Another season of litfests

What explains the enduring appeal of literature festivals? As we enter another winter, once again there is a litfest planned for every weekend somewhere in India -- a familiar line-up of sessions, speeches and, if you somehow manage to get in, parties. The litfest revolution that was sparked by the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) — now in its second decade — shows few signs of slowing.

In Jaipur’s early years, it was easy to see why people cared. It was an opportunity to meet and hear your favourite authors from all over the world: A charming little bubble in which readers rubbed shoulders with writers, and fans could have casual conversations with people they had been reading for years. Given the JLF’s size and the massive crowds that descend on the Diggi Palace venue during those five days in January, some of that charm has dissipated. And yet it is, of course, more popular than ever, as those very crowds attest. 

The multiple other litfests across India, in both metropolitan cities and smaller towns, don’t all have Jaipur’s problem of plenty. But, even so, there is something worth exploring in their growing popularity. When they first started off, I was of the opinion that they reflected a hunger for information and for connection with the world in small-town India. Yet surely that cannot still be true — even if there was a sense of unconnectedness then, the explosive growth of broadband internet in the past years should surely have satisfied a great deal of that need. And yet small town festivals continue to be an attraction. Is part of that the fact that they serve a social need? That they create a place for book lovers, people who want to be book lovers, and people who want other people to think they are book lovers to come together? Perhaps. That might explain why the social gatherings, whether informal ones over the snack stalls or somewhat more planned ones in the evening, are so important to the Indian litfest experience. Once, at a festival in a small Indian city, I was startled to learn that there was actually another rival festival planned for that very weekend across town. The funniest part was that the rival organising committees had devoted some considerable time and energy to poaching each others’ guests for the evening parties.

It isn’t as if litfests are necessarily all about books, either. You can find very crowded festivals where the bookshop tent is the least frequented part of the venue. But nor can one easily imagine a festival with sessions and panels and speeches that doesn’t have the peg of “literature” on which to hang its purpose. Books make it a festival; without them, you would just have a strangely disconnected conference with lots of academics and journalists speaking to a puzzled audience of college students. 

And even so, not all the most popular panels at many litfests are specifically about books. Some feature celebrities, of course -- an actor who has “written” an autobiography, a cricketer discussing something written by a sports journalist. And yet others are current-affairs panels in all but name: Nominally focused on some recent book, but actually a group of a few people discussing the news and the nation’s trajectory in a generally free-wheeling manner. Often, depending upon the composition and conduct of these panels, they turn out to be the biggest crowd-pleasers. 

Which is, one suspects, one of the main reasons for litfests’ continued growth. Even if we no longer hunger for information or connection as much as once we did, we do still feel the need for discussion. 

But hold on, you say, there’s no shortage of discussion and debate in today’s India. There are multiple noisy prime-time television news shows; there are arguments on WhatsApp; there is Twitter. Why would anyone need anything more? 

Perhaps what we need is not something more, but something else. Something strange happens when issues are discussed in a litfest and not, say, in a television studio. Perhaps the fact that the discussion is nominally pegged to a concept as vague and as timeless as “literature” takes some of the topical heat out of the most tense of subjects. People tend to insult each other less; arguments are calmer, and more carefully laid out; moderators are less likely to go for the self-satisfied speech or the easy applause line. 

It is possible, therefore, that through the death of discussion on television has been born a demand for discussion in person. Even if the panel on stage is talking about the same issues that may have incensed the panel on your screen the previous evening, you’re willing to invest time in this panel just in case it provides a less exhausting, more informative, and more uplifting experience than what television gave you. Litfests may not be about books; but they are still, perhaps, about a hunger for ideas.