Lit fest kicks off with Remnick’s brilliance

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Queen Mother of Bhutan Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck lights the lamp during the inauguration of the Jaipur Literature Festival.PTI

Given the intellectual razzmatazz at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the candid banter and informal vibe, it’s very easy to get smitten. But on Friday morning, just after the inaugural session on Bhakti Poetry, David Remnick, the editor of New Yorker, raised the bar.
A brilliant performer, Remnick, who was addressing a session titled “The Disappointment of Obama”, told a packed tent of students, journalists, litterateurs and avid readers that the Nobel peace prize awarded to US President Barack Obama was “ridiculous. It was given for not being George Bush”. But added, “To his credit, when Obama was woken up and told that he had won the peace prize, he said, ‘Get the f*** out of here’”.
Remnick said that though he was disappointed with Obama’s first term, the current President had several redeeming features: “honesty, intelligence and the fact that he believes in science”.
Though a moaning cow at Hotel Diggi Palace kept interrupting Remnick, he didn’t miss a beat and talked in anecdotes and delightful one-liners about the “clown show” currently underway, i.e. the Republican campaign, the conservatives’ one-point agenda to get Obama out of the White House and of Obama’s conceit that he can, in fact, with his speeches and rhetoric, win over the red states. “There are states that are just immune to the charms of Barack Obama,” Remnick said.
Maybe, but female journalists in the state of Rajasthan were charmed and happily drooling at Remnick.

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Michael Ondaatje, who won the Booker prize for The English Patient in 1992, was the star show on the first day of the JLF. The front lawn of Hotel Diggi Palace was packed, with people squatting in the aisles and standing on toes all around to listen to the Canada-based Sri Lankan author. The session, titled “From Ink Lake”, was to focus on Ondaatje’s process of writing, specifically his latest book, The Cat’s Table, which is a fictionalised account of his own “unaccompanied” journey by ship from Ceylon to England, when he was 11 years old.
Everyone was expecting Ondaatje to read passages from his book, talk of living with fictional characters for months, and whether good novels make good movies. What no one was expecting was Amitava Kumar, a professor in New York and the author of Husband of a Fanatic, to make the session a masterclass in how not to interview a great writer.
Kumar, who was to introduce Ondaatje and just “conduct” the session, read from Ondaatje’s book, mock emotion and all, made long-winding comments and talked at length about his own likes and dislikes. Ondaatje, who looked and sounded like an aging white lion -- wise, deep, naughty and sharp -- got a few words in, but Kumar was a constant distraction. He pulled faces, rocked, frowned and postured as if he were in a seminal art film.

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Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif, who is attending the JLF primarily to promote his latest novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was sought out more for shopping tips than to get autographs. Delhi’s decked up aunties, riveted by his orange leather sandals, couldn’t resist asking, “Where did you get these?” “Oh!” he replied, looking down, “Mardan Chappal House, Karachi”. Faces fell. Visas are tough to get.
The author of the brilliant satirical novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, which is a fictionalised account of Gen. Zia ul Haq’s regime and plane crash, was also the most congenial quote-giver on Salman Rushdie on Friday. Hanif said that though he preferred Rushdie’s other novels to The Satanic Verses, added that “the criticism, the outrage was completely out of proportion. If you don’t like a book, don’t buy it, don’t read it, don’t keep it at your house.”
Commenting on the threats issued to Rushdie and his decision not to attend the litfest, Hanif said, “It’s the state which is complicit. How many people, how many Muslims in India do you think, or in Pakistan, follow whatever the (Darul Uloom) Deoband says?... There will always be some nut case who won’t want this or that to happen. It’s the state’s responsibility to provide security to its citizens. And the state shows its weakness, right, when it says, ok, I am not going to protect this because I might lose some votes.”
Hmmm, I nodded, and asked, “Where did you get these sandals?”