Rajasthan

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Faiza S Khan is Editor-at-large at Random House India, and one half of the team that created and runs The Life’s Too Short Literary Prize, Pakistan’s largest short story prize. She is also editor-in-chief of the Life’s Too Short Literary Review and has written widely on arts and culture for publications including The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The Caravan, Open, Tehelka, The Express Tribune, The Herald and The Friday Times. Faiza travelled to rajasthan to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival a few years ago and offers an amusing description of the giant mela of writers, writing, and all things in between.

The unpinkness of Jaipur

AT one Point, while craning my neck to see a speaker on a stage first over and then between the surging sea of bodies in front of me before finally resigning myself to looking at the back of someone’s ear, it occurred to me that the Jaipur Literary Festival would make a wonderful location to set a murder mystery. Perhaps even ‘commit’ rather than ‘set’, and without all that much mystery. I could certainly have gladly slit the throat of the man with the abnormally large head in front of me who entirely blocked my view of Tom Stoppard. But then that’s the thing about the lit fest, or JLF, as it is referred to on social platforms such as Twitter where each January it starts to trend even before it begins—the swelling numbers of attendees, annoying though they be, are a testament to its roaring success.

Hosting an estimated 50,000 people over five days, scattered through a number of different sessions or milling about the bookstalls or coffee shop, the literary festival draws not just people hoping to see their favourite authors speak but, increasingly, it draws cultural tourists from world over. (As such, it’s particularly galling that I only ever seem to meet other people who live in South Delhi but we’ll save that story for another time.) The nicest thing about the Jaipur Lit Fest, other than the whole literary festival aspect that is, is how pleasingly un-Pink City it is. While it’s about as peaceful and easy to navigate as a Justin Bieber concert, it’s an entirely different face of a city that you know and have visited, and in fact entirely different from any ‘Rajasthan experience’ you may imagine.

In the Jaipur I’ve visited before one can hardly move an inch without being urged to buy (admittedly exquisite) door knobs, tiles, beads, gemstones and little dolls in elaborate turbans or mirrored cholis. Fancy a stuffed camel with a mirrored hump, anyone? Didn’t think so. Along with the inescapable wares up for sale are the palaces. Throw a stone, hit a palace, and if not a palace then something named after one. or looking like one. The numerous fawning references to royalty, the obligatory “royal”, “regal” and “majestic”found at every location does make one wonder at moments whether or not India actually enjoys being a republic.

While the festival too takes place at Diggi Palace, it could just as easily be Wembley Stadium for that is how it’s used. It doesn’t come laden with heritage, nor is one there to admire the architecture, there isn’t a hint of feeling mired in the past or trapped in a sort of tableau vivant as I was at my hotel, descending for breakfast one morning to find two elegant ladies with bangles up to their armpits dancing far too close to the croissants and muffins. And that after I’d survived through the lobby where a dignified looking gentleman in a turban had somehow been coerced into playing “I Just Called To Say I Love You” on a Rajasthani flute.

no, the lit fest is definitely not your typical Rajasthani experience, no sand dunes or snake charmers in sight unless you count some of the literary agents. Despite the human crush and less seats than there are bums by a mile, one visit is enough to why the Jaipur Literary Festival has set this city apart from Rajasthan and put it on the international map in its own right.