttered as the journalist swept away, “From an international publication indeed! I’ll make her dance all day for her press pass now.”
The ultimate crime story
Is it possible that a country may have just too much crime for crime writing to succeed as a genre? If there’s no diligent man of the law (like Chief Inspector Japp or Hercule Poirot) in India, and with the police force’s morality being shaky at the best of times, won’t the concept of procedural policing and the careful hunting down of minute clues be too foreign to Indian culture?
Henning Mankell, the creator of Kurt Wallander, the diabetic, stodgy, slightly depressive Swedish detective, says that he can understand why an ‘Indian’ crime novel may not attract a lot of readers. “Just today, on my way to this interview, I saw a motorcyclist bump into a car. He got off, pulled the driver out of the car, and started beating him up. The most shocking thing about the entire incident was that no one helped him!”
Close on the heels of the Millenium Trilogy, Steig Larsson’s massively successful crime novels, there has blossomed a host of new Swedish crime authors, including Mankell.
Mankell believes that the definition of crime writing as something that began with Edgar Allen Poe 200 years ago has to be redefined. “Macbeth is the ultimate crime story. As are many Indian religious texts…it can’t be denied that there is an aspect of criminal activity to them as well.”
But Mankell is optimistic about the future of the Indian crime novel. “Maybe, if you think up a policeman or a detective who goes against the Indian norm, it could be interesting.”
Meet the Tween trackers
Apart from the usual ‘literary’ sorts and (in sharp contrast) the mascara’ed-to-the nines glam brigade, the Jaipur Lit Fest has thrown up another ‘type’ of Fest attendee… the Tween tracker!
Young 12-13 year olds, Fest catalogue in hand were overheard chortling about which authors they wanted to meet/see and which they had already encountered. “Arundhati Roy, is she here?” was one breathless query, whilst another, flipping the book and pointing to a picture, “I’ve met her.” We’re familiar with the rock band groupie thing and yes, the celebrity tracker too… but it seems the Fest has gifted itself a new tracker, underage, admiring authors, not stars… that can’t be so bad, now can it?!
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