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Just how irresistible this mix of work and play has proved is apparent from the steady stream of inquiries still pouring in at the festival headquarters in Jaipur. Among the last-minute confirmations are Fatima Bhutto and Aamir Khan. Several more, including Indra Sinha, Kamila Shamsie, music memoirist Namita Devidayal and 'tree man' Pradip Krishen were squeezed into parallel events at a newly-sponsored tent by Outlook for readings. Dozens of writers who wanted to be part of the programme had to be turned away with a promise to be accommodated next year. Dozens more, including Amartya Sen and Ramachandra Guha, decided to take rain checks for next year because of their schedules. It has turned out to be the season's most fashionable squeeze.
And it nearly didn't happen. William Dalrymple, one of the festival's three directors, says, "The prospect of holding the litfest this year looked really dim, even until October last year." Dalrymple, who regards the litfest as his own baby, stepped in to rescue it from going the way of most litfests in India: starting with a bang, and then folding up without a whimper. Until October, there were no star writers on the programme, and without them, no sponsors either. But three months of working the phone and e-mails by Dalrymple have produced results—a big budget, two-tent, star-studded affair that's attracting readers from across the subcontinent and beyond.
After all, as Dalrymple doesn't fail to point out triumphantly, "Where else in the world can you have world literary stars like Gore Vidal and Ian McEwan rubbing shoulders with an unknown or first-time writer from India? Where else can you have a litfest where the writers have no green room and are available all day to any reader who wants to meet them?"
But many feel such breath-catching growth has its own pitfalls. Will the litfest become a victim of its own success and collapse under the pulls in many directions? The tell-tale signs of the literary mafia is patent in the programme, with the same old faces in the same tired panels; rifts between the organisers have stretched the festival to an impractical eight days, and the charm of discovering unexpected and unheard-of voices is receding as the festival grows bigger; some of the warm intimacy may be lost in the confusion of two events going on at the same time; there are murmurs about it turning into a "gora sahibs' festival"; and more murmurs of it turning into a tamasha, more filmy than literary. Publishers complain they haven't been given enough space for their authors and books; writers complain they've been left out to make room for cronies...just the same old whingeing, Indian ishtyle, or is there something to it? Come to Jaipur next week and decide for yourself.
