Festival Day 1

Naseeruddin Shah (on the right)

Elephant walking down Jaipur Street

Our new Suite at the Raj Palace

Where are the other dinners?

Tandoori Chicken, Vegetable Biriyani, Dal

John is doing better. The hospital doctors feel they can release him this weekend. He has been advised that it would be best for him to return home to the States rather than try to join us. He is a wizard of trying to figure out best fares and is keeping himself busy trying to figure out the best business class fare from Bombay to SF. He needs to fly with lie flat seats. Interestingly, Haparin, the blood thinner injection, given to people at risk for Deep Vein Thrombosis, only lasts for 12 hours (not sufficient for a 24 hour or so flight home). Apparently there is a pill form that you can take, which he will be given. This brings up the question: why does anyone get a shot if they can take a pill? Maybe we will find out the answer. If you want to send an email to John, his email is: johnNsf@gmail.com.

The Jaipur Literary Festival kicked off today, with drums and horns, singing and speeches. Finally after all the opening ceremonies ended the actual panels began. Each hour there are 5 different panels going on simultaneously. You pick the one you are interested and go find a seat. If you get bored or it turns out the entire discussion is in Hindi or Urdu, you get up and join another panel mid-session. Over the next 5 days they expect over 250,000 people to attend! Being that it is a literary festival, it really doesn’t lend itself to pictures. Diggi Palace has spacious grounds. Huge tents are erected providing different venues. A few of the events are held in conference rooms that open to the lawns. The entire venue is under security with lots of police standing around looking quite bored. Most of the venues have large screen video monitors so you can see the speakers all the way from the back. The sound system is excellent. There are many sponsors of this event, one of the big ones in Amazon. They are pushing Kindles and have an actual bookstore onsite.

3 poets split up the convocation this year. One spoke for 20 minutes or so all in Hindi. The other two spoke in English. Gist of the two that I listened to: Poetry is essential and gets to human truths. Vijay Seshadari, of Indian origin who immigrated to the US as a child, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2014. The previous night we talked to him at the party at the Rambaug Palace. He said he had to go back to his hotel to write what ever he was going to say at the convocation. Boy must he be a fast and good writer. I could listen to him for hours. As he spoke about the poetic imagination, I realized his speech was like poetry. He wasn’t reading a poem as such, but rather explaining the poet; yet his cadence, thoughtful word choice and delivery were mesmerizing.

The next session we attended was an author Scott Anderson discussing his book: Lawrence in Arabia. A wonderful moderator asked excellent questions of Scott. This allowed the author to explore the implications of his own writing. By happenstance, Cathy and I had both read this exceptional book last year. We highly recommend it. In World War 1, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany against England, France and America. Ottoman rule of the Middle East was very decentralized, preventing conflicts between the various tribes, religious sects and communities that inhabited the region.   When the Arabs rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, Lawrence was working as a British military intelligence officer based in Cairo. Viewing the Arab rebellion as a tool to weaken the Empire, the British supported Lawrence when he promised the Arabs control of their own lands if they joined the British to defeat their common enemy. Secretly, however, Britain and France had decided to divide the lands among themselves carving out the states where there had never been states: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. When Lawrence, who identified with the Arab cause, learned of this  plan,he divulged it to the Arabs, essentially committing treason against Great Britain. Following the end of the war, Lawrence tried to uphold his promise to the Arabs, but he was marginalized at the Paris peace conference.  The Arab Spring is essentially a repudiation of these artificial boundaries set be the British and France. We both enjoyed the session.

The next session that we attended continued the examination of the Middle East. It was entitled: The First Crusade. We have not read the book, but we were very intrigued by the Oxford Don author: Peter Frankopan a scholar of Byzantium. The story of Pope Urban II's call in 1095 to retake the holy sites of Christianity set off the Crusades; at least this is the common perception. In his book Frankopan argues that the real reason for the Crusades had much more to do with the schism of the church at the time between the Eastern and Western branches and the plight of the great walled city of Antioch. Ultimately, of course, the crusades failed, leaving Christianity as the  only major religion not in control of its Holy Sites. This book is a potential future read for us.

We next experienced a very sad event. We walked in near the end of  session devoted to Nobel Prize Laureate VS Napaul’s book: “A House for Mr. Bizwas”. At the end of the session they announced to the delighted audience that VS Napaul who was in attendance would address the assembly. He is wheelchair bound and was wheeled to the stage to great applause. He attempted to speak and was only able to utter a few words. We don’t know if he was overwhelmed by emotion or physically incapable of speech, but it was a sad spectacle as the organizer’s of the event brought it to a hasty conclusion. He is supposed to be interviewed for a session later in the week. I don’t see how it can happen.

After lunch, we attended a session where Naseeruddin Shah was interviewed about his new memoir: And Then One Day. Naseeruddin is a distinguished Indian actor  who performs in films, plays and also directs and teaches. The audience was delighted as he recounted his journey as an aspiring actor who lacked matinee idol looks and a Muslim trying to break into the Hindu dominated film industry to becoming a recognized and respected actor. It was a fun session.

Cathy and I attended different sessions to end our day. She attended a session about Rajasthan singing storytellers. I attended a session with Paul Theroux, who has written over 50 books in his career. He writes both books about his travels and fiction. He was interviewed about the process of writing in two different forms. It was a glorious session. He has a marvelous sense of humor and fantastic tales to tell. He has that very rare gift of both being an excellent writer and extemporaneous speaker.

Exhausted and happy, we returned to The Raj Palace for dinner, drinks and bed. I had a problem with wifi in our room, so they moved us to an upgraded suite with better connectivity. Tomorrow is a another day at the Jaipur Literary Festival.