Of words and authors

Roopinder Singh

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The Jaipur Literary Festival is a maha kumbh where lakhs gather every year to worship words. The high priests are the writers and speakers, attended to by their acolytes and looked up to by the vast crowds that hang on to their words. It is a totally immersive experience — the sounds and sights of this celebration of literature create a vibe that washes away the sins of philistinism and illiteracy. It is a magnet that draws in writers, poets, experts, academics and visitors, many of whom have flirted with the notion of being literary.

Young and old, bustling with energy, flitting from one venue to another and flirting with each other, the setting is superb. Those who write seek to be read. They seek those who would listen to what they have to say, and others, who, like Quentin Cripps, a character, find that “Language could be soothing when it reduced itself to sound waves, when words lost their particularity and became vibrations.” JLF, ever-present but not named, is a wonderful setting that allows the author, Namita Gokhale, to throw up an interesting cast of characters, bound together by their love for letters.

A train journey introduces us to septuagenarian Rudrani Rana, who clutches on to her unfinished manuscript with the desperation of a mother unwilling to let her child go and the child-author, Anura, short for Anuradha, who is daunted by the prospect of going on a stage to read from her self-published book on dystopian future.

Rudrani has clutched her manuscript for years, working on it, polishing it, editing it again…and again. It is an integral part of her, and she finds it impossible to let it go. “What would happen if her book was published? And read? She would have revealed herself, made herself naked. No, she assured herself, Unsubmitted would remain just that, her private masterpiece, all the more precious for being hidden from the world.” The consequent resentments against those who are now published authors sometimes find their expression in biting postcards to those who irritate her, or worse.

Here she is at Diggi Palace, attending sessions, even raising questions, even as she avoids answering any. Not that there are many interested in her story, except for the young graphic artist Anirban, who sketches her, finds her fascinating and is eventually entrusted with the Untitled manuscript. It is to him that she opens up, surprising herself.

Why do we write? What is it that makes an author? Such existential queries have no answers, and yet many who are at the festival seek answers, from within and from others. The multitude of erudite voices like those of Shashi Tharoor and Javed Akhtar (both of whom are named) and characters that flow through the narrative encompass the five-day period of the festival.

A thief of poetic aspirations, Raju Srivastava, finally finds his voice, a takalus Khan Singh Betaab and a new vocation. Historian and cultural anthropologist Gayatri Smyth Gandhy, memorably described by a type “compounded of intellectual entitlement, and the careless assurance of class, privilege, good looks and an American green card.”

Anna Wilde, who teaches theology in the US, is now a famous author who is speaking at a session and promoting her books, The Inner Eye, and The Third Way. To Gayatri she says: ‘I suppose you could call me a Hindu, by dharma and by karma. I lived in Kashi for six years, in Benaras, by the banks of the Ganga, studying the scriptures and learning from my guru. Then I awoke from my dream and returned to my own land.’ Yet this sanitised self-introduction hides a great betrayal.

Men in the book have peripheral roles, and besides the well-known authors, include a philandering cad, Sumedh, Gayatri’s first love, now which his second wife, Bhopa the bard whose death pricks her conscience, and others.

The story that evolves through the intersection of these characters captures much about writing, and the festival that celebrates it. The author is intensely familiar with the subject, being one of the founding directors. Yet this is a tale that lays bare the human dimensions of literature, and the often-painful processes that sometimes culminate in the practitioners and supplicants achieving the pinnacle that they seek — of being a published author.

Only after you conquer a summit do you realise what sacrifices you have made for it, and how much of the world remains to be explored. Rudrani has it all, almost. The book confines itself to the festival days, and the after-stories serve to tie up the knots. So much in the volume made one chuckle, reflect and remember those days in January when the world could host a festival attended by more than a hundred thousand persons a day, all to partake in the experience of being in a sea of words.