Literature is perhaps the strongest and the most effective mode of record keeping that human kind has ever innovated. One may not look for historical facts in it, facts that are any how densely blurred versions of the truth, but may absorb the essence of humanity and the times a literary piece represents. The varied forms of literary expressions are needless to be mentioned. However in recent years, especially in India, people seem to have grown more conscious of the magnitude of the reach of the unique gift that mankind possesses. And as a result of this we see the various magnanimous celebrations of the gift. I write this article to share my experience of one such series of celebratory events- The Jaipur Literature Festival.
The Jaipur Literature Festival is one of the most prestigious intellectual events of India. I would not give a detailed account of its background as it may be found amply on the internet. I will start straight away with my experiences at the festival.
Day I (21st January 2010)
Adaptation 3:30PM to 4:30PM
For the year 2010 it began on the 21st of January. I, being a graduate and a keen student of literature, went to attend. More than anything else, the relation between other literary art forms and films has always captured my interest. Hence to choose from a varied list of events to attend was made way easier for me as I saw there was a talk on Adaptation.
The talk on Adaptation was moderated by the well known Indian actor Rahul Bose. And the two authors involved in the talk were Esther Freud and Michael Frayn. Michael Frayn is an English playwright who is bestknown for his works like Noises Off, Copenhagen and Democracy. He is also the author of Towards the End Of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, novels that gained both critical and commercial success. He was there because he has also written a screenplay for the film Clockwise and some of his work has also been adapted to film. Esther Freud is a British Novelist. Her works include the semi-autobiographical novel Hideous Kinky, The Wild, Gaglow and The Sea House. She was a part of this talk because her novel Hideous Kinky has been adapted into a film that stars Kate Winslet.
As a part of a such a festival, i was expecting a few very important things from this event. Few expectations were satisfactorily met. The talk was well conducted by the talented Rahul Bose and there was a satisfactory involvement of the audience. A few very important questions were raised as daily doubts. People asked openly about the significance of the spirit of the literary work that is to be adapted. A question that we all come across is whether a film adaptation can be as great or greater than the text itself. It's a question that one would ask without much knowledge of cinema and least exposure to works in the field. Questions like these were well answered by the authors. Then an interesting question about the collaboration of the author and the film maker was raised. It was a question regarding the success of such collaboration. Here the example of James Ivory, Ismail Merchant and Ruth Jhabvala was brought into light.
However all admitted this sort of successful collaboration is rare as once the author sells the rights to the film maker he or she has a divorces experience with the entire film making process and the film itself. Mr. Frayn gave an example of how his play was a pain to be adapted to a film as there were few very important changes that had to be made in order to make the film a success including the change in the ending from a sad one to a happy one.
Though the discussion was a very interesting one and quite mature, what every one failed to do was to recognize cinema as another independent literary art form. Adaptation of written text to a film was treated almost as a pick and buy act on the part of a film maker. There was no delving into the realm of much more sophisticated adaptations like There Will Be Blood, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Throne Of Blood, Goodfellas etc. What every one seemed to be obsessed with was the story or the character or the 'soul' of the book. What the discussion failed to bring into light was the independent stage and stature of a film. This is as much a failure to recognize film as a popular medium, as it would be a failure to recognize the genius of Shakespeare if we concern ourselves with the original facts and actual stories he drew his plots from. What i would personally expect from a gathering of such stature is to broaden ones idea of literature as not just the black print on white paper but much more than that, including everything that utilizes language, plot and character to convey something.
Kaifi & I 5PM to 6PM
I have studied English Literature as my major graduation subject, and though it remains a chief area of my study, literature in Hindi still has my heart. I've been brought up with Hindi songs on the national radio and on the old cassette players and Chitrahaar on Doordarshan. And at a more mature stage I have also studied some Hindi literature. Having gone through a variety of works in Hindi Literature, which includes Poetry and Drama, the Hindi film songs still remain my favorite Hindi Literary art form. And when one digs into the treasure of Hindi film songs one may not miss names like Sahir Ludhyanvi, Shailendra and Kaifi Azmi.
Kaifi Azmi was a member of The Progressive Writers' Movement and also the Communist Party of India. His wife Shaukat Azmi was a renowned actress of her times. Their daughter Shabana Azmi is still one of the greatest names in Hindi Cinema. Shabana is married to yet another renowned poet and lyric writer Javed Akhtar, who happens to be my personal favorite. In this session Shabana Azmi was to read from her mother's recently publish memoirs called Kaifi & I. What drove me to this session was not merely the celebrity status of the people involved, but a keen interest in the family and Kaifi as a person. Moreover being such a personal affair I also looked forward to get to know the family and the generation better.
As was expected the event gathered too much attention and the venue was overcrowded. I am certain most of the people gathered in the hall were clueless of most of the works of the writer and poet being discussed. However, Shabana began the session by reading from the Hindi version of the memoirs and read the part where Shaukat Azmi talks about how she met her husband. As told by Shabana, Shaukat was a deeply romantic person in her youth and remains a passionate person till date. So much so that having been brought up in a comparatively luxurious environment, she followed her husband to the simple life of a communist. Though she is a devoted wife and mother she is intrinsically of an independent nature. Here Shabana explained what the term 'independent' really meant to her as she saw in her own mother. It meant that a woman would have a sense of responsibility and power. She would pursue her passions but not at the cost of family life and role playing as it was a bond of love to which one voluntarily devotes oneself. However, as obviously was the case, a woman of such nature could only fit well by the side of a man with progressive thinking. And this was exactly what Kaifi Azmi was.
There were a few more familial revelations that brought the lives of these extraordinary people to light. This increases ones respect for the Artists all the more and make them more lovable as human beings rather than mere symbols of success. At times even Javed Akhtar was asked to come on stage and share his experiences with the in-laws. And it was revealed that after all it was him who encouraged Shaukat Azmi to write those memoirs. And as he puts it, he did that in order to get people to know those times and the people in it, to realize how challenging those times were and how only people of such dynamic nature could utilize the time to bring something fruitful out of it.
General Observations
The overall experience of the festival leaves one thanking those who provide such a platform for minds involved in such activities as literature. As you walk down the venue you see faces that are generally unreachable for a man distant from such stature and environment. Seeing, those you look up to, in real life and shaking hands with them and having an occasional word with them takes you to another level. If one is sincere in one's appreciation of the art form one would only need to feel the presence of such experienced and colorful people.
It is indeed encouraging and reassuring to see such a crowd at such a festival for whatever reasons they might be there. After coming out of the Kaifi & I session i had a chance to briefly attend the reading of Tuglaq by Om Puri. I had never heard Om Puri in public. His voice as could be seen around there, had captured the attention and fancy of a good amount of people.
Other than this I had a chance to see Gulzar, but unfortunately not a luck to get a good close look and a photograph, let alone a conversation. Having experienced a somewhat exciting and partly enchanting spirit of the festival I looked forward to the second day of the festival.
Day II (22nd January 2010)
The Road 12PM to 1PM
On the second day of the festival I had planned to attend the reading of the book The Road which is written and was read by the Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka. This choice on my father's recommendation else I am very low on such information. However as I reached the venue, which received a great deal of sunlight and could be an uncomfortable place if only the speaker was some one else, at first I was confused to see the man on the stage as it seemed to me that Morgan Freeman had grown white gouty and bushy hair. Even the voice was similar. Any way it didn't take much time to sink into me that the speaker was in fact Wole Soyinka.
By my description one one should realize what a magnificent personality the man has. When i arrived at the venue the event had already started. At that time Mr. Soyinka was reading from his book The Road. Having worked in theater as a playwright and actor, one could notice, he had this depth in his voice and expressions. Soyinka is known to derive heavily from his native mythology in his literary works, and The Road is no exception. Although one might need to refer to the actual mythological concepts to understand the work in its totality. None the less the reading could be enjoyed as much just for the richness of the language he employs in his work and of course the peaceful quality of his tone kept people attentive and interested.
It is difficult for me to summarize his work as i haven't yet read it myself. But i believe that many a times, literature that one has been ignorant to becomes much more interesting if one has had the chance to listen to the author or to talk with him/her. After the reading of The Road, Soyinka was asked to read few of his poems. So he did. People were expecting him to read The Telephone Conversation, the poem perhaps most referred to, but it so happened that the poem was not in the collection that he was carrying with himself. However he read out another poem that he had written on an occasion when he was driving his car and a bird flew smashed on to his cars front glass and driving further he saw the remains of a car accident that just took place and the corpses still laid by the roadside covered with white cloth.
After the poem was the brief Q & A session, which happens to be a very interesting part not because the questions were good, but how even the most insipid questions were answered with flavor. The first question that came up was the most simplistic question that can be asked to a man with such experience as Soyinka. It was "What is the one thing that you have learnt the most from your experience on the road?" To this question the answer was as simple. Soyinka replied by saying that first of all it is very confusing to answer a question that demands such precise answers. Then he said that there is never one single thing to learn from such a vast experience but there are essences to pick and move on being enriched by them. The second question was much better and that considered the fact that Soyinka was also politically active and had an experience of political imprisonment. It concerned more of his general political humanist opinion rather than a specific take on his own cause. It was "What is your view on the wide spread terrorism and discrimination? And how do you deal with discrimination your self?" In reply to this the first thing that Soyinka said was that terrorism is an epidemic, a disease. He said that it seemed that these people had forgotten even the 'I'm right you're wrong' condition, but what they have brought about is the 'I'm right and you're dead' condition. About dealing with discrimination he said that there are various levels and forms of discrimination. The one involving verbal attacks and statements can be dealt with a good sense of humor. But the one involving deprivation and physical abuse had to be dealt with a peaceful but strong and dignified protest. The third question involved his relation to his own culture as well as his experience of other cultures. The question was "How do you retain your own culture while staying away on the road most of the time? Doesn't exposure to other cultures contaminate your own cultural inheritance?" To this the first thing said was that controlled contamination is a good thing. He said that his own culture is that he has deep installed in him, what he gathers from outside is what increases his scope of thinking. He said that he looks for new kinds of things and new cultures and more interestingly he tries to find correlations. Soyinka commented that a man doesn't need to push his on culture away to imbibe another, the mind of a person is extremely expansible. The final question was regarding his experience in the prison. It was "How did you sustain yourself in the prison?" To which Soyinka first described what the nature of his imprisonment was. He said that it was a solitary confinement without anything to read or write or play with. However what one does in such times to help oneself is that he invents games in his mind. Moreover, he said, as mathematics had always been a horror to him in high school, what he spent time doing was to improve his mathematical skills on the prison walls. Over time though he befriended the prison guard, who would sometimes smuggle reading and writing material into the prison for him. He made ink out of coffee and pens out of bones. In the end he added that its not always important to keep oneself engaged all the time. The time he wasn't engaged in anything gave him a good chance to meditate and come to terms with oneself.
As I left the venue, I remember saying to one of the people I knew, "I wish this man was my professor!"
Tibet 2:30PM to 3:30PM
After a good lunch, I quickly had to decide what to attend next. Then amidst the crowd I saw Tenzin Tsundue. I recalled having read about him a little. And by my little reading, as he seemed to be an interesting person, it appeared to be a good idea to attend the event he was involved in. What I knew about him that interested me was the fact that he was a Tibetan brought up in India educated here and got his masters degree in English from Mumbai University. He also had been a political prisoner in China for supporting the Tibetan cause of Dalai Lama and opposing the Chinese intervention in Tibet. He still is an active participant in the cause and a keen follower of the Tibetan government of Dalai Lama in exile. Although what made me most curious back then and even now is the red band he wears on his forehead. It might be something to do with his movement, but again I, being ignorant to the details till now, have no clue what so ever.
I quickly looked up the time table and saw that his event had just begun. So I went to attend it. It was a talk on the issue of the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the two speakers were Tenzin Tsundue and Isabel Hilton. Tsundue besides being an activist is also a poet and has many friends writing about and for Tibet. Isabel Hilton on the other side is a British journalist who also works as a travel writer. She had done her post graduation with Chinese and she had traveled to Tibet. She also has a very grim view of the Chinese occupation of Tibet as she mentions how even the climatic conditions are not favorable for such a mass immigration of Chinese people into Tibet. She quoted her own experience of humiliation at a hotel where she was staying.
A very interesting aspect that completely drove me to the event was the fact that the moderator was William Dalrymple. It was not only from my father's positive view of him that I wanted to see him, but at that particular event because he himself is a travel writer. This made the talk much more about experience than philosophizing ideas. One may say that it was my intense respect for the first hand observers that drove me to the talk. And, as I had expected, though the talk was much more political than literary, it was interesting none the less.
Tsundue was asked if Google's backing out of China as a refusal to give into the bullying policies of the country was any sign of hope for the Tibetans to get support from the big multinationals. It was also mentioned that Google for the first time had uncensored material for the Chinese public, so as to reveal the truth of the real world to them away from the romantic notions of Mao the have been holding, including the truth and tragedy of the Tenemen Square. However, what Tsundue stressed upon was the fact that it was the large multinational companies that helped and supported China to flood Tibet. "While there were once buses full of Chinese that came to Tibet, now there were trains full of them arriving." as Tsundue said.
Ms. Hilton on the other hand, while trying to answer as to what can be expected to happen to make things better, said that it is impossible for China to give Tibet up. There are absolutely no chances that the Chinese government would risk to lose Tibet. But what can be expected is the evolution of the Chinese government that can think in terms of benefits for the original Tibetans. The expression used for the Chinese government "Little people handling big issues" was brought up to summarize the point being made.
Moving on to a more personal question posed to Tsundue. It was Dalrymple quoting one of his friends, who is a Palestinian writer, that it is a misfortune to be born in such a politically disturbed environment because it restricts ones writing to the context and one can't write about the trivialities of life in order to get accepted. Tsundue was asked if he felt the same. But he replied that he, along with his colleagues, was too dedicated to the path of Dalai Lama to think that way. The dedication is so much that it is felt to be an honor to be writing for the cause. Another question that was posed to him was if all his writing was political or were there other human aspects as well like romance. To this the answer was somewhat light hearted and obscure.
After this Tsundue recited two of his poems. One that he wrote as a proposal or a request to his rich friends in Mumbai to let him stay in their houses and another one that described his condition in a room in Dharamshala on a rainy day. Both the poems were written in non rhyming free verse and dealt quite well with the imagery. They conveyed subtly the sensory aspects of the conditions, however they lacked in a maturity of language. One is bound to realize that the poems are coming from more of a political activist than a poet. However both the poems conveyed a very honest emotional condition employing very simple technical bits emerging more as the poetry of heart than of intellect.
Day III (23 January 2010)
Wanderlust 12PM to 1PM
On the third day, as I looked up the time table, and saw there were two very interesting events involving five very interesting people, and both of them were about travelling, there was absolutely no doubt that I was attending them. The first one I went to attend was Wanderlust which was a reading by four travel writers from their books and their experience as travel writers. These four people were William Dalrymple, Isabel Hilton, Brigid Keenan and Geoff Dyer.
Hilton and Dalrymple, I have already talked about under other events. Geoff Dyer is a British author who has written books like But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz, Paris Trance, Out of Sheer Rage etc. His latest work is Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. Dyer's But Beautiful was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award. Brigid Keenan is also a British author, who worked as an editor of Nova Magazine, The Observer and The Sunday Times, but after her marriage to a diplomat due to a lot of travelling, assumed the job of a writer. She is the author Travels in Kashmir, Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City and Diplomatic Baggage. She has lived in and traveled many countries in Asia.
The session started with William Dalrymple introducing all the speakers. Then he went on to explain the concept and history of travel writing, which is what the session was all about. Moving on to the history of travel writing Dalrymple brought up the examples of the ancient monks and traders who traveled across lands and kept a record of their ventures. He said that travel writing could easily be counted as one of the oldest form of writing along with the epic. After this short introduction and story of the form, the microphone was handed to Geoff Dyer who is a travel novelist i.e. unlike the other travel writing that simply states real life observation and experience, he creates fiction out of his observations and experiences of a place and people.
Dyer started with a statement about travel writing and said that it was the most homely genre according to him, in the sense that one could bend it and use it how ever one likes and doesn't have to stick to any kind of literary rules. Geoff read out a passage from his book Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi it was an exceedingly hilarious description of an incident in a bank in Varanasi, where there is a cue for getting into the ATM. The narrator is a British and he finds it rather absurd that the cue as it was supposed to be was not exactly a cue. It was something of a middle ground between a cue and nothing close to being a cue. There is a German with him in the cue who seems to be letting every one get ahead of him. The rest of the passage describes the narrators little adventure and struggle to get inside the ATM with a determination to follow all the laws of the concept of a cue. By the end of this reading every one in the audience and on the stage had eyes wet of laughing.
Next person to read out was Isabel Hilton. She started with her view on travel writing. She said that travel writing is an extremely flexible form. Resembling somewhat to Dyer's view she said that one didn't really need to be too qualified to be a travel writer. She read out excerpt from her article for The Guardian on Greenland. She started by describing what green land was all about. She begun with its history and went on to talk about the massive layer of ice that sank the land beneath it into the ocean and about the icebergs. Her writing is more of serious observations about the place and about the local living and local history. In the article she starts away with the History of Greenland that sees Vikings as its first inhabitants. Then she moves on to talk about all that ice now melting. Though not exactly an entertaining one, the article was informative none the less.
The next speaker to get the microphone was Brigid Keenan. She started by saying, "There are two types of travelers. There are born travelers, like those here on the stage with me, and there are those with travelling thrust upon them, and that would be me." Brigid likes to describe her travels across the world mostly as a side-effect of being married to a diplomat. She admitted that she never made a single journey with her own will to travel, except for once when she wanted to report from Vietnam during the war, which, she says failed completely because "I was wearing mini skirts." She then read out from her book about an experience of going up a mountain on a very dangerously narrow path in an automobile. She describes her fear vividly as they go so high that there is not enough vegetation on the slopes to grab if in case they fell. She has already explained that she had an unconquerable fear of heights. It was again an extremely humorous account of the little unasked for adventure, which ends when she asks her driver after reaching the destination that if the vehicles ever fall down to which the answer is "they keep falling over all the time."
The last one to speak was William Dalrymple. He made his turn very short and read out a passage from his first travelogue In Xanadu. This was an account of a hilarious conversation with an Indian Babu. To admit i couldn't make out what most of it was, but what I could, was extremely funny. As usual, there was a short Q&A session after that. People asked a few questions bout something or the other, but one very vivid question was "How do you balance between the demands of the market ans sensibilities while writing?" To which the first, and according to me the best, answer was given by Geoff Dyer. He said "I don't give a damn about the market." The others said almost the same thing in just few more words. With this the session ended pleasantly.
The Lonely Planet Story 2:30PM to 3:30 PM
The name they gave to the session meant travel to me, and so it was. Though I didn't know what exactly it was because I didn't know who Tony Wheeler was. But the session was being conducted by Dalrymple so I was convinced that it had got to be something interesting about traveling. Hence in all my excitement I went and sat at the venue half an hour before the session was to begin. This decision turned out to be an act of wisdom because later too many people flooded in for there to be any space to sit or even stand. Tony Wheeler was a big shot in my mind now. So many people to listen to him, had to be something more than just a travel writer. Well it so turned out that I was an ignorant fool amongst the audience to not have known that Tony Wheeler is the owner and the co-founder of Lonely Planet along with his wife Maureen. Any way when I did come to know, I was convinced I had made the best choice of the day.
The session started with Tony talking about the beginnings of his adventures. He spoke about his background and told about his Engineering and Marketing degrees. It was rather interesting to know that though he was born in Britain, he was mostly brought up in Pakistan, West Indies and USA. After his higher education Tony married Maureen and shortly after that they both left to follow a hippie trail in the early 70's. Tony talked about how they bought a very cheep car in India hoping only to drive it into Pakistan. But as it turned out, they drove it all the way into Afghanistan where thy sold it in profit. That was the time before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan when it was a peaceful country. While talking about whatever happened to the old car, Tony smiled and said, "Perhaps it was the escape vehicle for Osama Bin Ladein." A year after they left to follow the hippie trail, Maureen and Tony put together their first travel guide, as they ended up in Australia penniless and working. This little travel guide was named after an expression that Tony misheard on the radio from a song by Joe Cocker and Leon Russel called Space Captain. Tony heard "Once I was travelling across the sky; This lonely planet caught my eye." He turned to Maureen and said, "That is a good expression for a name- Lonely Planet." To which Maureen replied "Tony, he said Lovely Planet." Though an expression misheard, 'Lonely Planet' turned out to be a far better expression.
About Maureen, Tony said, that though he had the Business degree, Maureen had a better sense of Business. He quoted Maureen as she said "Tony, I agree Lonely Planet couldn't have started without you, but it would have fallen on it's face without me."
Talking about the idea of writing the travel guide, Tony said that when someone gets a wonderful idea, it's strange that though one might think he/she is the only one with that idea, it never is so. Giving examples of other guide books that came out almost the same time as Lonely Planet, he said that perhaps it was the time when people across the world were taking up such travels like never before and might have been only natural to occur to someone to write a guide about places that have never been touched before by travelers just to help them across the lands.
The conversation then turned to the decision made by the couple to sell 70% of the shares of Lonely Planet to BBC Worldwide. Tony replied by saying that handling the business and travelling simultaneously was too difficult to carry on. Hence this decision had to be made. Although there were many other companies wanting to buy Lonely Planet, Tony and Maureen chose BBC Worldwide because it appeared to be much more responsible and their world view was somewhat similar to the founders. When asked about the Burma Guide controversy Tony
reacted by saying that though people were being discouraged to go to Burma, according to him the conditions there could only get better if it stayed connected to the rest of the world. In fact there were few friends back in Burma to whom help could be delivered by staying connected with them. Even today Lonely Planet guide to Burma is the only international travel guide available for the country.
In the beginning Lonely Planet faced a peculiar problem that when it recommended some place, the quality there would go down and the prices would go up. Tony reassured that this problem has been dealt with because once a place does that, the next revised addition removes it from the list of recommendations. Tony also talked about the Thorn Tree Forum on the Lonely Planet site, which is based on the concept of passing messages in a particular part of Africa by sticking a piece of paper on a thorn tree. After all these years of an immense experience Tony and Maureen are still traveling in the age of 60 & 57.
Interview With Michael Frayn
After the second session of the day, as I wandered around in the crowd waiting for the evening music concert, I saw Michael Frayn walking around with his wife. They sat down at a table in the garden for a coffee. As they did I decided that I would have a little conversation with him and ask him a few questions. Quickly I made up a few questions that I thought would be relevant. Then I walked up to the table where they were seated. Just through experiential observations, it was quite new to me that an Englishman disturbed during coffee time with his wife stood up to shake my hand and with all the politeness welcomed a conversation. There was no chair for me but I quickly arranged for one and sat down besides the writer. I must say that somehow I wanted to talk to the man since I saw him first at the Adaptation conversation. He had a very subtle peaceful quality about him. He clearly could be seen as an old man who has learnt a lot with age and still had a child living inside him.
Any way, it's a shame I didn't take his picture while I could as it completely slipped out of my mind. The conversation began with him asking me questions about myself rather than me asking him. after having told him a lot about myself, I finally got to the point. Now while reading this one must remember that I wrote these questions down in a hurry and as a student of literature. Hence there were certain things that I should have kept in mind just skipped.
(i) What drove you to be a writer?
Well, as a school child I wrote an essay. My father saw it and said that i should be writer. He suggested that I be a reporter. So I started off as a reporter and then started writing plays and novels. So it's basically for my love of writing that I am a writer.
(ii) Is writing and working for theater enough to make a living?
Yes it is pretty much. Though it is very hard but one can sustain oneself through writing.
(iii) What do you think is the chief factor that runs through all the contemporary literature?
Well, I don't think that I am the right person to be answering this. You know I am just a writer. You should be asking this probably to a Literary critic. But through my observation of my own field I think a lot of violence and intense emotional states occupy most of the playwrights these days. I don't know if that answers your question but that's all I can say.
(iv) What are your views on film as a literary form?
I don't really think of Film as literature. I think of it more as a mere entertainment. But again like some one said this morning in a session, literature is what is not popular any more. So probably its just because cinema is too popular that i can't think of it as a literary form.
There were only these four questions that I had managed to think of. By the end of the interview Mr. Frayn apologized for not being able to give me enough stuff to write about, but i said, "this conversation was enough to write about, and about the interview, I will make enough out of it." We shared smiles and then I left.
Day IV (24th January 2010)
The Whirlwind of History 2:30PM to 3:30PM
On the fourth day, I was a little late to attend any session before lunch. It so happened that having left from home just in time to attend a 12PM session, I got stuck in the traffic so long that I was just in time for the lunch instead. Any way that had me reschedule my plans to attend some other session. It was undoubted that I was attending the 5PM session Director's Cut, which, as the name might suggest was about movies. However having missed a morning session as I moved my finger through the time table carefully the name of this event Whirlwind of History caught my eye. It just said Louis De Bernieres moderated by Sunil Sethi. I recalled that Mr. Bernieres was supposed to be there for the Adaptation talk as well but somehow couldn't make it. Anyway, I decided to go for this particular event just out of curiosity.
Just as it happened many a times during the festival, it happened again. I had heard of the very unsuccessful high budget film Captain Corelli's Mandolin, but I never knew that it was an adaptation of a novel, and that the gentleman who was the speaker for this particular event happened to be its author. De Bernieres is considered to be a historic fiction writer as some of his major works are based on significant historical backgrounds. The first half of his works, as he claims, is heavily influenced by the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, hence they have a touch of magical realism in them. However in his later novels he shifted to political and social realism instead being deeply moved by the reality.
Sethi, it seemed, had planned to interrogate Bernieres more on his personal life and try to extract some sense out of Bernieres' work through this. Bernieres talked about why most of his work had a disturbed social background to it. It was in the times of his grand parents' youth that the I World War began. His grand father was a soldier in the war and had survived the war. Talking about grandfather's influence on him as a role model, Bernieres told that he shot himself in his 60's. Considering that he had had a difficult life after the war, he could be called a late victim of the 'great war'. Even the next generation, his father and his mother, was involved in war. Only this time it was the II World War. He said that both his parents' lives took a disturbingly different turn because of the war.
Bernieres was only a child when all England lived under the fear of the nuclear war. He said only some one living in those days could tell what it was like to live in that fear. Years later when he was 18 he joined the army too. But he left the army after four months service as he "didn't like being told what to do". Back then his father commented on this decision by saying that he would never be a successful man.
On being asked about his choice to be a social historian, Bernieres said that he was a social historian by experience. Having experienced war and military it didn't take him much to imagine the physical and emotional torture that his characters go through. "While writing Corelli's Mandolin i knew what it was to be hiding in a trench all night", he said. Research, it appears to many people, doesn't come from siting in the library for hours. Much of the raw material that is pulled out, comes from the second hand bookshops and interacting with people. Although having left the army for his dislike for the kind of life, he said, he still has to go back to the same environment to pull out information for his work. A lot of information comes out from the military archives to which access can only be granted by some really long and unpleasant interaction with the officers. Hence research, for the work one likes, can be very unpleasant. However he said that interacting with local population is what he likes a lot. He gave an account of his research in Colombia when a cook named Farukh helped him by getting local people to talk.
On being asked about the ubiquitous music in his work, he said that music has been his life long passion. He said that he learnt guitar in college to get the female attention, but soon he started playing for his love of it. After answering a few questions from the audience Bernieres played a beautiful piece of music on a string instrument that he carries. I don't really know what the instrument is called but any one who can recognize the instrument being played in the picture may please inform me.
Bernieres made a comment on some ones question. The questions i fail to recall, but the comment he made was, "Nationalism is one of the most absurd concepts to me. And though religion does have a lot of good things about it, people should try to live without it." England, he says, he finds to be very dull having seen countries like Columbia. He shared an experience with there about when he met a French man who said that he loved England. Wondering when Bernieres asked the gentleman what the reason was, he said, "Because it is so exotic!" We all laughed till our eyes were wet.
I must say that this man somehow left a lasting impact on me. Like I have mentioned before, I have an immense respect for people with first hand observations, it's probably the same reason that applies here.
Director's Cut 5PM to 6PM
After a short tea break, I walked to the venue where this session was to be held. It was the same venue as for the one I attended before this. It is a big hall with only one entrance for the audience. It has a big illustrious stage. The venue for this particular event was more crowded than in the morning. The speakers were Roddy Doyle, Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi. Doyle is an Irish novelist and also a screenwriter. It's most of his novels that have been adapted to very successful and popular films including The Commitments. Hanif Kureishi is a British novelist and screenwriter born to a Pakistani father and British mother. Kureishi stared off his career as a screenwriter with the very well known and much celebrated movie My Beautiful Laundrette. Stephen Frears was the director of the film. The film had been through a lot of controversies due to its content showing homosexuality between an Irish man (Danial Day Lewis) and a British Pakistani. I knew the film and the makers already because it was shown to us in college for some reason related to identity.
Anyway, to be very honest there wasn't too much to gather from the talk as such. It is all pretty exciting to have the speakers there but when it came down to the content i didn't feel there was too much to discuss other than how Kureishi and Frears got together to make the film and why was the story about Laundrette.
