About Jaipur Literature Festival

I have a tendency to look for utterly inconsequential details of life. This is within the fact that everything, including the universe, is utterly inconsequential.

The Jaipur Literature Festival has become not just India’s but Asia’s largest such annual gathering. The five-day festival has just begun in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. Author William Dalrymple and publisher Namita Gokhle together have created something of lasting value in holding this event. Authors of great merit, from English and other languages, attend the event where anyone interested can walk in without any ticket or connection. The whole atmosphere is one of informal conviviality.

I give this backdrop for a reason. Given the conscious decision by Dalrymple and Gokhle to keep the proceedings so accessible, it is a bit amusing to read this bit about how celebrity authors display no starry airs at the event.

Both Dalrymple himself and a piece in The Daily Best by Olivia Cole mention how once author Vikram Seth sat on the floor and ate his food when he did not find a chair. This trivia is mentioned with obvious admiration and the intention seems to underscore how humble a great author becomes in the friendly settings of the festival. The import of mentioning Seth sitting on the floor, as opposed to in an ornate chair, and eating food is lost on me. Why is sitting on the floor a sign of anything, let alone humility? And that too in the midst of a gathering of people who think of themselves as above such ceremonies as where they may sit and eat.

Vikram Seth squatting with his legs crossed and eating food with his bare hands is not emblematic of anything. Period.

P.S.: That felt good.