Indian flavour aplenty at Sydney fest

SYDNEY: The just concluded Ninth Sydney Writers’ Festival had a marked absence of Indian authors in as many years. However, there was Indian flavour aplenty.

Australian writer Christopher Kremmer’s Inhaling the Mahatma, published by Harper Collins, was launched to a packed audience, enjoying the delights of Indian savouries and Bollywood dance at Walsh Bay, overlooking the famous Sydney Harbour.

Reading from his book, the former South Asia correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, created a sprawling portrait of India at the crossroads and took the audience on his intensely personal journey as his fate is entwined with a cosmopolitan Hindu family of Old Delhi.

There was much talk in the audience about the maddening, but always fascinating country that India is. Inhaling the Mahatma also made it to the bestsellers list at Gleebooks frantic on-site bookshops.

The 2006 festival attracted 70 international guests from across 20 countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, East Timor, Germany, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, and for the first time Russia.

As Artistic director and CEO of Sydney Writers’ Festival Caro Llewellyn said, “We do not bring writers from every country every year. That is not how we work. This year we welcomed Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal and Hari Kunzru from the UK, who made terrific contributions to the Festival.”

UK-based Hari Kunzru, who won several awards for his first novel, The Impressionist, and has since published his second novel, Transmission, and Noise, a short story collection; and Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal, whose first novel, Tourism, is an unflinching and politically incorrect take on modern Britain; both authors write very much about the experience of being from one culture (Indian) and living in another (British).

“We are looking forward to welcoming more Indian writers to future Festivals,” Llewellyn added. In the past, the festival has had Manil Suri, Pankaj Mishra, Tariq Ali, Ramachandra Guha, Hanif Kureshi, Simon Singh, Anirudha Bahal and many more.

Despite the rain and cold, an estimated 65,000 people, at least 10,000 more than last year, made their way to the week-long gathering of 300-odd authors speaking on issues ranging from politics to comedy, culture to climate at as many events stretched to Sydney suburbs and the Blue Mountains.

Indeed, Indian English writers have put their stamp on the literary map of the world. As one bookseller told this correspondent that when her customers ask her for a good book and she offers her favourite books, they say, “Not another Indian writer,” but the good news is that do read them and find them fascinating.