GRIN & BEAR IT

Strange things have happened on my panels before. Writers have fallen in love, writers have fallen out of love, writers have wanted to make love, in one instance, one very famous author tripped and fell, another had the mike fall in his lap. The wine has resulted in slurry speech and even slurrier thoughts.

But never before has a very, very famous author wanted to pronounce judgment on the state of my teeth.

Nury Vittachi has already narrated the story
'VIKRAM SETH doesn’t have a reputation for being easy-going, and referred to himself during an on-stage interview as someone who used to be “touchy”.

But he won the hearts of the crowd at the Sri Lanka festival. He was treated like a rock star, with huge mobs attending his every move, and he responded by providing high grade entertainment.

At one point, he told an entertaining story about a relative who was a one-armed dentist. To illustrate the challenges involved, he put his arm around the head of moderator Deepika Shetty and duly inspected her back molars.

What the author didn’t know – but many of the rest of us did – was that Singapore journalist Ms Shetty has just completed a lengthy dental treatment which involved carrying around a quarter of a ton of metal in her mouth for more than a year. Thus his good reports about her dentition carried great weight.'

Shelley Keningsberg has captured the sequence of events which started when we were talking about 'Two Lives' and the conversation veered towards Uncle Shanti and Aunty Henny. Seth was trying to explain what the loss of Uncle Shanti's right arm [he lost it during the war] meant. He paused to ponder, the next minute, he was up and about;

'Deepika, will you let me examine your teeth'
Sitting at the Hall de Galle stage, with a crowd of 500 in attendance, it was impossible to run for cover, so I responded....
'Vikram, if only I knew this was going to happen, I would have been sure to brush my teeth.'
'Don't worry,' he assured me, 'I won't reveal the state of your inners to anyone.'

He was as good as his word, he didn't. While the teeth look a tad too perfect now, there is an offending molar. I'll be sure to fix, before I meet Vikram next.

For those of you who haven't heard it, he is due to appear at the Ubud Writers Festival next. Be sure to look out for the dates in September/October.

You can take it from everyone who has met him, heard him, read him, taken a picture with him, Seth is worth your airfare.

Till then, enjoy these....

A thinking dentist...

Gets ready for the dental examination....

The way it works from the right...

Now, for the left...

Someday, I'll laugh about it too....

THE TOP SPOT GOES TO....

The true measure of an author's success at a festival is not reflected in the number of people who show up, the laughs a session generates or even the Q & A. It boils down to the dollars and the cents people spend investing in books and then the number of minutes they end up waiting to get them signed. Gore Vidal took all of 10 minutes to get over and done with it.


Vikram Seth, on the other hand extended his session by 30 minutes. He sure can go on. I was watching people in the audience getting up, then sitting down, attempting to get up again, then sit down. It was quite a sight. Shall we leave, shall we not/ The session that started at 4.30pm finally ended at 6pm. Seth was signing books for the next hour. By 7.10pm, I'd walked him back to Amangalla, he was to appear at a literary dinner at 8 and the next morning he was doing a kids session and still signing books. How can you not love him....

FOUND IN THE TEA TRAILS

By Vikram Seth - Tom Issacs.
You have no idea what you missed, if you didn't sit in for this session. I'll post more about it, soon.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

After all the Carl Muller reports from last year, almost gave this a miss. If not for the Tim Severin lunch at Kogalla, might not have made it for this. Muller had his wits about him as he tracked his brushes with the law, getting in and out of jail, crashing his computer, reminding himself to Read The F****** Manual 'I call it RTFM, to his new book that a publisher in Madras has picked up. 'I can't help it, if it bears resemblance to a certain character we know only too well.'

They've got the beat - Jeet Thayil and Suman, were the stars of the slam. Catch them wherever you can. It's worth staying up all night.

Expected someone straight out of the sets of The Pirates of the Carribean. Explorer, adventurer, film maker, writer Tim Severin surprised me. His adventures put every other travel trip to shame.

Pioneering women all. Sri Lankan authors Punyakante, Yasmine Gooneratne, Jean and Vijita. They showed us, if you've got to write, you will. Jean, though needed a session all on her own.

Alexander McCall Smith had made exactly the same speech a couple of moons ago in Singapore. Yet, who can resist the company of the 'Number 1 Ladies Detective', the books are travelling at the same pace, he told us. Mechanics are still mechanics. 'Lots of things are happening at other sessions at this festival, serious stuff is being discussed, not here. Like my books, very little happens in my talks,' he told the crowd in the Hall de Galle.


They told us we took ourselves too seriously. Wonder if that's a bad thing. In any case if the session isn't going the way I expect it to, I'd rather let my legs do the talking.

PEOPLE, PLACES, WORDS

Snapshots from the Galle Lit Fest

STREETSIDE

FALLING IN LOVE

Is easy, when you have places like these....

OH ISLAND

In the setting sun...

IT'S A SIGN CITY

You can get 'brand new old antiques', 'antiques made to order' or live in 'old new forts'.... go ahead take your pick....

DON'T TRY THIS

At Bandaranaike Airport in Colombo. They tell me I was lucky to get away with a warning...

SO FAR

If there was a fear of that underlying threat, it wasn't evident on the flight. Singapore-Colombo aboard SriLankan Airlines was fully booked. There were traders, a big group of them, who make weekly trips to Singapore. Ask them about the business, "it can be better but it's good." There is optimism, hope and a radiant smile. It's the way to land in Sri Lanka.

When I ask my driver, Sumanacna about the bombings, he tells me "nobody cares about it anymore. See so many people are visiting." The shadow of the gun may be there right outside the airport, but it isn't scaring people off. Things seem perfect till I yank out my camera. There is a rush followed by a stern warning, "no pictures." Later in the night Mihiri Weerasinghe and Lakshman enlighten me about the dangers of wielding the camera. Lucky to have got off with just a warning.

How else could I have seen the beauty of Casa Colombo?

Driving on Galle Road, nothing gives away what awaits you. A vintage car pulls in ahead of us. "That must be the one," Sumanacna says before turning in. He is here for the first time too. "It's very nice, Mam," he tells me. It's breath-taking. It lives up to its top star billing. As the sun sets, the last of the day's rays make this 200 year old The sun is setting, the 200 year old Moorish mansion shine in all its beauty.

The lights are switched on. Pink bounces off the white, the short walk way looks like its lit up in gold. More surprises await. Ambra makes me feel like I've always known her. Amila won't let me head to Odel alone. It's past 6:30, he tells me. How easily one forgets? Along the way, there are tips on what to see, what to do, it almost feels like I never left home. The room is so gorgeous, that I feel sleep is wasted. I could go on looking at the ceiling, the gold leafed wall, the little touches that blend modernity with tradition. Like this laptop that's letting me say all of this. Soon there shall be pictures to complete the rest of this tale.....

ONE FOR THE ROAD

Couldn't resist this one.....
"When Tata Motors set out to build a $2,500 car, people said it couldn't be done."
- Blurb from Newsweek on 'The World's Cheapest Wheels.'
Another reminder, when the world says it can't be done, it must be done.

I really must go now.

OFF AGAIN

Leaving on a jet plane.

Destination : Sri Lanka.

Final Stop : Galle Literary Festival.

Tomorrow's the opening. You can still get there, you know. Mihin Lanka has just announced three flights weekly from Singapore. Starting from $250 Sing, it's not a bad deal indeed. There's also Sri Lankan Airlines, SQ and a couple more I'm sure.

Now, I really must go pack those bags. Updates will need connectivity. If it's established, you'll hear more. If not, the waiting's only a week.

LEARNING: THE PLEASURE

Apart from meeting writers, one of the biggest joys of a lit fest, is the uncharted voyage of discovery.

Mine invariably starts with a session. While I love meeting established writers, interviewing them, talking to them, hanging out with them, there is the thrill of discovering many, many names I wouldn't have read, if not for a lit fest.

Last night, when the house was quiet, the telly was given a break, I worked on three of my sessions for the Galle Lit Fest. It was a fascinating ride. If you haven't already heard of them, I thought I'd take more than a moment to introduce you to three enormously gifted writers.

Let's go with the ladies first.

She read History of Art, went on to work as a staff correspondent in Fleet Street, a job she left to research medieval European Art.

From there it was more travel, this time in Asia, the Far East, Australia & America, where she studied Tibetan Thanka painting, wrote the text for a book of photographs on Nepal, edited an anthology of mystical poetry and wrote a film treatment.

Then she returned to journalism working first for the Independent, covering the revolution in Sri Lanka in the early 1990s and both sides of the island's civil war. She was then posted to New Delhi, first for New York Times Video News International, then the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, as their South Asia correspondent, covering India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan & Iran. 1996 to 2002, saw her reporting on the wars in Afghanistan, including the post 9/11 American campaign. She also reported from the front lines of the Indo-Pakistan wars in Kashmir and began writing her debut novel 'Serpent in Paradise' in Sri Lanka in 2003.

The novel started "while I was grovelling in the dust in Tora Bora in Afghanistan in 2001, I was being shot at and thought: there must be better things to do with my life than this."

I'm not sure what I would be thinking if I were being shot at, it certainly wouldn't be a novel. Which is why I'm dying to meet the daring Julian West. She's been there, done that and is busy at work on her second novel.

Then there's a poet, essayist and translator in English, Spanish and French. His first book 'The Elephants of Reckoning' won the 1994 Paterson Prize in the United States, and he has gone on to write four other works after that. These include - The Splintered Face, Tsunami Poems (to be launched at the festival - Hanging Loose Press, January 2008), Ceylon R.I.P. (The International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2001), El Hombre Que Recoge Nidos (Resistencia/CONARTE, Mexico, 2005) El Infierno de los Pajaros (Resistencia, Mexico, 2001), The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose Press, 1993).

His essays and op-eds have appeared in The Hindu, the New York Times, El Norte, Reforma, New York/Newsday, The Daily News (Sri Lanka).

He directed Mexico's first ever programme dedicated to conversations with poets which appeared on cable television in Northern Mexico in 2006. He is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow and a past recipient of an award from the US/Mexico Fund for Culture. He is currently working on a translation of poet Jose Eugenio Sanchez.

Meet Indran Amirthnayagam.

This book cover left me a little unsettled last night. Since it was too late in the night to go looking for it, I ended up reading everything about it online. Randy Boyagoda's debut novel, 'Governor of the Northern Province' was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Writer, critic and scholar, he is a Professor of American literature at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Julian West, Indran Amirthanayagam and Randy Boyagoda will be discussing Writing: The Pain & The Pleasure' on Thursday, 4:30pm at the Hall de Galle. There'll be lots to write about, I'm sure.

THE CRYING'S DONE

Can she still swing it?

Who better to gaze and tell, than Maureen Dowd herself.

THE SUITABLE WRITER

Do you have a copy of 'A Suitable Boy' on your bookshelf?

Yes?

Affirmative?

Alright. Go ahead, dust it well, hold in your hands, re-visit the pages, think a little bit. Could the writer ever be daunted by a blank sheet of paper?

Unlikely?

You sure about that?

Yet, he talks about that. He talks like he writes, you feel the ground move beneath your feet, that voice lingers, urging you gently to move on, to think beyond the sheet. There is no advice, no credit, he believes he deserves, no greatness. If you looking for modesty in a writer, Vikram Seth would give you the best possible start.
Poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer and biographer. Five volumes of poetry, an award-wining travel book 'From Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet,' the bestseller 'A Suitable Boy', 'An Equal Music' and the moving 'Two Lives.'

It's got to be my good karma that I get to continue this conversation that started with 'Two Lives.' You could be there too. It's at the Galle Lit Festival, the Suitable discussion is on the 19th of January. Till then, this will have to do. Words from one of the finest writers of our time. I'd call him a living legend, knowing fully well that he'd disagree.


Q : You went to live with your Uncle and Aunt when you were 17. What really fueled your interest to write about them?
A : Initially I didn't think about it. I went to live with them when I was rather young. I took them for granted. I knew my Uncle had his right arm blown after the war, nonetheless he'd gone on to become a dentist. My Aunt was taller than him, she was German, she lost her family in the war. I never asked a lot of questions when I lived with them. They took good care of me while I lived them. Then I moved away, studied and lived elsewhere. In the 80s first my Aunt died and my Uncle was extremely lonely. When I started, I imagined it would be more of an archival document for the family, it turned out quite differently.

Q : 'Two Lives' effectively captures the spirit of those trying times. The reader is drawn into it almost emotionally. As an author how tough was it for you to embark on that journey, given that the subject was so close to your heart?
A : It was overwhelming. Many of the letters that Auntie Henny received after the war from her friends and also her letters, reading them was quite harrowing. One knew what had happened to her mother and her sister but reading about it, about the concentration camps they were taken to, was a very tough journey to take.

Q : If you didn't find those letters, would the book have happened?
A : I wonder sometimes. Certainly, Uncle's life story by itself was very interesting. He was very emotional and courageous in his own way. But discovering the letters, which as fate would have it, had survived - discovering them made 'Two Lives' a book that I couldn't not write. It shed so much light on my Aunt's character. Her forgiving nature, her willingness to adapt to everything around her, her ability to stay loyal to her friends.

Q : We see a lot of writers probing into the past and writing about their families and traditions. What do you think draws you to the past?
A : There are no easy answers to that. The past is interesting in its own right. We find out where we came from. We learn about thoughts, events that have shaped our world. It also explains our recent past. It explains everything about the people we love. I suppose another thing to learn from the past is how it shapes human characters. The times we live through determine a lot of that. While we don't know what's going to happen to us, looking back at the past helps us understand human life, the resolve of human beings and how they respond to events shaping us. On a broader level, the historical events of the past - what happened in Nazi Germany, what happened during the Indian Freedom struggle, they help us better understand our times.


Q : War, history, collision - you've addressed all of that in your book. How has it impacted you?
A : I suppose we are all accidents of history. When you look at who populates which part of the globe, what language they speak, what their thoughts are, what their religion is, you realize, it all has something to do with their past, the power of history. As for the blows or currents of modern history, I'd say perhaps in this generation we've been luckier than others in certain countries. Not many of us have had to live through the traumatic times Aunty Henny had to or to experience what Shanti Uncle did. A military shell fired by the German Army took off his right arm in the war zone.

Q : You've said in your book that "you're not sure if anyone can understand their life fully." While writing 'A Suitable Boy' you spent the better part of your life in your childhood bedroom in India. Now, with 'Two Lives' have you been able to comprehend your life better?
A : There's something to be said for analyzing things up to a point because the thing about life is to understand it somewhat but also to live it fully. Sometimes attempting to understand it too much gets in the way of the joys and pains of living.

Q : You've excelled in whatever form of writing you've done. Poetry, novel, travel writing.....
A : I don't think I deserve any particular credit for it, if indeed one deserves any credit for it at all. It is the stories, the ideas that come to me, come with their own method of telling. Whether it's prose or verse, fact or fiction, short or long, whether its first person or third person, all these things are to some extent ingrained in the nature of the story itself. All I have to do is to get on to the tiger and sort of hold on, while at the same time trying to understand the rules of the game. It is a bit of a rocky ride to continue with that metaphor but its truly worth doing. You can't just tell the muse, come back later with a better idea, something more in the genre that I've already dealt with.


Q : Is writing something you do for yourself or is there a deeper connect with your reader, one that comes packed with a message?
A : Maybe not necessarily a very overt message but I think my personality as a writer and what I feel about various subjects - personal or political does come across in my work, in my books. As to whether I write for myself or for a particular 'ideal reader' that's a tricky question. I try to get the picture of the character or their thoughts across not through stained glass rather through plain glass. That implies of course, that it's not just me speaking, rather there is an attempt to communicate with the audience. But what sort of an audience, you may ask? That's difficult to say. What I do know if for instance a particular book that I've written about a particular subject or a particular cast of characters doesn't ring through to the sort of people whose life I'm trying to describe then it doesn't matter whether its accepted, given excellent reviews or sells a million copies because I think at the end of the day a book has to have to power to speak to its readers.


Q : What type of writing did you grow up on?
A : Almost everything. Newspapers, comic books, fiction, biographies, anything I could lay my hands on. Writers are very often quite omnivorous and not quite as selective in their reading as is imagined. On the whole, I like books which are very clear. They may be very complex, but I enjoy lucidity in books. I've even liked books that I've sometimes not quite understood. In fact, I was reading a detective story the other day, an anthology the next day. Normally, I like reading poetry in rhyme and meter but this anthology wasn't like that, I enjoyed it nonetheless. I think writing and reading are both very private activities. One is continually surprised by what one enjoys or what moves someone or what makes one think.


Q : Have you been surprised by some of the reactions to your work given that one of the things we hear a lot is that people don't have time to read, people don't read enough or people just don't want to read?
A : I was quite surprised by the reaction to 'A Suitable Boy.' I was quite certain it would sink like a stone because people don't seem to have time to read. They seem to get impatient with very short television programmes. You'd think they have tiny attention spans. But, I was quite surprised, startled rather that people read the book and sometimes very young people read the book. I think in many, many competing calls for our attention - whether its music, television or entertainment of one kind or another, it may be the case that books are not quite as omnipresent as they were in people's consciousness earlier but apart from books there is a plethora of journals, newspapers, magazines to read. I think there is a lot of hope and that's demonstrated in the people's wish to read solid and serious literature.

Q : A lot of writers shy away from the business of dispensing advice but what's helped you in your career as a writer?
A : I sort of stumbled into writing. Certainly I always wrote poetry but I always wrote fiction largely because my first novel was a novel in verse, so it grew out of poetry. I think one must take advice very tentatively. The thing that really helped me was to not refuse to write what I was inspired to write. I never felt I couldn't do it because it was a different genre or that I might not be able to sell it or very often because people sought to dissuade me from writing it. I think one has to be true to the ideas one gets, the characters one creates, true to one's thoughts, true to how one feels, otherwise the writing will be dull or dry. There's nothing more daunting than a blank sheet of paper, but one has to begin somewhere.

NAMES, NAMES

Really big ones....

Gore Vidal, Vikram Seth, Alexander McCall Smith, Jung Chang.

Enough to make you pack your books in bags. I recommend you should.

There are so many others I want to hear.

Kamila Shamsie, Tishani Doshi, Tim Severin, Jeet Thayil, Chikki Sarkar...It's a long-list.

So many friends to meet....
Libby, Geoffrey, Seetha, Nury, Manuka, Elmo, John.

Blog friends shall move into real life. It'll all happen next week.

There's still some time to go, go ahead, book the tickets, grab the bags, some festivals are simply worth repeating.

The Galle Lit Fest it is, the dates - 16th-20th Jan. Here's hoping you will be there. I would very much like to say hello.

UNPLUGGED

There's always a reason, isn't it? For that prolonged period of absence. That moment when you've been missed. The thought of which of resonates, when they ask you for your reading lists. It should have been in 2007, 2008 it shall be.

I've had my reasons.

It started with attempting to trying out if I could without it - the blog that is. It was hard, I've got to say. I went all these days without blogging, without looking at other blogs, taking time to watch the sun rise, the sun set, take long walks in the parks. I can tell you about all of them.

Starting with the one at East Coast. Cramped I'd say. And what's with folks who fail to read those signs. Foot soldiers walk right into skaters and cyclists. But then it scores by the very presence of those shops that provide the skates and the cycles. The West Coast Park gets my vote. It's smaller, I agree. But those things for the kids, are the kind of thing every Mum needs. And they do their Cappuccino right at the McCafe. I should know, I've been drinking it through the mornings, noon, even nights. Yes, that would roughly add upto the number of times I've been there.

The kids and I have done the long walks, put the sand toys to great use, cycled, walked, played and done the things we'd all like to do all the time.

The reality is no holiday can last forever. They are back in school, I'm back at work, its time to say rise and shine to the blogosphere and beyond. Hello there, hope 2008 is turning out to be the way you imagined it to be.

I'll be packing my bags soon, before I disappear again, you'll have that list you asked for in 2007 and a little, little more. If only, you'll bear with me, it will take a bit.