Jaipur Lite: Scenes from a Carnival

SPEAKING VOLUMES

and the fireworks display that make up the rest of the evening. It's a little unreal, as though I've strayed from the Jaipur Literary Festival into a film set.

A writer whose work I admire shares my sense of bemusement. Over the last three years, the Jaipur fest has acquired a reputation for its laidback, carnival atmosphere. But he's a regular on the growing literary festival circuit and he voices my concerns: "I haven't seen another festival quite like this. It's wonderful, but who is it for?"

There is much about Jaipur 3.0 that works brilliantly. The schoolchildren love the kids' workshops, and they make a colourful, chattering group on the lawns of the Diggi Palace. Poets Jeet Thayil, Sampurna Chatterji and Tishani Doshi rock the casbah, with a little help from graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee and one-man band Jason. Star attraction Gore Vidal doesn't show, but Ian McEwan, the birdlike Donna Tartt and John Berendt draw crowds.

The main Diggi Palace hall fills up for Manil Suri, who explains how to become an accidental writer "" if you promise your agent a trilogy in a rash moment, you find yourself delivering over the next decade. And the tent next door is packed when Indra Sinha and Australian writer Alexis Wright discuss politics, governments and corporations. Indra's Booker-shortlisted Animal's People is set in the fictional city of Khaufpur, but it revives the debates over Bhopal. To Indra, Bhopal is an ongoing disaster, a city abandoned by the Indian government and Western corporations in the wake of the gas tragedy. Alexis speaks of alcoholism among the aborigines of Australia as a marker of government apathy. The questions afterwards are fast and furious; literature has never been more relevant to our times.

Film and adaptations are a recurring theme. Christopher Hampton talks about the process of turning Ian McEwan's Atonement into a film; Kunal Basu and Aparna Sen clearly enjoyed working with each other on Basu's short story, The Japanese Wife, soon to be screened. Sen and Hampton have very different approaches to screenplay writing, but it's interesting how both of them see the work of transferring the printed word onto the screen as an act of translation.

But what on earth is Aamir Khan doing here? I have nothing against the actor, but his only role seems to be to add a touch of glamour to the festival. He's The Entertainment; and so is Dev Anand, there to discuss his memoirs and provide the festival's most entertaining if least literary quotes. "I am a romantic because romance is in my life. Life is a romance. Making films is a romance. Living is a romance." We get it. The fans melt away once the Bollywood stars are gone.

Fatima Bhutto, daughter of the late Murtaza, delivers an accomplished politician's turn in a conversation with William Dalrymple. I have no more idea what her writing is like at the end of the session than I did at the beginning. And why devote an entire session to her while cramming three Pakistani writers "" Moni Mohsin, Shahbano Bilgrami and the fiercely intelligent Kamila Shamsie "" into an hour that ends all too soon?

The writer's question stays with me. What's missing from the festival this year, in contrast to Jaipur 2007, is the readers. A few have made the trip, but last year's ebullient bloggers and enthusiastic amateur writers haven't showed. The audience is made up of the media, publishers, and delegates, with just a thin layer of junta readers. And it is a crime to have the "other India", the country that doesn't write in English, represented by just three or four writers in other languages.

I enjoyed being a literary groupie, no complaints there. But the festival I saw in 2007 was everyone's festival. 2008 seemed more like a writer's conclave. As another writer said, "I'm here for the readers, but where are they?" The masses were missing in action. I hope they'll be back next year.

nilanjanasroy@gmail.com  

(The author is chief editor, Westland and Tranquebar. The views expressed here are personal.)