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The eighth edition of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) kicked off with a stirring rendition of Abide With Me by Sonam Kalra that left a pack of connoisseurs of the printed word in raptures. Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who inaugurated the event, said, "As a springboard for intellectual discourse, JLF must also perform the role of propagating issues that are catalysts of People’s empowerment. She hailed the event for having "brought together a cross-section of people from across the globe".
This year's event gains further traction considering the Perumal Murugan's 'voluntary' withdrawal of all his writings for allegedly having hurt Tamil sentiments and the barbaric attack on Paris-based satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. Speaking at the event, the festival director and acclaimed author William Dalrymple said that the turnout for the event is really encouraging for India. "Go to any festival in England, say Cheltenham, and the average age is 70, here (in Jaipur) it is 21," he said.
The day's first big talk happened between British letters' enfant terrible Will Self and Booker-nominated Indian writer Jeet Thayil. Self read out from his Booker-nominated novel Umbrella in the most animated fashion -- in a manner that this festival at least has never witnessed. When asked for his views on Charlie Hebdo, he said the French magazine was in the wrong; the Prophet Muhammad cartoons were in bad taste and that the work was 'fossil-like'. "I no Je Suis Charlie" he said as a reaction to the Je Suis Charlie hashtag making the rounds on social media.
Another talk that was an absolute delight was the one between Eimear McBride and Eleanor Catton -- the former an Irish writer who made her writing debut with her throat-clenchingly haunting A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and the latter won the Booker in 2013 for her sophomore novel The Luminaries. McBride explained she took nine years to get her inventively-written novel published. It left everyone in the audience befuddled when they learned that this beautiful book about a sister writing about her brain tumour-inflicted brother was rejected by three publishers because they didn't know how to 'market' it.
Catton, whose 19th century novel set in the Gold Rush period of New Zealand, said that she was able to find parallels between her novel and the 2008 economic crisis. Catton, who likes to identify herself as a mystery novelist, did say that the cellphone was the worst thing that could have happened to a mystery novelist.
Zia Haider Rehman's talk on the class system in UK and his marvelous first novel "In The Light of What We Know" was utterly delightful too. He spoke about his sprawling novel and how it was not semi-autobiographical as it's being made out to be.
The highlight of the day was, without doubt, when Nobel Laureate V S Naipaul, in a wheelchair, joined Amit Chaudhuri, Farrukh Dhondy, Hanif Kureishi and Paul Theroux on stage. The writers had just been discussing Naipaul's momentous novel "A House for Mr Biswas", which was published 53 years ago. Paul Theroux, Naipaul's estranged friend and a fabulous travel writer, gave the novel the fulsome compliment of the day, "The most complete novel I have ever read since Dickens." Naipaul was visibly moved. Kureishi was thankful to Naipaul for his novel that removed the stigma attached to "third world writing".
With Day One being so marvelous, it sets a promising tone for the next four days of the festival.
