The literature festival season that starts in India in November goes on well into March. It’s a busy time for writers and readers. The former have to convince the latter why their books are among the best at the moment. Meanwhile, the latter are so overwhelmed with choices that they don’t know which festival to attend and which ones to let go of. Even at the festival, one is torn between which sessions to attend, as several fascinating sessions are scheduled simultaneously. Everyone is terminally ill with the worst case of FOMO.
Writers – perennially anxious and under-confident – make pacts in the speakers’ lounge to attend one another’s sessions. If only to ensure that at least someone is in the audience. Outside of a blank page, a sea of empty seats has become the author’s worst nightmare. More often than not, the writers-in-solemn-pacts discover that they have been scheduled to speak at the same time, albeit at different venues. No longer able to show solidarity, they say quiet prayers to the all-powerful audience.
As someone who has borne the anxiety of being both a reader and writer at a literature festival, I have found myself wondering what a dream literature festival would look like. The demands of aficionados are simple: Sessions long enough for them to hear their favourite writers speak, absolutely no clashes in schedules, a relaxed atmosphere with minimal running around between venues, and the opportunity to pick the brains of the greatest writers to have ever existed.
Among the many dreams that’ll never come true, this has turned out to be the one I most regret losing out on. Regret and longing aside, and with plenty of time in my hands shuttling between various literature festivals, I conceptualised the lit fest of my dreams: The Malgudi Literature Festival.
Hosted in RK Narayan’s favourite idyllic, sleepy, small south Indian town of Malgudi, this is the perfect setting for a four-day literature festival.
Favourite writers and thinkers of all time from India and across the world will descend in Malgudi for the literature festival of a lifetime. Best of all, they will be from any period of history, and not just the current one, and from every part of the world.
In the first edition, readers can expect, among other things, a conversation between Rabindranath Tagore and WB Yeats, a debate between Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf, Han Kang and Gabríel Garcia Márquez weighing in on the “importance” of English, and William Shakespeare reciting his famous soliloquies. Here, five sessions of an hour each will be held between 10 am and 4 pm, with a lunch break in between. The sessions will be held in two venues close to each other, depending on whether it is a conversation or a roundtable.
Wrapping up just in time before sundown, the festival will leave enough time for readers and writers to take a stroll by the Sarayu river, explore the Mempi forest, and enjoy the sights and sounds of Lawley Road after a hot tiffin of coffee and bondas.
And what will the Malgudi Literature Festival lineup look like? Something like this:
Day 1, Thursday
10-11 am
‘The jewel that outshines ordinary jewels, is your praise’: Rabindranath Tagore and WB Yeats in conversation
Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Exactly ten years later, WB Yeats, a fellow poet and friend, was honoured with the Prize too.
This edition of the Malgudi Literature Festival opens with the two Nobel Prize-winning poets talking about their poetry, being the pioneers of modern literary movements in their respective countries, witnessing unrest and eventual independence of their homelands, and most importantly, their lifelong association as friends and champions of each other’s works.
11-12 noon
We, the creators and reproducers: The art and excellence of translation
Constance Garnett, Anthea Bell, Gregory Rabassa, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, Edith Grossman, AK Ramanujan: A roundtable of the most iconic translators of the 20th century where they break down the craft of translation, translating the biggest icons of world literature, and making translation an art of excellence. Should translators also be eligible for the Nobel Prize for Literature? The legends weigh in.
2-3 pm
The stage calls out to me: Drama and dramatists
Kalidasa, Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, Girish Karnad in conversation with Henrik Ibsen: The legendary Indian playwrights walk the audience through 2000 years of Indian drama and how it has evolved with the times. They each look at their own body of work to address the art form’s responsibilities and burdens in upholding social morals.
3-4 pm
Editors Maxwell Perkins and Diana Athill in conversation: Making Nobel laureates and icons out of writers.
How did the two star editors of 20th-century fiction create a lasting legacy for their authors? They also share their memories of finding writers and creating reading markets in newly independent nations.
4-5 pm
‘The death of the author’: Long live the author, the author is dead
Literary stalwarts William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Agyeya, Chinua Achebe, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison interpret Roland Barthes’s landmark theory.
Day 2, Friday
10-11 am
Yeh Mera India: Ten Indian women writers on living and writing in India
Anita Desai, Kamala Das, Shashi Deshpande, Ashapoorna Devi, Mahasweta Debi, Geetanjali Shree, Ismat Chughtai, Krishna Sobti, Amrita Pritam, and KR Meera in a conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri on writing India as an Indian woman. A ten-writer roundtable of India’s foremost women authors who in addition to breaking new grounds in literature discuss what it means to be a woman in India, and how their lived experiences have shaped their writing.
11-12 noon
Writing history, creating history: Under the watchful eyes of the tyrant
Historians Thucidydes, Romila Thapar, Jadunath Sarkar, and Edward Gibbon talk to Ramchandra Guha about resisting state powers to write “real” history – and the many, truthful dimensions of the common man’s life.
2-3 pm
Fissures and brotherhood in South Asia: A fiction writer’s perspective
Writers of five South Asian countries – Bapsi Sidhwa of Pakistan, Akhtaruzzaman Elias of Bangladesh, Rokeya Begum of India, Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri Lanka, and Nadia Hashimi of Afghanistan examine the volatile politics in their nations and the impact of their writings during times of turmoil and peace. They are in conversation with filmmaker Deepa Mehta.
3-4 pm
To write a bestseller: Straight from the author’s mouth
Rumi, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gabríel Garcia Márquez, Humayun Ahmed, Agatha Christie, RK Narayan, and Haruki Murakami in conversation with Sally Rooney. The writers share tips on how to write a perennial bestseller while staying true to your artistic principles and not getting bothered by rampant piracy.
4-5 pm
‘The way I think…’: My life, my philosophy
Confucious, Plato, the Buddha, Søren Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Maitreyi. How can philosophy become a way of life? The most respected – and controversial – philosophers of human history make a case for their most deeply held beliefs.
Day 3, Saturday
10-11 am
Feluda and James Bond: The dream team
Feluda and Bond, swoon-worthy detective and spy, for the page, screen, and ages. And the perennial appeal of crime thrillers for both readers and writers. They chat with Hercules Poirot.
11-12 noon
The horrifying and the horrific: A life of writing horror
Horror legends Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson unpack the genre in a conversation with writer Stephen King.
2-3 pm
The home and the heart: Fiction beyond English
What does the resounding success of non-English writers in the West mean for their respective languages? Is English a “secondary” language for telling stories? Do they think of themselves as representatives of their homelands? These are some of the questions that Fumiko Enchi of Japan, Javier Marías of Spain, Liu Cixin of China, Han Kang of South Korea, and Imre Kertész of Hungary in conversation with Natalia Ginzburg of Italy.
3-4 pm
Science and mathematics: the joy of logic
Eminent science and mathematics thinkers Stephen Hawking, Bertrand Russell, Kurt Gödel, and Ada Lovelace are in conversation with everyone’s favourite Carl Sagan about finding stories amid hard facts.
4-5 pm
I’m more real than you: Fictional characters meet up
No literature festival is complete without its most celebrated heroes. In this session, the loved, detested, revered, and controversial icons of fiction – Mrs Havisham, Count Olaf, Tintin, Elizabeth Bennet, and Swami – talk to each other about their creators and their lives of unrelenting fame. A conversation moderated by Holden Caulfield.
Day 4, Sunday
10-11 am
It runs in the family: The genius gene
The illustrious Tagore family is multifaceted as well as prodigious in its creative talents. Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Sunayini Devi, Pratima Devi, and Pragnasundari Debi chat with actor par excellence Sharmila Tagore about their family, education, and training, and the true “gene” of genius.
11-12 noon
Trigger warning: Contains graphic details of reality
Graphic narrative creators Art Spiegelman, Joe Sacco, Osamu Tezuka, Marjane Satrapi, and RK Laxman recount their experiences in witnessing some of the worst atrocities of modern times and why they chose the graphic narrative medium to document reality. The panel is moderated by Stan Lee of Marvel Comics.
2-3 pm
In my own world: Running a bookstore in uncertain times
Selling books is a risky business and always has been. How did Shakespeare and Co in Paris, Daunt Books in London, Higginbotham’s in Chennai, and Livraria Bertrand in Lisbon survive the ebbs and flows of bookselling? Founders George Whitman (Shakespeare and Co), James Daunt (Daunt Books), Pedro Faure (Livraria Bertrand), and Abel Joshua Higginbotham (Higginbotham’s) lay it out for us. In conversation with the legendary bibliophile Umberto Eco.
3-4 pm
‘Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent’: Poetry is not a luxury
The penultimate session of this edition of the Malgudi Literature Festival will have poets Emily Dickinson, Jibanananda Das, Thiruvalluvar, Andal, Akka Mahadevi, Kabir, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sappho, and Wang Wei reading their poetry.
4-5 pm
‘A merrier hour was never wasted there’: Until next time!
William Shakespeare closes this edition of the Malgudi Literature Festival with performances of his most well-known soliloquies. “To be, or not to be?” – the greatest writer of all time finally answers the question.
