So on Thursday 11th evening, I got on the other side of the fence, err, the other side of the mike. Metaphorically of course. I was asked to moderate a “Fresh off the Shelf” discussion among a truly eclectic cast of characters: a Britisher, a TV anchor, a freelance writer, an Italian and a newspaper editor.

That’s, respectively: Melvin Burgess, author of some acclaimed “young adult” novels, Nicholas Dane being his most recent one; Amrita Tripathi, author of the soon-to-be-out novel Broken News; Annie Zaidi, blogger and once Frontline reporter, author of one of the essays in the book India Shining, India Changing; Gioia Guerzoni, editor and translator of the aforesaid India Shining, India Changing into its original Italian edition; and Soumya Bhattacharya, editor at the Hindustan Times and author of the novel If I Could Tell You.

I ran into Soumya a few minutes before we started, and after greeting each other he asked me how my book was doing. I mentioned that it had had a couple of positive reviews, a couple of critical reviews. He promptly warmed the cockles of my heart by saying, in a vehement whisper, four words and four words only: “F**k the reviews!”

(That “**” stands for “uc”). (And sorry, I meant three words and three words only. I’m numerically challenged).

(Click here to read the whole post)

Less than 24 hours before it was to happen, I was volunteered into “being in conversation with” (what a strange expression that is, and yet with what felicity I use it) the singer/songwriter Biddu (the name behind such song standards as “Kung Fu Fighting” and “Aap Jaisa Koi”). The guilty party knows who s/he is, and will remain nameless except to say that s/he shares her/his first name with an actor who played Lawrence of Arabia, and his/her last name with most of the moniker of a Harry Potter school house. (None of Slitheryn, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff).

But if I sound ungrateful, I am not so at all. Really. Thinking about it for a few minutes after the late night phone call, I started getting to like the idea. And then I got a copy of Biddu’s book, “Made in India”, and read over half of it in the hours leading up to the event. It is a charming book, easy to read and like. A TimeOut Mumbai essay described Biddu — admiringly, I think — as having a “penchant for silly similes”, and it’s true, and I’m admiring too. He tosses them out left and right, with the ease of a guest flinging rice at a church wedding (there, I’m doing it too). And they work, because they leave you with a smile and a nod of the head. (Click here to read the whole post)

The Kala Ghoda Art Festival 2010 kicked off to a rollicking start on Saturday. After sampling a bit of literature, visual art, music and food through the day, I finally settled on theatre for my final course in the night. The play ‘Dance Like A Man’ was being staged at Horniman Circle at 7.30 p.m.

I’ve attended music events at Horniman Circle before, most of them Kala Ghoda Art Festival events. It is an unconventional setting, a stage in the center of a park. But it works really well, more so for a play than a music concert given the intimate interaction that is possible between audience and performer.

A bench-painting event had been conducted earlier in the evening owing to which all the seating en route to the stage bore ‘Wet Paint’ signboards. It was too dark for photography and I was eager to get to the stage before the play started but I passed some interesting art on the way. (I hope one of us will be able to post photographs soon).

Just as well, I suppose, since we got there just about five minutes before the play began. All the seats were taken so we sat down on the grass and that’s how we watched the entire play. Normally, I would not consider squatting on the ground for a play but like I said, this was an unconventional setting.

The stage and seating area were edged on one side by ‘Lotuses of the Floating World’, an art installation by Sabrina Mascarehas. As I approached the area, I first thought they were diyas floating in a pool. But I soon realized that there is no water body inside the park and the temperature was the uncharacteristic cool of February rather than the heat of a hundred lamps. (Click here to read the whole post)

Confession: I am not a foodie. I have never been interested in trying out new restaurants, nor in making an effort to check out the food typical of places I’ve travelled to. So for me, it was an hour of wonder, listening to a panel discussion on food writing. I will freely also confess, what drew me was that two of the panelists (Nilanjana Roy and Shoba Narayan) have been on panels over the last few weeks discussing my recent book, Roadrunner, with me. (Shoba in Bangalore, Nilanjana in Delhi). And in November, this session’s moderator, Vikram Doctor, moderated me in another discussion. He’s invariably knowledgeable and engaging, which only made this panel more appealing still.

(Click here to read the whole post)

Moderated by Vikram Doctor- featuring Nilanjana Roy, Shoba Narayan and Rushina M Ghildiyal .  

Food writing is sizzling! Across the world the interest and amount of food writing in books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs has been exploding. It is a subject with almost guaranteed reader interest - everyone eats! everyone is hungry! Everyone has opinions on where to get the best vada-pav!

Food writing spans the spectrum from serious academic research on the role of food in societies to food as a way of discovering family histories. Food writing is now less a specialised category, than a style that cuts across genres, so you have food and history, food and science, food and crime fiction, food and romance fiction, food and politics… plus, of course, there are cookbooks!

Vikram Doctor is the Editor - Special Features at the Economic Times, but the features he writes are really excuses to support the two regular columns on food that run in the paper along with other articles on food that come in ET, the Times of India and Times Crest. His main focus is on Indian food and the many meanings it has in society and culture, both in India and the Diaspora.

Actively blogging since 2002, Rushina M. Ghildyal has been a food writer for 6 years and written thousands of articles on gastronomy in reputable international publications. She continues to be a prolific blogger and is currently working on two book projects of her own. In her career she has found the perfect cover for her obsession with all things food and brazenly uses it to legitimise her foodie idiosyncrasies; such as an obsession with getting a perfect bite - every time, shamelessly discussing food with anyone, anywhere, and going to any length to get her hands on new and exotic ingredients! Rushina began as a blogger, but quickly grew into a food writer and today heads her own consultancy company (also called A Perfect Bite). Rushina also spearheads her own consultancy firm. Called ‘A Perfect Bite’, this is a fresh new company, that offers a wide range of turnkey solutions in gastronomy related consultancy to clients in the food publishing, hospitality and restaurant businesses. A strong core team of individuals, led by Rushina specialize in identifying and putting together ensemble casts of experienced, creative professionals to best serve a projects requirements on a project to project basis.

The Kala Ghoda Art Festival 2010 kicked off this morning (yesterday morning, technically, since its past midnight as I’m writing this).

My favorite time during the entire of this annual event (Click here to read the whole post)

Saturday, 06 February 2010
20:00 - 21:00
David Sassoon Library Gardens, Kala Ghoda

What did India and the world read between 2000 and 2010? Boy wizards and vampires may have dominated the bestseller lists, but this was also the decade of Roberto Bolano, the return of the short story and the reworked spy thriller, the graphic novel and the forensic thriller. India’s translators discovered a new readership; pulp fiction in languages apart from English found countrywide fans. Though celebrity memoirs dominated the headlines, three surprising topics–climate change, food ethics and evolutionary biology–held sway over the charts. By the end of the decade, we were also debating how we would read and how reading would change, as ebook readers made an entrance.

A brief presentation celebrating and analysing the Decade of Books will be followed by a discussion between Ms Roy and critics Anita Roy and Sanjay Sipahimalani.

Nilanjana S Roy is a book reviewer, food writer and literary columnist with the Business Standard, and has worked extensively in the worlds of media and publishing. As chief editor from 2007-2009, she was part of the team that started up Tranquebar, a Chennai-and-Delhi based publishing house. She edited A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book Of Indian Food Writing; some of her short stories have appeared in the Scholastic anthologies of science fiction, horror and fantasy writing for children. Her journalism has appeared in publications from Outlook to Biblio to The Hindu and Le Monde, and can be found online at Akhond of Swat.

Sunday, 07 February 2010
18:30 - 19:30
David Sassoon Library Garden
M G Road, Kala Ghoda

The Kala Ghoda Lecture seeks to set the tone of the festival, to focus on the opportunities and challenges ahead of the community that loves books and reading. The inaugural Lecture was delivered in 2009, by Urvashi Butalia, founder of Zubaan Books.

This year, the very popular author Chetan Bhagat will speak about Reaching Out To New Readers.

Mr Bhagat’s first three books, Five Point Someone (2004), One Night @ the Call Center (2005) and The 3 Mistakes of life (2008), have done just that. They have each sold in the neighbourhood of 700,000 copies, redefining the idea of a bestseller in English. While they continue to fly off the shelves, his latest, 2 States (2009), aims to do even better.

From his website:

Chetan also writes op-ed columns for leading English and Hindi newspapers, focusing on youth and national development based issues. Many of the issues raised by Chetan’s columns have been discussed in Parliament and among the top leadership of the country.
Chetan quit his international investment banking career in 2009, to devote his entire time to writing and make change happen in the country. He lives in Mumbai with his wife Anusha, an ex-classmate from IIMA and his twin boys Shyam and Ishaan.

As I entered the David Sassoon Library Gardens, my attention was grabbed by the provocative book covers which were being flashed on the screen, beauties with guns, some with fangs and blood stained lips. I stared at them, unable to tear my eyes away. They were covers of popular Tamil pulp fiction. I wished I could read the titles.

I had missed the Pulp Fiction workshop. Gods of KG festival had slotted it for Sat and Sunday morning.  I mean, have mercy! This year I found a lot of good workshops happening earlier in the day and I had to miss them. Grrrrrrr!   It had made me doubly keen to attend the event  Pulped and Popped. I could see some girls setting up a table by the side piled with books. A girl with a rasping voice was here there and everywhere. My attention was divided between the screen and that girl.

Jerry Pinto entered the scene almost like a master-ji, asking every one to take their places. The energy levels were high and the sassy girls insisted upon sitting down on the stage. After some persuasion everyone took there seat, order was restored and Jerry started the introductions…

Meanwhile the gruesome slides were still being flashed on the screen.

The panelists were Rajshree aka Raju whose book was launched during this festival, Pritham K. Chakravarthy, Sudarshan Purohit, Kaveri Lalchand, Rakesh Khanna and Rashmi Devadasan who worked on Blaft Anthology on Tamil Pulp Fiction.

Rakesh confessed that his interest was roused by the covers of the books he used to see everyone in Chennai read, but was unable to read them himself.

Sudarshan was well versed in Hindi PF which is known as Pocket Books.

Pritham ( the the most vocal one in the group) was the only one who could both read and write Tamil,

The discussions were energetic. Pritham talked for everyone else and others listened appreciatively. Jerry did a great job of making everyone participate, even the girl who was content to hide behind Pritham

I remembered the Pulp I was hooked to James Hadley Chase, Star Comic romances, Mills And Boon ( are they  still pulp or have been declared  classics by now ? It seems ages…) I am sure everyone had their own favorites.

Meanwhile Jerry was quizzing Raju on her book. She was denying vehemently that her book falls in that category. It was Chic-lit, if you please! Don’t put it on the same shelf along with pulp. Then everyone launched in the debate defining chic-lit and pulp.

Looks like Pulp has a LOT of rules. They have to end happily. Only so much promiscuity was allowed for the main characters, bad girls had more freedom, the language also had it’s own style.

Guys, I enjoyed every minute of the hour long discussion, perhaps best in the whole series. The images were back, a stabbed woman lying in a way to display her  feminine beauty , a macho Inspector with his moll with goggles, with a skull in the back ground etc. etc. A sudden craving for pulp hit me, almost like craving for chaat!

KGAF 2009 was a far more diverse event than earlier years. There just seemed to be a lot more variety even in the themes that got exhibited.

One strong theme was living in Mumbai - that got carried across the photography exhibit and a giant art walk through. The focus here was basic hygiene factors being denied to over 65% of citizens. Starting with overcrowding, to available toilets, to water supply …. and all of these conveyed through innovative exhibits

A pyramid of plastic buckets.

The other theme, that brought a smile to the face was Chai. ‘made in Chaina’. Mithali Mehta’s exhibit seemed to gently mock at our obsession with all things foreign, while bemoaning the risk to the chai in the face of gloabalisation - don’t worry Mithali, the recession will make sure that the cutting chai will survive - and was a homage to the drink that is everyone’s favourite beverage.

And, of course, less than 10 weeks after 26/11 - there was a giant exhibit of letters and views on terrorism and terrorists. Some were simple, some were hate filled, others wondered why they hate us … in any case it seemed to be the voice of many - as opposed to a few - and it was on display in a raw form that made the words more poignant.

visitors to the exhibit reading the letters

Unfortunately I caught only the tail end of the conversation with Ganesh Devy in the David Sassoon Library garden. Somebody asked him about Naxalism. Here’s a gist of what he said.

It’s like P Sainath’s book Everybody Loves a Good Drought. It suits governments to declare areas drought-affected. In the same way, the Government says 128 districts are “Naxalite-infested.” We have about 600 districts in this country, and I’ve been to about 350. I’ve not seen so many that are affected. It helps the government to say there is this danger. It conceals the failures of development. Nobody listens to these people, so in an absurd way they are hitting back using their bodies. The media does not want to look at the fine print in these stories.

This fed well into the next session at the Garden, which was about writing on conflict. Sudeep Chakravarti, author of Red Sun, was the moderator, and said something similar to Devy. The Government says 15 of our 28 states are “Maoist-infested” — a term he detests — and if you add J&K and Nagaland and Arunachal and Manipur and a few others that are wracked by violence, you have 21. 21 of our 28 states that are going through social conflict. What is conflict if it is not endemic to India?

Sonia Jabbar read out three extracts from her forthcoming nonfiction book. One small part stuck in my mind, and I shall try to paraphrase. It was about a young man abducted in Kashmir. His sister met the abductors, and pleaded for her brothers life, while stroking one of their AK47s. It was an unmistakable sexual gesture, and it made the others present queasy: this young girl, offering the unthinkable for her brother’s life. It didn’t matter, because they killed him anyway.

Sudeep played two short audio clips, intercepts of police transmissions in Chhatisgarh. The first is some quick intructions from a senior officer to his men. If they find journalists who are going to cover the Naxalites, said this officer and all of us in the Garden heard him, “unko seedha marwa dena.”

The second is about reaching out to villagers in these areas. Reach out once, reach out twice … if after the third time the cops think the villagers are still supporting Naxals, tell them “tumhara gaon jala denge.”

The next session, I am to moderate. Right about now, I feel distinctly queasy.

Wednesday evening at KGAF: With about half an hour free before we had to meet someone, we braved the nonstop MG Road traffic and crossed to the David Sassoon Library garden. (Why do people in cars refuse to let pedestrians cross?)

Trees with exposed roots, the famous little cats, the smattering of eager listeners: there’s something about that little pocket garden. As we sat down, a frail older lady stepped hesitantly in the dark over the roots right in front of me. Inevitably, she stumbled. I reached out and grabbed her arm, whereupon she shot me a murderous look. I quake at the memory.

A Gujarati poetry session was near its end. Reading his poem at the mike was Dileep Jhaveri. I’m not much of a poetry fan, and I don’t know Gujarati, but I caught enough of his words to get some sense of what it was about. The poem spoke about finding a sword used by the poet’s great-grandfather, drawing some kind of a parallel to a pen … I was intrigued enough that I decided to ask him afterward if he had a translation. But when he finished, to my delight Jhaveri said he would now read out the same poem in English. And it was indeed about a sword and a pen, musing about what his great-grandson would think if he found the poet’s pen some day…

I realize I’m successfully murdering the poem with my attempted paraphrase, so I will cease and desist right here. I hope to have the actual translation soon, and if I do, I will post it here.

In the few minutes before the next event kicked off, Syed Ansari climbed on stage and rattled off three quick Urdu couplets. Once bitten … I’m reluctant to paraphrase some very elegant lines, so I will say only that the third couplet touched a chord. He introduced it saying it was about progress and development, and it spoke of how we build so many bridges that seem only to take us to where we came from.

I can think of many bridges like that. Real ones, metaphorical ones.

(Click here to read the whole post)

I waited at the Sassoon Gardens at 4.30  as requested .  I had been dragooned into helping out at the Places for Poetry event, a relay poetry reading. Mind Boggled. How the heck does one read relay? I pictured our veteran poets zooming from venue to venue on roller skates (Maybe next year. That will make fitness a prime criteria for participation).

Ranjit breezed in. He always seems to breeze in. After playing with the resident cat a little he got down to business. He explained to everyone, where they gathered, where each one started. Gave us lists explaining who will be where at what point of the evening and we all trooped off to our appointed venues.

I was to take charge of the readings at Kala Ghoda Cafe opp. Trishna, in a little lane near Rhythm House. The place was small and cozy place with hell of an ambiance. Every one went Oooo! The owner welcomed us and shooed away a guy at a corner table who was peacefully working on his laptop. “Let him be” I tried to say, “we need an audience.” But the owner was quite clear how he wanted things done.” That place is reserved for the poets.”  In the meanwhile we had lost one potential listener who had packed his laptop and left.

I had with me Arundhati Subramaniam, Malavika Sangghavi, and Vivek Tandon, the three who were starting the session. We looked around and wondered if we were supposed to wait for anyone to come in. The owner offered that he and the waiters would love to sit and listen. Arundhati started reading and thus began what turned out to be a memorable evening. One after the other the poets were reading. It stopped to matter how many were there. They were reading to each other. I had to make an effort to remember to look at time. The evening was enlivened by Vivek’s dramatic reading, Jeet strumming his guitar, Peter playing Rapunzel from the loft….

A few who peeked in the cafe vanished when they saw the lively bunch. It must have appeared a private gathering to them.

Half way through we broke for a round of coffee. The owner had kept tea - coffee machines shut as they caused disturbance. After finishing with their own reading each poet would leave for the next venue, the new ones would walk in. A few along with me were constant. Soon Manisha walked in and I realized that the evening was almost over. In one evening I had listened to Arundhati Subramaniam, Malvika Sangghavi, Vivek Tandon, Peter Griffin, Arjun Bali, Mustansir Dalvi, Adil Jussawala, Rochelle Potkar, Ranjit Hoskote, Jeet Thayil, Sampurna Chatterji, Manisha Lakhe, Jerry Pinto and Annie Zaidi. PHEW!

My feelings about this event? I loved it and I wish more people had taken advantage of such unique an event. I hope to see this again next year and hope there will be a board outside announcing this as a public event. And my earlier suggestion about the roller skates still stands :)

My photographs of the event are here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soney/

The first day of KG always overwhelms me. The colours, the sounds, the energy gives me a kind of high that stays with me for days to come.

After roaming all over the grounds looking at the market place, fighting the crowds in the amphi, eating a plate of chaat, envying the little kids having fun ( I WANT A SURF TEE SHIRT TOO !! PLEASE ?? ) I reached David Sasoon garden for the opening session of the KG lit. events, something I have been waiting for these past few weeks.

First shock. Where …Oh Where is the green bench ? What happened to My GREEN BENCH ? The molded plastic chairs, though economical and durable , are no match for My Green Bench!

I settled in a plastic chair ( identical to the ones on stage).Shriram R did the introductions, Anita Roy ( who we were told, plays good violin)  the moderator and Urvashi Butalia the main speaker took their places ( The plastic chairs).

She gave a wonderful speech. The publishing business, the kind of books that are published, people’s reading habits, and how few people buy books in India. Urvashi, I hereby promise to buy as many books as I can ! And read them of course!

One comment in her speech stayed with me and that was, we have very few books in Braille. I had read this point discussed just a few months earlier. I being as visually challenged as an owl have always been fascinated by Braille.

The KG Lit events were now officially opened. I wished it was cooler, like last year! Now for ten days Sasoon Garden was going to be a second home to me.

The cats settled under my chair.  They looked glad to have me back. Me too Cat, me too. Everything was just as should be. I just wished the Green Bench was there.

David Sassoon Library Garden

7/2/2009 

17:00-18:00

Urvashi Butalia will officially open the Kalaghoda literature festival with a lecture. This is to be followed by a brief discussion with Anita Roy, the moderator, and an interactive session with the audience.
(Click here to read the whole post)