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Excerpts from Delhi Daybook
February 6, 2008
While Mumbai is where the money and movies are, and Kolkata, arguably, retains its status as India’s culture crucible, Delhi is where Indian publishing is based, along with much of its attendant journalism.
My first call in Delhi was to Nilanjana Roy, to whom I’d secured an e-introduction from Suketu Mehta (whose New York follow-up to his Bombay magnum opus, Maximum City, is much awaited).
As chief editor of EastWest and Westland Books, Roy has recently made the jump from journalism to publishing as part of a wave of new houses setting up shop in India. Her advice on mapping the scene: go to Jaipur.
It happened that my trip coincided with two back-to-back festivals in the nearby city of Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. The first, Translating Bharat, concerned the complex and changing transactions between English, Hindi, and what are often called “The Languages”—the 10s and 100s of languages spoken, and written, within India’s borders (Bengali, Marathi, Oriya and Tamil, to name just a few). The Jaipur Literature Festival, which followed, was a more familiar stars and locals affair, featuring, at first glance, Ian McEwan, Nayantara Sahgal (Nehru’s niece), and many others.
[…]
Jaipur is a city of 2.7 million about 5 hours by train across the Rajasthan desert from Delhi. It has justly famous architecture (the Hawa Palace features an intimate outdoor theatre where poets performed directly across from the King and Queen). Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (aka the Queen) was reportedly vacationing there when I arrived.
Arrived at the lovely Diggi Palace on the last day of Translating Bharat, in time to catch a panel featuring the poet and fiction writer Sampurna Chattarji, who was there in her capacity as a translator from, and to, Hindi and Bengali.
I also caught the segment of pseudonymous novelist Yasmina Khadra, after which, around one of the fires of the Diggi Palace garden that kept off the nighttime chill, a wide-ranging discussion developed between Khadra, Abhijit Tamhane of the Maharashtra Times, and Mahmood Farooqi, an actor, writer and director.
At dinner following the conference, I talked with Outlook’s Sheela Reddy (whose coverage of the conference and of the Jaipur Festival is worth logging into Outlook for), with Taylor & Francis marketing executive Lauretta Syiem, and with Penguin Books India managing editor and rights manager Diya Kar Hazra. All had insight into the recent swell of English-language publishing activity, as did Mumbai writer and activist Shubhangi Swarup.
A quick handshake with Mail Today editor and Entry from Backside Only author Binoo K. John, and I was off for the night, with the Festival to start the following day.
[…]
The Jaipur Literature Festival (pictures here) has come a long way in six years. Some of the credit has to go to tireless organizer Mita Kapur, whose Siyahi consultancy was what made Translating Bharat the engaged and intimate event it was. Didn't manage to catch festival "wizard" Sanjoy Roy.
After opening remarks by the eminent Nayantara Sahgal, a panel on Rajasthani writing convened, and then it was time for lunch. I chatted with graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee and HarperCollinsIndia publisher and chief editor Karthika V.K. about Ben Katchor and PW’s own Heidi MacDonald.
Mahmood Farooqi prepared for a performance, with a little help from Ambarish Satwik and others. Among other things, Farooqi is a practitioner of Dastangoi, or the art of reciting traditional Urdu romantic epics (dastans). Farooqi was to be introduced by novelist and Hindustan Times editor Indrajit Hazra (here he is on Ian McEwan), whose third novel is coming out this spring.
“Was to be” because I had to catch a train back to Delhi.
[…]
Back in Delhi, confirmed with the novelists Sagarika Ghose (she’s also a CNN India anchor and journalist--she was McEwan's interlocutor at Jaipur) and Abha Dawesar (PW Q&A here) that we’d meet in the coffee shop of the Imperial Hotel. I arrived at as grand a spot a coffee shop (with garden) could ever hope to be. We talked for about an hour, ranging over everything from the differences in reception in the U.S., U.K., Europe and India to writing about sex as a female writer in India. (Podcast TK.)
After stopping in at a film studies conference at Delhi University, had dinner with the poet Vivek Narayanan, where we mused on the similarities and differences between the New York and Delhi writing scenes.
On my last morning, I had breakfast with HarperCollins’s Karthika, where, among other things, we talked about TV promotion for books, and selling fiction. (We also got into heated debates about Cricket and Baseball.)
The next time I go, I imagine the Jaipur conference will reach all the way to Delhi and back.
Posted by Michael Scharf on February 6, 2008 | Comments (3)
