A Rainy Day in Jaipur

Turban Covered by Shower Cap

Waheeda Rehman (in Center)

Our Palace at Night

Patio Open to Sky

Peanut Masala

Butter Chicken Jerra Rice

John is doing much better. He is deep in planning his travel itinerary home. He will probably leave Mumbai on Monday for SF. If you want to send an email to John, his email is: johnNsf@gmail.com.

When we awoke it was raining here in the Rajasthan desert. We kept checking the Internet to see if they were cancelling the day’s activities. The greatest Literary event in Asia decided: the show must go on. We grabbed our umbrellas and headed out to shop. We live by the motto “I was always regret the things I didn’t buy”. There was a vest Cathy had tried on a few days earlier and she wanted to return to the store to buy it. The first hour choice of sessions at the literary festival didn’t appeal to us, so while the rain was at its worse we skipped that first hour and went back to the store to get the vest. It was then on to the literary festival.

The venues had to be changed because some of the tents had flat roofs and were unsafe. It was a mad scramble to figure out where and when panels would be held. We managed to secure seats in the tent that had the speakers we wished to hear.

The first panel was with Ashwin Sanghi, he wrote a detective novel, Private India, both Cathy and I had read it. It was written in conjunction with James Patterson. It actually isn’t in our opinion, very good, I can’t recommend it. He is however a very funny speaker. He speaks with a lot of aphorisms. My favorite being: Politics comes from two Greek words: “Poly” meaning many and “ticks” meaning blood suckers. It was a light and fun session, more entertaining than elucidating.

The next session we wanted to hear was in the same tent, so we kept our dry seats for a session entitled: “Pakistan on the Brink”. What a session it was! The panelists were fabulous: Anatol Lieven a professor specializing in Pakistan, Khurshid Kasuri the former Pakistan foreign minister, Ahmed Rashid, author of 5 highly acclaimed books on Pakistan and G. Parthasarthy, the former Indian diplomat and High Commissioner for Pakistan. The moderator was excellent. I can’t possibly do justice to the discussion, but there was a general feeling that: The US leaving Iraq and Afghanistan is a good thing; it will force those countries to sort things out on their own. The Taliban must be accommodated to some extent into the political process. The bombing of the school that killed 150 students, many of them children of the military families, has united the non-Taliban parts of Pakistan to take on the militant parts of the Taliban. India and Pakistan have fought 3 wars. Currently they are not talking. The majority of the panel thought they should be, a minority stated you can’t talk while bullets are flying (as they are now in Kashmir and along the Pakistan – Indian border). Remember these are two nuclear-armed countries – the issues must be solved. It was a great stimulating panel.

The next panel that interested us was to be held in the same venue. But unfortunately for us, an interview with an author we never heard of preceded the panel. We decided, however, to remain in our seats, for we knew if we gave them up, we would never find seats for the following session. What a wise decision it turned out to be! One of the joys of the Jaipur Literary Festival is to serendipitously stumble onto an author who you would never have experienced and to have a new world open up.

Alberto Manguel is an Argentinean born intellectual and literary icon. He comes from a literary family. He collects books and lives in Southern France with a private library of over 40,000 books. As a child he was selected to be a reader to the blind writer and poet: Jorge Luis Borges. What a fantastic experience reading to and listening to the great Borges. His latest book is: A History of Reading. He is a marvelous, humorous raconteur.

He starts with the proposition that an author writes what he can, a reader reads what he wants. He humorously stated that: he does not like to lend books from his library, he feels it encourages theft. He discussed that transition of media from clay tablets, to written scrolls, to books and e-readers. Although Amazon is a sponsor of the Literary Festival he encouraged people to buy from independent books stores. It was a great session. I will buy his book.

The next session was with Waheeda Rehman, a much loved Bollywood icon who, although in her 70's is still radiant. The audience went wild with appreciation. She worked with many of the greatest directors of Indian Cinema and told stories about her career. We have only seen a few of her movies, but the audience knew them all. As she entered the tent they played to great audience cheering one of the famous songs from her movies. Quite a grand entrance.

The rain was subsiding, but we were getting cold and tired and we decided to go back to the Raj Palace for lunch then return later to the Festival for the final panel that interested us.

This turned out to be a crackerjack event. We loved it. This year a Hindi movie, Haider captivated us – we saw it twice. It is an adaption of Shakespeare’s  Hamlet set in 1980 in war torn Kashmir. Commonly thought of as the most beautiful part of all India, the state has been torn asunder  by Kashmiri independence movements and disputes between the Pakistani and India armies. The director Vishal Bhardwaj and the writer Basharat Peer have taken the main elements of Hamlet and tried to do justice to both Shakespeare and Kashmir. Tim Supple is theater director who specializes in Shakespeare and stages his plays all over the world. He emphatically does not believe in adaptation of Shakespeare. He believes it can be reinterpreted but must be true to its original words. The final panelist was Jerry Brotton a professor from London specializing in Shakespeare. The discussion was extremely lively. The session was a joy. See the movie Haider the and decide for your self.

The sky had cleared the rain had ceased and we returned to our hotel for drinks and dinner.