Delegate pass

Much has been written about muses and understandably so – they are salacious tales and scandalous to boot. The recorder always faithfully documents the gratitude the artistic and literary worlds owe to these little Lolitas who, by dint of their tenderness and tautness, aided the ageing masters in their Elysian pursuits. What might have started as a fugacious fuck culminated in a lot more – usually great works and sometimes children. Nothing great about the pick-up lines though which were insipid at best: ‘I am Picasso. We will do great things together.’ Marie-Therese was 17, had no idea who the painter was when he introduced himself. He was 46 and married, was world famous and thankfully held a book which had him on the cover.

Hemingway and Adriana (Pic from The Spectator newspaper)

When Henry Miller was 84 there was the oomph-offensive Brenda Venus who ‘enabled him to dominate his infirmities and experience the joys of Paradise.’

Masters and muses? Nothing numinous about it – they need to keep the juices flowing.

“But I feel what he brought out soon afterwards was not very good,” said Carlo Pizzati.

The journalist and writer was moderating a discussion on ‘Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and his last muse’ with the book author Andrea di Robilant at the Durbar Hall on the first day of this year’s edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival. Hemingway was 50 when he started off with Adriana Ivancich, 18, an Italian noble-birth. ‘Across the river and into the trees’ – the book that followed the affair and the last full-length novel before he killed himself – was panned by critics. Looked like Adriana, ‘as soft as a pine tree in the snow of the mountains’ couldn’t do much for Papa’s craft which had rusted over a decade of not writing. Then, his best known work ‘The old man and the sea’ followed soon. The Nobel came soon after.

“Why do you keep calling me the ‘deputy CM’?”

“You are the deputy CM.”

“But I am not here as the deputy CM.”

Part circus, part everything wordy (Festival logo from site)

At the Charbagh next door, the generally erudite and eloquent politician Sachin Pilot was being roasted by journalist Sreenivasan Jain. Or maybe it was the other way round. Pilot, as the deputy chief minister of the state of Rajasthan, outlined his government’s agenda for job creation and all-round development. Pilot, as an invitee to the festival, spoke about the power of youth to transform tomorrow. Thunderous applause alternated with isolated pockets of booing.

What the organisers bill as the ‘greatest literary show on earth’ was truly underway. And this year I was there as a delegate hoping for a ringside view of this part circus, part everything wordy.

Lunch hour vocabulary

With the man of his words, Shashi Tharoor (one cuter one)

You can walk in to the literature festival freely. Or you can walk in after buying a delegate pass for six thousand rupees. Should you chose the latter, the queue is definitely shorter and a well-spread buffet lunch awaits you. The ‘delegate’ badge gets you a nice tote bag with goodies and invites to early morning and late evening musicals – which to attend in the desert winter you need to be in possession of a will like Mohammad Ali’s. If you expect it to earn you familiarity from famous writers, it doesn’t even enthuse pretty moderators and event volunteers to pose with you for selfies. Heck, not even a front row reservation does it ensure! The only time I landed in the front row was when Upamanyu Chatterjee was going ‘pff’ to questions. The moderator, probably sensing an inclination for schadenfreude from the writer who already had the reputation for being a misanthrope, resorted to a coy line of questioning. ‘English August’ for me existed somewhere in the liminal space of bureaucratic boredom and Indian writing coming of age; the televised series had me falling in love with Rahul Bose, and unrequited-therefore-continuing-to-this-day kind of love. I had purchased ‘The mammaries of the welfare state’ to be signed by him. I even brought up the matter with him after his talk. The look he gave me from under his capped eyes drove home the jejune act of me living on this planet.

The last of great recluses, I will still pay six grand to hear him go ‘pff.’

I think so.

Floccinaucinihilipilification. One of the words I have memorised to keep approaching amnesia at bay. And I owe, along with thousands of other fellow countrymen, to Shashi Tharoor for it. I didn’t talk about it though when I met him during lunch – I knew it would come up during his session on ‘#Tharoorisms’ later – instead used the opportunity to sound him off on the work on hemp I was doing. He looked visibly interested and promised to meet me at his office in Kerala. From a distance I marvelled at the quiet dignity and grace of Ahdaf Soueif, one of the founders of the Palestine Festival of Literature, pointed out to me by my partner who was in thrall of her. People who represented higher echelons of warfare where the enemy was the state.

Little blue coins entitled you to beer and wine. Someone walked up to me and gave me two of those. Though the grating sound of a tree being machine axed filled the air (which when fell injured four), the sun glowed warmly and glasses clinked sloshing the amber liquids within.

Of dinner and doppelganger  

Starters and bumblebees – a publisher’s dinner party

The frippery, jittery author was famous and such a mini-me that my partner spotted his salt and pepper bouffant from a distance and went and sat by his side. When she sprang up a tad embarrassed and collected her stuff to leave, he pleaded with her to remain. Earlier in the day he had bumped into her and asked whether she had seen somebody or something. Thus began a flippant cat-and-mouse between them: ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ While I maintained that this bumbling was one bright act, say, at pre-empting a #metoo or researching a character for an upcoming book, she gave me a look people usually reserve for Michael Moore. Well, writers have been known to put up whole museums so why not a little behavioural gimmick! Later that evening at a party thrown by a publishing house, I watched this author fumble into a group who would be standing around and smoking, peer intently at the gathered faces and leave with a frown. Within moments he would be back to the same group with the cheeriest disposition – happier than Trump looking at a firm rump.

Everywhere there were coteries of small writers who had gathered around bigger names in a large dimly lit hall. An endless supply of hors d’oeuvre came on trays borne by gangly looking kids who looked at you incredulously when you said no. A bartender mixed drinks expertly, suggested I take my cognac with warm water. Wasn’t Hors d’Age. At a spotlit corner a short woman in a sequinned dress crooned badly probably sensing everybody was drunk or busy pushing books. I sat at a table close by trying to feign interest which became increasingly difficult.

Time to check on my doppelganger and probably learn a thing or two.