Continuing the annual tradition, yesterday I attended the 12th edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival #blrlitfest. Scouring the website before going to Lalit Ashok, I found that while there weren’t many celebrities (apart from the usual suspects of mainstream authors and Huma Qureshi), there were a lot many sessions being conducted – in fact the main BLF event (the other one being CLF for kids) had 5 sections (Lawns, Poolside, Tennis Court, Red Couch & Blue Couch) this time around instead of a usual 4. That meant skillful peripatetism had to be showcased on my part to ensure that I don’t miss out on talks of my interest.
The cheapskate in me was overjoyed when they mentioned on the website that they had free shuttle service from the nearest metro station, so braving the Purple Line traffic & swinging my hands in my pockets – I reached there just 19 rupees lighter and without a splitting headache that I get in a smelly Ola/Uber.
Quickly scanning the brochure – I decided to attend the session on ‘Raja Ravi Varma: An Everlasting Imprint’ by Ganesh V Shivaswamy with Alka Pande. Because they had changed the layout of the Fest to accommodate one more section, it took me some time to reach there (I heard bits & pieces of Ashwin Sanghi at the Lawns & Sudha Murthy at the Poolside on the way– I didn’t linger as I had heard them before). I shamelessly barged in mid-session in the Blue Couch and plopped myself in one of the available seats while Ganesh & Alka were discussing why Ravi Varma was so popular amongst the masses – how democratization & one-to-many access helped him become more popular and richer. There were two aspects to it – Ravi Varma the painter had skillfully obtained the patronage of the various maharajahs of the country by establishing close relations with the diwans of these kingdoms (Travancore, Baroda amongst others) – allowing him to spread his art across the length and width of the country in his unique style and other was opening up a Ravi Varma lithographic printing press to sell the prints of Hindu Gods & Goddesses in the scenes which have been adapted from the Mahabharat, the Ramayana & the Puranas. While initially the Ravi Varma Press was a failure under the administration of his brother Raja Raja Varma – when it was sold to the German technician of the press, it started seeing some success. It was news to me that the calendars featuring the Gods that were so ubiquitous across Indian homes were actually paintings by Ravi Varma, over and above featuring as labels for Agarbatti & matchbox brands & cotton bales – exported across the world. You always learn something new…
As a matter of economy & efficiency so that I can cram in as many sessions as possible, I had decided early-on that I won’t ask unnecessary questions to impress the panelists (which I have done in the past) or linger around them post session to have a word with them (selfie!). So even though Ramachandra Guha was prowling around the Speakers’ lounge the entire day (I brushed past him twice or thrice as I was going from one session to the other – once overhearing Sagarika Ghosh greeting him, “Always a pleasure to meet you here”) or Anand Neelakantan clicking selfies with his enamored readers – I busily brushed past them always with a twinge of regret that I couldn’t snoop in on their conversations or get a selfie.
Post Ravi Varma, I decided to attend ‘Bad Boys and Bad Girls: The Anti-Heroes of Mythology’ by Anand Neelakantan, Koral Dasgupta, Madhavi Mahadevan, Ranjith Radhakrishnan with Ravi Singh. While the moderator tried giving equal opportunity to all the 4 speakers, it was clear from the start – that Anand was going to take the center stage. With his inimitable style of speaking, controversial opinions presented without mincing words (‘Draupadi is the weakest female character in the Indian mythology’) and stage presence – Anand directly the flow of discussion around his view-points while Madhavi & Ranjith demurely listened. Koral was one feisty lady who tried fighting the reality-distortion field of Anand and the later half of a discussion was simply a tennis match between the two while others watched & the moderator stopped moderating. Yet Anand had a unique perspective and raised pertinent points like – “Did Hanuman get Karma-fal when he burnt the city of Lanka and numerous innocent citizens died?” He also proposed that the Epicurean / Charak’s philosophy of ‘Eat, Drink and be merry’ is better than the Karma theory, and asked us to soak in rampant materialism and enjoy life. I was intrigued by the man and hence attended another of his session that day in the second-half (‘Nala Damayanti: A tale of love’ where the tête-à-tête between Anand & Koral continued).
Next was ‘Indian Icon: A cult called Royal Enfield’ by Amrit Raj with Karthik Venkatesh. It was again an insightful session on an iconic India brand by a former columnist of Mint. How an HUL hire helped turn around the sales of the Himalayan range of bikes when they actually started listening to what customers actually wanted? From trying to be a me-too of Jawa / Harley Davidson to actually starting to own their Indian roots and foraying into mass-premium, while ensuring that their quality of manufacturing is top-notch – how this change in strategy helped the brand reap dividends in terms of revenue and profitability.
With afternoon heat setting in and people thronging in line to get their burgers and noodles, I jump-shipped from couple of sessions that didn’t hold my interest. ‘Madam Commissioner: The Extraordinary Life of an Indian Police Chief’ by Meeran Chadha Borwankar with Shevlin Sebastian was one such session. While Meeran madam is a formidable lady who had done a lot and seen a lot more in her extensive career as an IPS officer (witnessed riots in Mumbai or interacted with Ajmal Kasab when he was captured) – the session didn’t hold my interest primarily due to lazy questioning by Shelvin. He couldn’t bring out the best of so much material that was already available and seemed to be asking anodyne questions (“whether politicians are to blame for corruption?”) instead of asking some nuanced questions that would allow Meeran to talk more about her actual life-experiences. He had come unprepared & didn’t seem to have done any research on the person or her book. Post which I attended the session ‘UnderCover Artists: Designing Book Jackets’ by Ahlawat Gunjan, Ausra Kiudulaite, Elsa Mroziewicz, Pinaki De with Rashmi Menon as the subject piqued my interest. But the panelists didn’t intrigue me, and I was soon getting listless and hence left mid-way.
Traversing hither & thither, I later came back to Lawns to attend a session ‘Tell It Like It is’ by Gideon Haigh, Sagarika Ghose, Suhasini Haidar with Vasanthi Hariprakash. It was an interesting configuration of left-leaning reporters & a cricket journalist and I was a bit confused why was an Australian sports journalist was part of the panel? A quick google check told me that Gideon compared Indian cricket fans in blue jerseys during World Cup to Hitler supporters! Ah, a session on reporting the truth as is while the panel itself was biased. Nice, it was a pat on the back of the panelists that while they were speaking on polarization, social media amplifying our biases and need to be wary of echo-chambers, they themselves were acting as echo-chambers of each other’s opinions. It was a regular Modi- / Arnab Goswami-bashing session with nothing new to offer. When the moderator asked a question on the polarization in media – Godi media & “other” media, Sagarika was quick to take offense and asked the moderator to repeat herself (subtext: to ensure that the moderator was not calling “other” media by any other name like the tukde-tukde gang / anti-national even when she was asking in a rhetorical sense). The moderator clarified that she was talking about Godi media vs other media, I sniggered. While the discussion was winding down to a tepid end, Vasanthi asked a hard-hitting question, “Today’s audience don’t want to watch the news. They pick up the bias of the news channel (whether left- or right-leaning) basis which they decide whether to peruse the content or not. In such a scenario – how to ensure that ‘truth’ is reaching the audience, without the ideology-bias creeping in and ensuring viewer trust?” The panelists were not able to answer it very satisfactorily and vaguely asked the audience to consume more news and decide for themselves. In other words, their truth is the only truth which the illiterate Indian masses need to consume and glean reality as the panelists perceive it.
While on-stage there were no fireworks, off-stage Ramachandra Guha offered plenty. The session was jam-packed and I was standing to a side, my legs paining from all the walking and standing. Mr. Guha came and stood near me, listening to Ms. Ghosh’s words with rapt attention. A fellow star-struck audience member immediately went to Mr. Guha to request for a selfie. Mr. Guha brusquely pushed that man aside and shushed him, telling him he was listening to a very important discussion. The poor man immediately left the Lawns, not to prolong his humiliation.
After attending ‘Kashmir: A Partition Story’ by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar with Kalpana Raina, I had to decide between the session by Ramachandra Guha ‘Personality Cults and Democratic Decline’ or ‘From Monica to Zeba: Reel to writing’ by Huma Qureshi with Sidharth Jain. As I had already attended one of Guha’s session before in earlier editions of BLF (all ‘fire & brimstone’ from a podium kept at the left and the man, the legend – reading out from the extensive notes that he had prepared for the session and raining fire on Modi & BJP), I decided to skip it and attend Huma’s session instead. It turned out to be a poor choice as Huma’s session was plain boring. She was reading excerpts from her novel & while she had a sensuous voice and appealing presence – her writing style & the story had no appeal. She closed the reading with a “sex scene” (her voice dropped a few decibels when she read out the word ‘sex’, feeling a bit coy) featuring a Bollywood star Raees Khan – RK but wink wink SRK really. Huma admitted that the scene didn’t have a point (nor did the random insertion of a Bollywood star at the end of the novel) except for the superheroine to blow off some steam after saving the world. What if a similarly gratuitous sex scene was written by a male author?
Post this, I went to ‘Irrfan: A life in Movies’ by Shubhra Gupta with Vasanthi Hariprakash. Having read earlier movie reviews by Shubhra in Indian Express, I had high expectations from the session – and it turned out to be indeed a heart-warming session discussing Irrfan’s life and body of work.
After this, I was dead tired. Yet I decided to stay a bit for ‘Gen AI Ink: Literary Cyborg’ by Anil Ananthaswamy, Gautam Bhatia, Kanishka Gupta, Tashan Mehta with Krish Ashok as the sci-fi aficionado in me wouldn’t let me leave if I didn’t attend a session on speculative fiction or in this case – speculation on the future of fiction itself. I was grossly disappointed. While the panelist was asking question that AI would mirror human authors and start churning out bestsellers, and how we should cope with that reality – Tashan Mehta (author) and another publisher bloke whose name I am not able to figure out from the above list of panelists were just winging it without giving two cents of thought to the question asked. Tashan was telling that writing is a process of self-reflection and at the end of finishing a book, a writer becomes more aware about herself and the world around her and because of this – she didn’t think AI would impact the publishing industry at large. And the publisher bloke was telling that books don’t sell in India – that we need more readers. That’s why he doesn’t see AI as a threat. What they failed to see, according to me, is that technology that can write many thousand books aping the styles of all the bestselling authors out there without charging any royalty or suffering from writers’ block can very well threaten the careers of many authors in future. I didn’t wait for the discussion to go in that direction, I left after a bit.
Coming to BLF is always fun, and it was no different this year. Had a ball!
Alienman 