Teen spirit smell
Nadeem Aslam’s (Maps for Lost Lovers, The Blind Man's Garden) next novel is based on a short story he wrote when he was 13. As a youngster, he had written 27 short stories and put them all in a scrapbook. Then his family had to flee Pakistan. Thirty years on, a distant relative gave him his old scrapbook. “And I saw this short story, just a three or four paras long. And I can say this now, as it is someone else when you are 13: it was absolutely brilliant. I am writing it as a 300-page novel,” he said at the Jaipur litfest. From anyone else this might sound pompous, but Nadeem is so earnest it only disarms you.
VM’s Many Lives
After the super success of Lucknow Boy, Vinod Mehta is already headlong into its sequel (yes, autobiographies can have sequels if the author feels he has not said it all). But the publisher has run into a roadblock. What should it be called? 'Delhi Boy' is one option, as this part deals with Vinod’s life in the capital. 'Lucknow Boy in Lutyens Delhi' is another. Or simply 'Lucknow Boy 2', like blockbuster films. Watch this space for the final name.
Fest-ache Season
The season of litfests is not yet over. After the big ones in Bombay, Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Jaipur and Delhi (and of course Kathmandu and Thimphu), the bandwagon now moves to Bihar for the Patna litfest. As a veteran who never attends litfests quipped, “If half the year a certain bunch of writers are only going from one litfest to another, when do they ever sit down to write?”
