Getting lit up in kerala

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With the first edition of Hay Festival, an exuberant celebration of literature and life, held at the majestic Kanakakunnu Palace in Thiruvananthapuram from November 12 to 14, Kerala became one with the word. And one with the world.
Milling around in the sprawling premises of the historic palace for three days were authors divided by cultures, poets divided by languages, filmmakers divided by genres and people divided by ideologies. But what they had in common was the sheer love for literature, thirst for ideas and hunger for knowledge. And they all got an ample dose in the whirl of cerebral bohemianism associated with the Hay-on-Wye, that little town on the Welsh border that has sprung onto the world map for courting literary and cultural icons of our times.

MAN ON THE MOVE

Minutes after Peter Florence, the founder-director of Hay-on-Wye, walked out of the last session on the last day of the festival, I caught hold of him for what I thought would be a fleeting conversation. But when we settled down for an interview, Florence, visibly agog and upbeat upon the completion of Hay’s debut venture in India, betrayed no signs of rushing through the conversation. He couldn’t possibly have done that anyway, I later reasoned, for the festival itself was a conversation after all: A conversation on literature and life. In about 30 odd minutes, I discovered how Florence, a great conversationalist who floored one and all at his sessions with Simon Schama, Shashi Tharoor and Michelle Paver, could be an interviewer’s delight.
We were sitting in the authors’ green room, adjacent to the Palace Hall, where Simon Schama was holding forth on Barack Obama the man and the “superhero” leader. People were buzzing in and around the hall. A stream of young men and women kept trickling in, trickling out. As we talked, we could hear their arguments, claps and whoops, cheer and chatter. Literature was thrumming in the air. Several steps below, at the Nishagandhi Amphitheatre, Irish folk-rock legend and activist Bob Geldof was strumming his guitar for a concert that would wind up the “Woodstock of the mind”.
In a candid display of an incredible sense of joie de vivre, the very hallmark of Hay, Florence, a man of constant joy, described to me the power of literature and the philosophy behind the phenomenal movement called Hay which, in its first year at the Indian soil, was only testing (back)waters. Florence said he wanted to see whether it was possible to have a festival like Hay here, whether it had a future, if it might grow organically, if there was an audience for it. “The answer to all these things is yes,” said a beaming Florence.
“It is the best you could have actually,” he said, talking about the festival’s argumentative, contrary and pluralist strands — argumentative and pluralist like India itself. In Kerala, what struck Florence the most was the fact that people “just got in”. They were inquisitive, demanding and absolutely generous in spirit. “We are in Kerala. It works,” Florence said, rejoicing in Hay’s Kerala moment, exulting in its success.
The Kerala Hay Festival aimed at achieving three things: One, study climate change as broadly as possible. Two, address the idea of emerging democracies. Three, look at the Dravidian language and culture and “put it at the same stage as other better-known international cultures and give it the same status”.
Florence said what he had to bring to Kerala was some ideas, energy and structure. “But this has to become a Keralan festival,” he said, adding that the festival was both local and global. Going “glocal”, perhaps, is a magic mantra as much relevant in the literary world as it is elsewhere. Like Hay festivals in other countries, Hay Kerala had a strong local identity. So while Vikram Seth or Sebastian Faulks were star attractions at the festival, no less starry, albeit in their own ambits, were Paul Zac-haria or K. Satchidanandan.
Malayalam, said Florence, was a culture of 10-20 million (“who knows how many!”) speakers. But chances were that there were some “damn fine writers” for whom being published in English was not the be-all and end-all. “The sheer majestic, Maximilious power of the English language doesn’t invalidate great writing in any of the Indian languages for which there are hundreds and millions of readers. And that is a huge exploration to go on,” he said.

‘A PARTY FOR THE ENLIGHTENMENT’

At the root of Hay festivals all over the world is the exchange of different ideas. Hay is not and will never be about one thing. Florence said he will be bored to tears if he had to do a poetry festival, for example. Much of Hay’s identity emanates from Florence’s personal philosophy: “I like mixing stuff. I like the energy that comes off people who do different things. I’m not good at high art. I am not that refined. I like rough stuff. I love synthesising. I also love extroversion. I like stuff that is bursting out. And I like difference.”
It’s no wonder Hay is about many things: “We are not interested in purism. We are impurists. We are bastards. We are Mongols. We are mix and matches. I’d like it to be more like life. Yes, of course, we want literature, which is a great human art form and, in many ways, more accessible than art and more individuating than music. But that’s part of the conversation about science, life, education, civilisation, politics, love and death — all the things that we do. It’s about socialisation. It’s a way of being together.”
According to Florence, in the dutifully connected world we live in, there is a yearning, a hunger to share what we know with people over a cup of coffee. It is absolute and increasing and more valuable. It’s all about forming the human contact at some deep level.
Florence, who had started the Hay festival with his father (Norman Florence) in 1988, said his father was wonderfully and naturally responsive and sympathetic to great writing. Florence devised the festival by trying to answer a simple question: Who do you think will be the most interesting people to talk to? More than two decades later, it’s the same game. “If you ever write this,” Florence told me, gesturing with his hands, “Put this in heavy inverted coma: Hay’s like having a party for the enlightenment. There is no greater gift than new ideas or good stories.”
As Florence goes around the world “hanging out with the nicest bunch of mates I can possibly imagine,” he gets to explore the world through its stories. It also, he says, imposes an incredible humanity on him.
Hay is a literary fever, but not quite a hysteria. Florence would rather have it small than make an spectacle out of it. In India, it appears he’s not aiming at turning it into a literary “show”. He said: “We are not the IPL. We are not trying to sell stuff. We are not trying to fill stadia. It’s a small-scale, intimate thing.”
Hay-on-Thiruvananthapuram might be small, but it could have profound ramifications with its resonance going way beyond what happened at a small hilltop in mid-November.

HAY, DEFINED

In that stimulating conversation on the last day of the festival, which I am glad I had, Florence defined Hay to me rather succinctly. Hay was all about idea, energy and exchange. It was about getting to know the world through stories. It was about the yearning to share. To talk. To listen. And the festival got its “kernel” (executive director Lyndy Cooke’s word) quite right.
Hay, in many ways, is about life. And any good literature, anywhere in the world, essentially deals with life. Aren’t books our window to many lives, many worlds, many cultures? Don’t they bring to us the beauty of different narratives, different times, different zeitgeists?
During the three days of debates and discussions (not to forget the charged, free flow of conversations in the lush, emerald green lawns over appams, carrot juice or red rice), I got my mind messed up with bright, bristling ideas that shape literature, culture, history and politics of diverse societies and nations. (Isn’t getting your mind messed up a step, albeit small, towards understanding big ideas and finding clarity and meaning in them?).
Soaking in the festival’s sights and sounds, tuning in to scintillating conversations while keeping my sense of wonder all the time, for three days I could feel that literature was beautiful, life was beautiful. I was glad I made it to Hay for it’s not very often that I get to see Vikram Seth breaking into a limerick or an impromptu haiku while discussing the landscape of his novels and his love for taking a line out for a walk or Simon Schama talking about the A-Z of his likes and dislikes. It’s not often that I find myself in the midst of numbers, made to believe that they govern much of our lives: The session with British mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, whom I had the privilege to introduce at the festival, was a wonderful exploration into the number kingdom.
Yes, there were some authors snuggled within their ivory towers, but mostly, they mingled and were receptive.
Hay-on-Thiruvananthapuram was highbrow without having any highbrow pretensions. It was less sanctimonious and more inclusive. It had the no-holds-barred feel about it. And that explained why almost everyone flocked to the festival, from the elderly Malayali gentlemen with childlike inquisitiveness to school children, with the open minds of adults, vying with one another for a brush with their literary heroes, getting their favourite titles signed by the respective writer.
On a personal, less relevant, note, Hay meant getting a bit sun-burnt and then soaked in the sudden rain and finding myself amidst the serene palm landscapes and sandy beaches, a welcome escape from the rough and tumble of life in a metro. There are memories of playing with the quicksand, walking barefoot on the Kovalam beach, getting food for thought over banana upside down cake, seeking solace in sparkling red Shiraz, singing Geldof’s long-forgotten songs, watching an angry Sting, a surprise entry at Geldof’s concert, stick out his tongue at a TV journalist, discovering Matchbox Twenty through a new-found friend and spending some quality time with valued pals.
There is also a memory of writers of all hues divesting themselves, on the last night of the festival, of their clothes, getting down to the basics, sloshing around on the seashore, splashing into the waves. Becoming one with water, one with the waves .
When the curtains came down on the festival in Thiruvananthapuram on November 14, it wasn’t quite the end for Hay in India. It was only a beginning — the beginning of an engagement with stories and ideas that will scintillate the minds of people, year after year.