Growing up in Thiruvananthapuram in the 80s, the closest thing to a literary festival we had in the city were the many poetry gatherings or kaviyarangu. Staged often at the Victoria Jubilee Town (VJT) Hall, these gave us glimpses into how poetry can be taken to a different level when powerfully recited. The leader here was poet Kadammanitta with his strongly oral poetry. Chemmenem Chacko was the poet of delightful satire. Later came Prof. P. Madhusoodhanan Nair who popularized 'cassette poetry' and still younger men like Murukan Kattakkada. At the initiative of cartoonist Sukumar, the late P.C. Sanal Kumar IAS, Krishna Poojappura (who made a mark as a screenwriter too) and other humorists, the city also saw occasional sessions devoted to humor and wit called Chiriyarangu. But a full-fledged literary festival that encompassed all genres was still unheard of here. A rare elitist 'conclave' of say, feminist writing in the odd college or hotel hardly evinced public interest. At the same time, we read about the annual jamboree called Jaipur Literary Festival in India, Bhutan Literary Festival outside and the big names of the literary world who attended it. This was a glaring lacuna in our state which prided itself in its high literacy and where the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has almost honorary citizenship.
Therefore I was terribly excited when in July of 2008 I heard that we were going to have something called Kovalam Literary Festival. I took a day's leave from work and set out for the picturesque Kovalam beach a ten-kilometer drive from the city and renowned as a tourist hotspot. The event was a two-day affair at the Taj Green Cove Hotel there. A mostly English language literature event, it was the brainchild of senior journalist Binoo K John who curated it. An endowment lecture in memory of his late father, journalist K.C. John, was part of the agenda. Publishing honchos like V.K. Karthika of Harper Collins (She moved on to start Westland Publishing), Mike Bryan of Penguin India and Ravi Decee of DC Books attended the event for which writers were flown in from various parts of the country and abroad. The chat sessions and debates were a feast like nothing we had heard of before. Among the announced names, Shobhaa De and Chetan Bhagat were the absentees. But we had the fortune to watch in the flesh Tarun Tejpal (after the right-wing government ran amok and put him through Kafkaesque trials for his Tehelka exposes and before he embroiled himself in a sex scandal), William Dalrymple (travel writer and curator of JLF), Gulzar (the lyrist-screenwriter had not won Oscar and Phalke yet), Jaishree Misra, Patrick French (V.S. Naipaul's biographer), Namita Devidayal, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Boria Majumdar, Sunil Sethi (of the delightful Just Books show on NDTV), Shashi Tharoor and poet-dancer-novelist Tishani Doshi.
Tharoor had lost the race for UN Chief and joined the Gulf-based Afras business group. Then he tested the Thiruvananthapuram waters with a soft skills training Academy in Technopark. He had not yet ventured into politics but had shown some indications about his inclinations by visiting Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the copies of his latest book, a collection of columns called 'The Elephant, Cellphone and the Tiger'. Clad in a black juba, set mundu and angavasthram, he recited the poetry of the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish who had been recently deceased. Gulzar's poems translated to English by Pavan. K. Varma, Tejpal's debut novel The Alchemy of Desire, Devidayal's brilliant music novel The Music Room, Misra's novel on Jhansi Rani called Rani and Dalrymple's Nine Lives (one of the accounts is about a Kannur Theyyam dancer) were the attractions of the festival. I remember attending a morning session when a teenage-looking girl in a skimpy dress and seemingly hung over, appeared at the entrance of the hall. After surveying the room she trooped in, came and sat right next to me, took out her mobile and started typing away furiously. I realized soon that she was 26-year-old Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, one of the most popular bloggers in the country and author of the coming-of-age novel You Are Here. Another way of introducing her is as the only child of prominent Malayalam writer and Bihar cadre IAS man N.S. Madhavan and Outlook India editor Sheela Reddy. She was possibly writing her blog sitting there. She was to be in the next session which was on chick lit, anchored by V. K. Karthika. Meenakshi's book is a fun read, of rebellious youth and late nights and vodka binges. If so far I had known about terms like 'football buddies' and 'cards buddies', this book enlightened me about 'fuck buddies'. Khushwant Singh wrote nicely about the book (well, Sheela once collaborated with Singh on his book 'Why I Supported The Emergency', but the Sardar was a just man) in The Tribune. In later years Meenakshi went on to write many more novels.
I must confess I read Namita Devidayal's book only much later, after reading a great review by S. Jayachandran Nair of Samakalika Malayalam weekly. It is one of my favorite books today. A biopic of her Hindustani music guru Dhondutai Kulkarni, the book is at once about music, about Bombay, about the sheer nostalgia of one's formative years. The professional journalist and musician recently wrote another biography, this time about Ustad Vilayat Khan. Tejpal's novel was very popular and won many awards in Europe but I don't think it won the deserving acclaim in India. He went on to write two more novels. One of the best discoveries for me was Binoo himself! His book Entry from Backside Only: Hazar Fundas of Indian English is a laugh riot. I have been following his writing ever since. The KLF lasted a few more editions, shifting venues to Kanakakunnu Palace and later VJT Hall, by which time it had shrunk to a one-day affair. But still we could see a host of literary celebrities come down to the tranquil city - people like Fatima Bhutto, Farrokh Dhondy, Shehan Karunatilake, Kiran Nagarkar, Om Puri, Tushar Gandhi, Biswanath Ghosh, T. M. Krishna, Anita Nair, N.S. Madhavan, Raghu Karnad, Suresh Menon, et al not to mention the incredibly young historian Manu S. Pillai and his erstwhile boss Tharoor. Even though I read everything that cricket journalist Suresh Menon writes, I never thought I could meet him in person and get hold of autographed copies of his books on Bishan Bedi and Tiger Pataudi (edited by him). The KLF sadly ground to a halt in 2016.
Starting 2010, there were a couple of editions of Hay Festival conducted at Kanakakunnu Palace, modeled after the Hay-on-Wye Festival in the UK. Vikram Seth and Germaine Greer are two big names I spotted at these events. Kozhikode and Kochi witnessed some literary festivals in recent years but with heavy 'left of center' leaning in the selection of speakers and programs. A remarkable new and grand development is the Mathrubhumi Literary Festival which inaugurated in 2018. Now two editions old, this is a truly international event spread over a week and showcasing the best of English, Malayalam and other language writers. This might seem like a funny coincidence but at the inaugural edition, I was seated in a back row of a jam-packed hall watching the very popular Tharoor in conversation with cricket historian Mihir Bose in one of the venues when a lady in her late fifties came and sat beside me. She asked me who it was with Tharoor on stage and we got chatting. Then she enquired where 'Bamboo Grove' venue was as she had a session coming up there. Upon which I gave her a look and asked her her name. I had been reading Sheela Reddy on Outlook for long but never once chanced to see a picture of hers! She was here with her book 'Mr. and Mrs. Jinnah' a product of four years of research on the weird (as all things about him are) marriage of Quaid-e-Azam. I told her how I love her husband's and daughter's books too and later got her to autograph my copy of her book.
The festivals enable us to sample a cross-section of writings and watch writers up close - like young slam poet from Delhi Adithi Dhital reciting her poem under the banyan tree or veteran journalists Anil Dharker and T J S George recounting their professional journeys. Where else can one hope to see modern voices in Malayalam fiction like Benyamin, Unni R, Subhash Chandran, and TD Ramakrishnan sit together and discuss their craft at length? Going beyond mere book readings/ discussions, the festival has taken on a true carnival flavor by holding concerts, showcasing arts and artisans and conducting writing competitions for youngsters. Hopefully, sponsors will keep the flame alive and Thiruvananthapuram will continue to be a fertile ground for ideas and imagination.
PS: During the last Hay Festival I was seated in the main hall of Kanakakunnu palace watching Tharoor engaging a greying rock star in conversation on stage. Someone patted me on the back and I saw a beaming Mani Shankar Iyer (yes the former Union Minister, Stephanian intellectual and IFS man from Mayiladuthurai) in flowing orange kurta and white pajama asking me about the man on stage, ‘Bob Geldof, isn’t it?’ I am like ’yesssir!’ Then I was distracted by the sight of the former Foreign Secretary Padma Bhushan Shyam Saran casually walking by. One man I always spotted among the audience in these festivals (as also any book fair in the city) was the quiet and resourceful ex-St Josephite (that's my school. He was a year senior) Venugopal, who headed Deccan Chronicle and who sadly passed away seven years ago.
(May 2019)
Therefore I was terribly excited when in July of 2008 I heard that we were going to have something called Kovalam Literary Festival. I took a day's leave from work and set out for the picturesque Kovalam beach a ten-kilometer drive from the city and renowned as a tourist hotspot. The event was a two-day affair at the Taj Green Cove Hotel there. A mostly English language literature event, it was the brainchild of senior journalist Binoo K John who curated it. An endowment lecture in memory of his late father, journalist K.C. John, was part of the agenda. Publishing honchos like V.K. Karthika of Harper Collins (She moved on to start Westland Publishing), Mike Bryan of Penguin India and Ravi Decee of DC Books attended the event for which writers were flown in from various parts of the country and abroad. The chat sessions and debates were a feast like nothing we had heard of before. Among the announced names, Shobhaa De and Chetan Bhagat were the absentees. But we had the fortune to watch in the flesh Tarun Tejpal (after the right-wing government ran amok and put him through Kafkaesque trials for his Tehelka exposes and before he embroiled himself in a sex scandal), William Dalrymple (travel writer and curator of JLF), Gulzar (the lyrist-screenwriter had not won Oscar and Phalke yet), Jaishree Misra, Patrick French (V.S. Naipaul's biographer), Namita Devidayal, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Boria Majumdar, Sunil Sethi (of the delightful Just Books show on NDTV), Shashi Tharoor and poet-dancer-novelist Tishani Doshi.
I must confess I read Namita Devidayal's book only much later, after reading a great review by S. Jayachandran Nair of Samakalika Malayalam weekly. It is one of my favorite books today. A biopic of her Hindustani music guru Dhondutai Kulkarni, the book is at once about music, about Bombay, about the sheer nostalgia of one's formative years. The professional journalist and musician recently wrote another biography, this time about Ustad Vilayat Khan. Tejpal's novel was very popular and won many awards in Europe but I don't think it won the deserving acclaim in India. He went on to write two more novels. One of the best discoveries for me was Binoo himself! His book Entry from Backside Only: Hazar Fundas of Indian English is a laugh riot. I have been following his writing ever since. The KLF lasted a few more editions, shifting venues to Kanakakunnu Palace and later VJT Hall, by which time it had shrunk to a one-day affair. But still we could see a host of literary celebrities come down to the tranquil city - people like Fatima Bhutto, Farrokh Dhondy, Shehan Karunatilake, Kiran Nagarkar, Om Puri, Tushar Gandhi, Biswanath Ghosh, T. M. Krishna, Anita Nair, N.S. Madhavan, Raghu Karnad, Suresh Menon, et al not to mention the incredibly young historian Manu S. Pillai and his erstwhile boss Tharoor. Even though I read everything that cricket journalist Suresh Menon writes, I never thought I could meet him in person and get hold of autographed copies of his books on Bishan Bedi and Tiger Pataudi (edited by him). The KLF sadly ground to a halt in 2016.
The festivals enable us to sample a cross-section of writings and watch writers up close - like young slam poet from Delhi Adithi Dhital reciting her poem under the banyan tree or veteran journalists Anil Dharker and T J S George recounting their professional journeys. Where else can one hope to see modern voices in Malayalam fiction like Benyamin, Unni R, Subhash Chandran, and TD Ramakrishnan sit together and discuss their craft at length? Going beyond mere book readings/ discussions, the festival has taken on a true carnival flavor by holding concerts, showcasing arts and artisans and conducting writing competitions for youngsters. Hopefully, sponsors will keep the flame alive and Thiruvananthapuram will continue to be a fertile ground for ideas and imagination.
PS: During the last Hay Festival I was seated in the main hall of Kanakakunnu palace watching Tharoor engaging a greying rock star in conversation on stage. Someone patted me on the back and I saw a beaming Mani Shankar Iyer (yes the former Union Minister, Stephanian intellectual and IFS man from Mayiladuthurai) in flowing orange kurta and white pajama asking me about the man on stage, ‘Bob Geldof, isn’t it?’ I am like ’yesssir!’ Then I was distracted by the sight of the former Foreign Secretary Padma Bhushan Shyam Saran casually walking by. One man I always spotted among the audience in these festivals (as also any book fair in the city) was the quiet and resourceful ex-St Josephite (that's my school. He was a year senior) Venugopal, who headed Deccan Chronicle and who sadly passed away seven years ago.
(May 2019)
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