Last February, as the literature festival season was nearing its end, I promised myself that there would be no more lit fests disrupting my winter hibernation. Over a decade spent loitering like a discarded junk food wrapper at every literary event imaginable, lit-festing myself to near-death, I’d put on 10kg thanks to greasy and humongous buffets, and lost many brain cells to various other causes. Hence my unilateral decision never to set foot at a lit fest again.
Come October, and I’d already said ‘yes’ to the Kerala Literature Festival — the one that took place last week — because it happened to be on a beach in Kozhikode. Its stellar cast of co-speakers included the likes of Arundhati Roy and Ramachandra Guha, both famously reluctant about speaking at lit fests.
I will be avoiding the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), which, in my humble opinion, is suffering from severe elephantiasis. Last year, the Diggi Palace, where JLF is held, was swarming with selfie-clickers snapping themselves with their backs to the stage, while serious writers such as Michael Ondaatje had to do with an audience of a handful of people. To me, that seemed like a portent — signalling the end of the glorious era of Indian literature festivals.
It had been good while it lasted.
Despite those missing brain cells, I can recall some mesmerising talks from over the years: Upamanyu Chatterjee in discussion with Jeet Thayil at a festival in Kolkata, talking about the launch of English, August in Bombay some 25 years earlier at a bookshop event that apparently nobody attended except for Thayil. I also recall a freewheeling session at JLF featuring Jay McInerney and Martin Amis, looking back at the 1980s when they were basically the two coolest writers on the planet, and discussing whether the novel would ever die — as is so often claimed. I was floored at a Goan litfest by Shehan Karunatilaka speaking so eloquently about his novel on Sri Lankan cricket that I had to get myself a signed copy even though I don’t care much for sport.
But all good things must come to an end.
Over the years, I’ve started to notice that, by and large, the same people speak at all the festivals and say the same things, including myself. The organisers typically ask me to sit on panels that are more or less identical with the pundit sessions I’ve done for a decade now. Furthermore, lit fests are increasingly about politics rather than literature. I used to go to listen to enlightening literary conversations — authors talking about writing or critics speaking on the noble art of reading. Nowadays, literary discussions are giving way to debates about the shrinking freedom of speech, the political situation here or there or anywhere.
Then there’s the hopelessness of the logistics. At one festival, the organisers had mistakenly ordered a box of books on management by Jack Welch — and was surprised that my name was Zac, not Jack. From their point of view, the wrong author had turned up for the signing.
At the recent festival in Kerala, it was full-tilt chaos — I learnt about my programme timing, accommodation and the actual location of the festival only after arriving in town, but it eventually turned out to be a lovely experience thanks to the breezy beach and a general sense that the audience was listening attentively to the speakers, and taking notes rather than selfies. I accept that it is impossible to organise a lit fest without minor issues cropping up, and I salute those who toil hard to put together these cultural extravaganzas.
As I now enter my vanaprastha ashrama , I am thinking of how both the writer and book-lover were, historically, always hermits living separately, hardly ever crossing paths. And, yet, we were able to conduct love affairs through the pages of books. Somebody wrote them with passion, somebody else read them, loving the experience. This revelation came to me rather unexpectedly.
A few days ago, at the classic Bengaluru restaurant Koshy’s, where I usually sit at one of the tables by the window, I met a person who had travelled 200km by bus from Tiruvannamalai to see me. She’d been reading my books for years but confided, as she ordered her coffee, that she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to meet the author — and she had hesitated for a long time before deciding to come to Bengaluru. But then her need to get her copies of my books signed prevailed.
To me, that hour during which she told me about her encounters with the characters that she related to, the scenes that could never be erased from her mind, was worth more than what I have experienced in the autograph booths of all the lit fests I have been to.
So that’s it then, don’t expect to meet me at many literary dos in the next 10 years. But if you must, try the table by the window at Koshy’s.
Zac O’Yeah is a part-time travel writer and part-time detective novelist