Jaipur Literature Festival (Day three)

21st January to 25th January was the week of literature at Jaipur.

The city was overflowed by the who's who of the literature world irrespective of the language.

But due to my personal commitments I had to miss on the first two days of the festival. The days which were pretty much marked by the presence of Javed Akhtar, Gulzar and Prasoon Joshi.

I will here present my experience at the festival from Day 3 to Day 5.

Day 3: 23rd January 2011

10a.m. -11a.m. - Boys will be Boys - Ruskin Bond

I reached Diggi Palace sharp at 10a.m. to start my adventure of 3 days into the universe of books.

The first session I chose to attend was of Ruskin Bond.

He read a rare 'adult' passage from his book, Boys will be Boys. He had listeners in splits by reading about a young boy being seduced by an older lady.

Later he shared his experience of living in Mussoorie in the company of nature. He then asked the audience if they would be interested to hear his encounter with tiger at his home in Mussoorie; to which audience vehemently nodded. He then left audience agape by narrating the experience with fine details. Giving few seconds to the intrigued listeners to breathe, he laughed out saying, "I just cooked up the story! If I had actually seen a tiger, I would surely have died of fright. I am a great liar!"

That was him.... :-)

11a.m. - 12p.m. - AfPAk - Jayant Prasad, Rory Stewart, Ahmed Rashid, William Dalrymple, Jon Lee Anderson and Atiq Rahimi, in conversation with Barkha Dutt.

Next was this session which had a promise of quite an intellectual debate and so it was.

This discussion was recently aired on NDTV. The whole video is available on the NDTV website here.

12:00p.m. - 1:00p.m. - India: A Portrait - Patrick French

I had not read the book. But given the previous books by Patrick French this session became automatically a preferred choice to attend. And it did not disappoint me. After listening to author from the book and about the book, it has made it to my must read list.

The author described the book to be a till-date biography of India.

2:30-3:30p.m. - Chandrakanta - Prasoon Joshi in conversation with Deepa Agarwal

After lunch I reached the venue of this discussion 20 minutes earlier for the greed of a seat.

Now to many of my age the topic of this session must be bringing the childhood memory of the TV serial. Well yes it was about the same Chadrakanta story, but the TV adaptation of the famous novel Chandrakanta by Devaki Nandan Khatri formed the least of the discussion.

This famous book has been translated to English by Deepa Agarwal to which the introduction has been written by Prasoon Joshi.

Prasoon Joshi, at the event, shared how Chandrakanta (the original novel) impacted him when he read it as child.

Also they discussed in length about the story of Chandrakanta and how it has not been succeeded in genre of fantasy writing by Hindi and/or Indian writer.

Throughout the conversation, Chandrakanta was compared with Harry Potter series. Both of the them urged the young generation (especially those who are smitten by Harry Potter mania) to read the English translation and be proud of the rich literature heritage in India.

3:30p.m. - 4:30p.m. The Return of Philosophy - A.C. Grayling

The opening line of the British philosopher was - 'Seeing the number of people that have turned up for the session; I don't think I need to speak any more about the Return of Philosophy'.

Yes, huge number of people had turned up for the session and like hundreds other I too was standing to hear the philosopher speak. :)

5:00p.m. - 6:00p.m. - Kashmir Kashmir - Basharat Peer, Nitasha Kaul, M.J. Akbar, Mirza Waheed, Rahul Pandita and Swapan Dasgupta

A high-emotion charged debate involving people who have lived in Kashmir through the tough times and few who still have their family based in Kashmir.

Watch it here.

6p.m.-7p,m, Tinderbox - M. J. Akbar in conversation with Mani Shankar Aiyar

The best was saved for the last. M. J. Akbar was interviewed (grilling interview) by Mani Shankar Aiyar about his latest book Tinderbox - Past, Present and Future of Pakistan.

It was very intriguing to see them in conversation. Mani Shankar had done his homework pretty well on the book to stump the author about his own writing. But Mr. Akbar showed real character in standing by his view and earned a lot of applause from the listeners.

One of the incident that he shared of his personal life still stalls in my mind. When they were discussing the partition and post-partition time, he told us that after partition his father leaving everything that he had in Kolkata, went to Dhaka as a refugee. But after a while he returned back to India. When his father came back, Mr. Akbar was very unhappy about his decision and asked him in anger, "Why did you come back?". To which answered his father, "There were too many Muslims there." Immediately there was a laugh among the listeners; which Mr. Akbar promptly stopped by saying, "No, No do not laugh. He was not joking. He was serious. He was habitual of living in a secular society."

And thus ended my first day at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2011.