‘LLF and KLF are acts of resistance’

No one knows why literary festivals are gaining popularity, says Gokhale.

LAHORE:

It appeared to be an excellent session on paper- founders of various literary festivals coming together to discuss the barrage of such events- yet despite the brilliant recipe, the discussion left a lot to be desired. Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, of Harper’s Magazine New York, was apparently not the right choice for moderator.

At the end of the session, Nusrat Jamil, president of the Advisory Committee of LLF 2014, said she wondered why she or another LLF organiser hadn’t been on the panel. Maybe it would have been better had the moderator been one of the organisers of literary festivals. Kroll-Zaidi was content to ask a question and then ask all panellists to answer one by one, which made for a bland chat rather than an engaging conversation.

Libby Owen-Edmunds (Galle Literary Festival, Sri Lanka), Maina Bhagat (Kolkata Literary Festival), Sadaf Saaz (Hay Literary Festival, Bangladesh) and Ulrich Schreiber (Berlin Literary Festival, Germany) all said that they had started their respective festivals to give a voice to English writers and literature.  Namita Gokhale (Jaipur Literary Festival) was the only one who said she had organised her first literary festival in 2002 to give a voice and visibility to writers of regional languages. She said she had been asked to help with the JLF in 2006, a small festival in which 18 writers were invited and 16 attended. “Now we draw about 200,000 people,” during the five-day festival, she said.

When asked whether they made an effort to avoid or include political discussions, Schreiber and Gokhale were the only two who said that they tried to include political discussions in their literary festivals. Schreiber’s reasoning was that “all of us are involved in political events” while Gokhale took pride in the fact that the JLF had become “a political process” in which “all voices are accommodated”. This, she admitted, had led to controversy more than once but the JLF’s organisers did not mind that at all. If anything, Gokhale said she took pride in the “spirited arguments during and after the event”.

Kroll-Zaidi then asked what happened behind the scenes at these festivals. Each of the panellists had more than one interesting story to share. Schreiber talked about a French author who came to Berlin for the festival two years ago but went back when upon reaching the hotel found out that his room wasn’t free. He spoke about another incident featuring a drunken moderator.

For Gokhale, managing the sheer number of people that attend the JLF was challenging. Another headache, she said, was visas.

“Let’s admit it,” said Owen-Edmunds, “Writers are all Madonnas”. She shared an incident featuring a high-flying author who always wore Armani suits but had to wear pyjamas because his luggage had gotten lost.

Saaz agreed that handling egos was one of the biggest challenges, but everything is when you are the organiser. “I had to send an ambulance so we could collect books from the border,” she told the audience.

When asked why the festivals were mushrooming, Gokhale said literary festivals were “wellness spas for the mind”. With such events, she said, you bring back multiple voices in numerous languages. As for why the festivals are becoming so popular, she had no answer.

The Harvard Business School studied the JLF for two years hoping to come up with an answer and couldn’t, she said.

Bhagat and Schreiber said such festivals deepened the bond between the writer and the reader. Nusrat Jamil said that the LLF and KLF were “acts of resistance and reclaiming of public space”.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2014.