Pablo Ganguli must be quite tired by now.There have been politicians to put on the podium, media to manage, authors toorganise, sponsors to schmooze, books to launch... Maybe it’s his youth—orhis hardworking backup team—but he seems to be thriving on it. This22-year-old impresario has crammed into his short adult life what most of usmight never achieve. Apart from organising a UK-Arab media festival inMarrakech, where he now lives, and Papua New Guinea’s first ever women’srights conference, the latest feather in this Bengali Boy Wonder’s knitted capis the Kitab Festival—"A British-Indian Literary and MediaExtravaganza"—held at the Habitat Centre from 7 to 9 April.
"This is not a book festival," he protests. "It’s bringing people fromall over to share ideas, to voice their opinions. We’ve got politicians andfilm stars, journalists, editors, publishers, diplomats—the lot." Hisqualifications for pulling this off? "Networking." And watching him work theroom, his shock of yellow-blond hair bobbing like a firefly, he is clearly amaster of the art. "And I guess I’m very passionate about what I do," headds. "I mean, just look at Fashion Week... a normal person can’t even wearthat stuff, but look at the amount of coverage it’s got! And we’ve brought aformer member of the Shadow cabinet, the literary editors of all the leadingnewspapers in the UK and all these authors together and not even 150 people canbe bothered to show up? It’s disgraceful." In a more philosophical tone heconcedes that even the Edinburgh festival started small. "My biggest failingis that I just do things too fast," he smiles ruefully, pausing briefly tobreathe before launching into his next Big Project: "The Majestic PetraWeekend" starring VS Naipaul and Mariah Carey, Sting and Vikram Seth. Hold onto your hats.
This article originally appeared in Delhi City Limits, April 30, 2006
