Zee-JLF: A medley of literature, art, music and cuisine

The Zee-Jaipur Literary Festival begins next Thursday, January 25, 2018, on the eve India’s 69th Republic Day, at the Diggi Palace. Lady Evans, better known as Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the Daily Beast, reportedly called it the “Greatest literary show on earth.” She’s probably right. Founded in 2006, the festival now in its 11th edition, is certainly a memorable extravaganza, a feast of literature, ideas, music, food, and friendship. I’m certainly looking forward to it, fortunate to be invited yet again. My events include an interesting panel discussion on “Samskara: The Intangibles” as well as a poetry reading.

I’ve always found JLF stimulating, exciting, absorbing — and yes — exhausting! There’s so much good stuff happening and going around that it’s difficult to decide where to go, what to listen to, even whom to meet. What often happens, instead, is that you just go with the flow, surrendering yourself to the energy, rather than trying to stay in control.

Frankly, I’m rather proud that the JLF is held in India, which I believe to be the world’s great if not greatest literary and artistic territory, what with our multifaceted creativity in more than 20 languages in which we must not forget to mention English, our “aunty tongue.” And what about all our living arts, ranging from the classical to the folk to the contemporary? In a sense, it is impossible to represent, let alone encapsulate, India’s diverse and never-ending creativity. But JLF tries to accomplish the impossible in the space of less than a week. It does so, moreover, with a fabulous medley of the videsi and desi, whether in literature, arts, music, or cuisine.

The success of JLF is largely due to its curators, Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple, themselves internationally reputed writers and art-lovers. In addition, Teamwork Arts, the event and arts management company, headed by Sujoy Roy, must also be credited for ensuring that the festival is run smoothly and efficiently. Teamwork, since its modest beginning a few years back, now produces nearly two-dozen festivals across the world in over twenty cities in a dozen countries including Cairo, Cape Town, Chicago, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, London, Francisco, Seattle, and Singapore. A friend who glanced at their balance sheet told me that the company reported a turnover of over 45 crores.

The owners of the Diggi Palace, the venue of the festival, Thakur Ram Pratap Singh and Jyotika Kumari-ji, also take a personal interest in welcoming guests and seeing to their comfort. They belong to the Khangarot clan of Rajputs of the Diggi thikana, near Jaipur. They also manage a heritage hotel on the premises, where some of the delegates are put up and authors have a lounge to relax in and meet up with fellow-writers or publishers. Given the growing number that flock to this free festival, the Diggi Palace is sometimes so packed that it is difficult to walk from one venue to the other. I must confess that I sometimes worry about what might happen if there is some sort of mishap, a fire or a stampede, for instance. God forbid! I am sure, however, that the organisers have thought of all possible scenarios and have safety precautions and evacuation plans in place.

One of the greatest achievements of the JLF is that it has made books, arts, and ideas central to our lives again. Youth not only from Jaipur but from nearby cities congregate to the festival. It’s one gigantic party. We may not be sure how many of those who come flocking to JLF are serious readers. But that hardly seems to matter. The book as an accessory is as important as the book as the source of knowledge or object of veneration. The JLF, moreover, has always tried to encourage works in translation as well as those from relatively less powerful or affluent language-communities, not to mention greater gender parity among the invitees and delegates. All these factors, along with the personal touch of the major organisers, makes JLF so special. In recent years, with Zee as the major sponsor and media partner, the JLF is as well promoted and showcased as it possibly may be.

As my contribution to the run-up to the festival, I want to highlight one book that I have been reading in recent weeks. It is Prasenjit K Basu’s Asia Reborn (Aleph, 2017). This is a rather fat book, as thick as a brick, serious non-fiction. I found it not just highly readable, but gripping in places. Apart from its length and scope, what also makes is somewhat special is that it is a book of continental history with a unique thesis. I hope to talk at greater length about this book, but let this snippet serve as a trailer as well as my own toast to JLF 2018.

The author is a poet and professor at JNU. Views expressed are personal.