Let me put it this way - for a Monday evening, we started out better than we’d thought.
And ended a LOT better.

Beyond the Boundary was held off for 15 minutes or so as we waited for more people to turn up, but it more or less stayed at those who’d dropped in on time - and these were pretty serious about being there because I saw some take notes. It was good to put a face to zenwriter and Akshay. I hope they crosspost here too about the event.

Soumya Bhattacharya’s longish reading from his book You Must Like Cricket? was delightful, though I was scared he’d be dehydrated by the time he finished, because he must’ve lost at least a couple litres of sweat! His wife and little little girl had accompanied him, and they filmed the entire talk.

I really like his candid, unapologetic style that says, look, it is perfectly normal to be an obsessive sports fan, and there are more of us than you think. I especially like the bit where he takes a dig at the privileging of ‘high culture’: why is it okay, in fact practically a prerequisite for being considered civilised, to listen compulsively to Mozart, while the same sort of passion for sport is looked down upon?

Dileep Premachandran read out a short excerpt from one of his favourite pieces from The Picador Book of Sportswriting, Hugh McIllvanney’s The Best Years of Our Lives. He pointed out some of the reasons for the lack of good sportswriting and books about sport in India, chief among them the lack of editors who encourage good writing and individual, independent perspectives, rather than a dearth of writers with either talent or the perspectives. Further, as Soumya added, the publishing culture had a lot of growing up to do.

At the end of it, we wound up with some Q and A, and I saw that earnest looking boy in a red teeshirt, who I’d noticed had been listening most carefully throughout and had quite evidently enjoyed the discussion from his reactions during the reading and some of the lighter comments made by the speakers - well he went up to talk to Dileep and took down something on a notepad. Turns out he lives in London and wants to know how to become a sportswriter! Dileep was more than glad to pass on a contact, saying they had all started out as strays anyway. So we know now that these festivals do make a difference in someone’s life!

The advantage of the half hour break was that I could catch up with Bina Sarkar, who is presenting Voices from Iran on Thursday, and her husband Rafeeq Ellias, who is moderating Smorgasword tomorrow. He said they’d come to ‘case the joint’!

One thing we remembered today was to get mosquito coils. Yesterday, I’d been saved another evening of scratchy legs by Deepa’s suggestion to rub Vicks on them. However, today the lack of mosquitoes was made up for by the sudden appearance of hundreds of crows - or at least that’s what it sounded like. It was a bit annoying mostly because we had a small audience.

By 7.30, however, we had practically a full house again for The Future of the Past. This was discussion I had really been looking forward to, and was surprised by how many other people were too. As Darryl D’Monte said, it was about books that had been written about the city, that ought to be written about the city, and the kind of people who ought to write some of these books. Darryl moderated the discussion, so I could sit back and simply listen and take notes once I’d introduced them.

We had a little presentation by Marg publications, who have published Mill Lands, copies of which were available at the back of the garden at our Bookseller’s Table. (a name that I have just legitimised via boldface, ha.) Neera Adarkar showed us some slides and talked about her involvement in the mill workers’ movement, and how Meena Menon and she came about writing their book 100 Years, 100 Voices. She stressed the need for consciousness-raising about our architectural and natural heritage - for which I was glad to do my two-bit by simply having had this talk in our programme. Vikas Dilawari had really done his homework for the talk - much appreciated - as he gave out a list of what needs to be done to ensure the above.

I also learnt about a new concept today - ‘the edifice complex’! Go google!

Though this was a very high quality discussion over all, the credit for really raising the bar goes to Shyam Chainani. I was so glad he didn’t have to go to Delhi for a hearing as we’d feared. The evening simply wouldn’t have been the same without him. Crusty, anecdotal (but ‘I will not manufacture anecdotes’, ‘we were taking on the ONGC, the Navy, and the Government, with a borrowed typist’), ), forthright, provocative (’globalisation is rubbish’) - his style was much appreciated by everyone. He is apparently a compulsive chronicler and archivist, and is going to turn his last 9 years’ research into 3 books, the first of which is going to be called In Defense of Heritage: A Bombay Diary.

In fact the question and answer for this talk set the benchmark for the rest of the festival - I’d be glad if I get 75% of the speaker-audience engagement we had here for the other days. We had to literally cut it short, as it was past 9 by then. Folk were still milling (!!) around the speakers in the garden after I’d thanked everyone and said my byes. (I have put up photographic evidence, which took a while - which unfortunately means I have to make sure I don’t sleep right through the first event tomorrow.)

Zzzzzz….