A Tale of Two LitFests
Chasing
that elusive book buyer for my debut novel Anveshana, the Search in a never
ending and most frustrating Anveshana, I had the chance to attend two
Literature Festivals recently. One the Kochi Literature Festival on 8th
and 9th December 2016 and the other the Bangalore Literature
Festival on 17th and 18th December 2016. Thanks to my
sister V.R.Devika’s connections, my book had a launch at the Kochi Festival
while Atta Galatta had the book on sale at the Bangalore LitFest. It was great
to meet Vidushi Shyamala Surendran and see her beautiful home and dance school.
The
differences between the two festivals were quite revealing and interesting. One
could use that often bandied expression ‘Difference between Bharath and India’.
Kochi had that native charm with Malayalam dominating while Bangalore was full
of English flaunting culture-vulture glitterati. The large crowds at Bangalore
were literally eating out of the hands of celebrity guests, Shashi Tharoor,
Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi. It was a joy to see and hear Dr.Satya Vrat
Shastri, 95 year old Sanskrit scholar from New Delhi at Kochi so clear in his
diction and thinking. Obvious at the Kochi Festival was the erudition and
scholarship of well known Kerala writers, C.Radhakrishnan, T.P Sreenivasan,
Dr.K.G.Paulose and Natyacharya V.P.Dhananjayan. It was heartening that
Dhanajayan who has read and liked my book referred to it in his speech at the
inaugural session. Kerala has tremendous numbers of readers though mostly in
Malayalam. Well known works in various languages get translated into Malayalam
and you will find most readers are well aware of literary trends and are well
informed. Quite a bit of space was given at the Kochi Fest for works from other
Indian languages. At Bangalore, publishers spoke on What Makes a Best Seller
and Ex-pats talked about writing with a foreign setting.
It
was very gratifying to listen to my sister Prathibha Nandakumar and Vivek
Shanbhag talk about ‘Poetry through the times’ in Kannada & English at the
Bangalore Fest.
·
At the Kochi Fest,
T.P.Sreenivasan said that Kerala readers are so familiar with Brazilian author Paulo
Coehlo and his works that many of them think he is a Malayali!
·
Ran into Gurucharan Das at
the Atta Galatta Book shop. He was protesting why his latest book was nor
displayed prominently. However well-known you are, you have to keep making
efforts to sell your book.
·
When asked at the seminar
why he had started writing erotica at his age, Gurucharan Das replied that he
was engaged in the practice of erotica when was younger and did not have the
time to write!
·
A cup of coffee cost ₹100 at
Bangalore while you could get Chaya(tea) for ₹8 at Kochi.
·
Both had enough to satisfy
some of the hunger for literary talk and were worth visiting.
