Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials

Ravaged by savage mosquitoes, a handful of people and a pregnant cat meandering through mostly empty seats wait for the book reading to begin. The delay leaves room to wonder why events like these suffer the lack of publicity and interest that they so rightly deserve. Is it because Mrs. Jariwalla rapped your knuckles blue in second standard? “Read in your head!” she would menace. Or is it simply because we buy a book based on the number of favourable reviews it has received in recent magazines? It is true. We usually leave the cultivation of our minds to the underpaid over-bribed opinions of freelance hacks looking for a quick buck.

I prefer to get it straight from the black horse’s mouth. (Ha ha, note horrible pun.)

Besides, it is quite a treat to hear prose in the author’s own voice. Every detail of inflection, pronunciation and unconscious body language make a difference. They belie how the writer handles his/her (mostly her) own little literary baby. Their voices resound the voice of their muse, driving their fingers on the typewriter, keyboard or pen.

But there is hope yet. A few minutes into the reading, the D.S. Library Garden is quite occupied.

Fresh Off The Shelf offers an eclectic selection of novels. From 13 short stories of the fictional Halfway House that is roof to the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of characters inspired by real-life encounters to a collection of sexually liberated cartoons depicted through characters like dogs and crows (as the cartoonist repeatedly insists). There is something for every taste as surely as some things that offend others. But none that will not move you to think in some way.

Modern Indian Literature, for example, arouses the cynic in me. Especially the women-oriented ones. Must it always include strange cosmo-spiritual awakening sensual discoveries of the self? Why the kissing and biting of soft hairy chests of dark men in dhotis who appear from nowhere and spout confusing forecasts? I refuse to believe that I need an uterus to understand the allure of such prose. Yet, Sharmishtha Mohanty’s novel, New Life, cannot be ignored. Her vivid descriptions do more than just create a world around you; they birth something inside you that goes beyond the stated. She says it best when she elucidates the importance of knowing the craft and of the need to write. We describe so that we may understand.

The endearing Kankana Basu presents her collection of stories as a splash of humour in everyday life. The stories, she says, are for everybody and for every age. And then she goes on to read an excerpt describing the thoughts of an old grandmother who has just discovered she is dying of cancer. The said grandmother decides to live up the last one month of her life - she wants to watch horny movies. This is where I blacked out and missed the rest of the wonderful plans of the dying Dadi. Of course, humour is subjective, I say. (The author says a sense of humour is like cancer, but that is another story.) However, Basu’s language is simple and thus inviting. It is light-hearted light reading and attempts to be no more.

In quick succession, the panel of authors read favourite bits of their newest works, interspersed with a few words on their experience spanning the putting of pen to their first word to seeing the word in print. So, yes, the evening is not just about writing or reading. Most importantly, it is about publishing. It is rightly said that getting published in this city is difficult when all the publishing houses exist in faraway Delhi. But one must draw inspiration from the panel itself. A short Q&A session dispels doubts. One must have love for the craft and must first know who you want to talk to as a writer. The world of publishing is indeed opening up with opportunities presenting themselves in new media like the Internet and new avenues of self-publishing. The written word need no longer remain in the closet.

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is testament to this phenomenon and one has only to look around at the engrossed eyes and pricked ears of the audience at the D.S. Library Garden as proof. The audience that braved savage mosquitoes for a session of book reading.