FROM SOMETIME AGO...

TOM ISAACS AND VIKRAM SETH:
Where Seth was the moderator.
VS: Why were you wandering around in Sri Lanka?
TOM: Everyone who has been to Sri Lanka absolutely raves about it, then you read the newspapers and get a totally different picture. But someone told me the other day that Washington is the most dangerous place in the world.
VS: For the rest of the world, yes.

SHYAM SELVADURAI
Start with Funny Boy, then head to Cinnamon Gardens.
"To pick up a book and read it, you have to be willing to enter it."
"Writers alone can't change things . It's not that we don't want to change things, but as a writer you can't over-estimate yourself and you have to make sure that your voice doesn't get too shrill."
"You have a writing style, it's like your voice, you can't change it, really. Once you have the material, you need to intergrate it but your voice will stay yours."

KAMILA SHAMSIE
If you haven't already read her, get started:
"You can't put the burden on a book to change things. The culture and politics of a society also has a role to play."
"I don't think more novels are going to change things around us. I write because I have to write. And I read because books make me think and re-think. Reading a novel is such a personal act, while writing a novel is like a sprawling moment."

ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
"Nothing nasty happens in my books, in fact nothing happens at all. It's just lots of interesting characters moving in, out and about."
"I often get letters from readers around the world asking how long does it take to get a mechanical apprenticeship in Botswana?"

GORE VIDAL
"We use democracy like ketchup, over everything."
"I recommend you read Aristotle's Politics, it takes more shortcuts than I do."
Simon Winchester to Gore Vidal: Do you love your country?
Gore Vidal responds: Anyone who loves a country is insane (laughter and clapping). I'm obviously in a room full of individualists.
On US policy or lack thereof:
"We have no policy of our own. The amount of money we've lost on mad cap adventures in Asia will take generations to rebuild. (pauses) We wait for time's chariot to pass."

VIKRAM SETH ON THE SIZE OF A SUITABLE BOY:
"Travellers take it out of their luggage and take it as their hand luggage. They just use it for one purpose or another, I imagine."

CARL MULLER'S CONFESSIONAL:
"I was young and utterly despicable. I was put in a jail in Bombay after being caught drunk in Eros Cinema. I wrote an article called 'The Fourth Floor,' I was arrested again and put back on the fourth floor. The cops locked and handcuffed the door. That was the first time I'd seen cockroaches the size of poppadoms."
His musical notes:
"I started because it was too painful to listen to my sisters playing the piano. They could only play two notes and they'd play them all the time. My international debut was when I was in Sharjah, I had to chase the dancers off the stage as half the Kandiyan dancers were pregnant. Who the hell sent pregnant dancers to do a Kandiyan dance? I had to go and play next."
Crashing PCs:
"I crashed my computer so many times that I had to stick a sign before attempting to turn it on - RTFF. Read The F******* Manual."
Writing:
"I love to write, it's in my blood. I wrote stuff for newspapers, I wrote articles on nature, I simply wrote all the time. I sent some of my articles to Penguin and they sent it back saying, you write well, you should write something like Ondaatje's Running in the Family. I said I have the whole family that has run me out, so it shouldn't be a problem."
On his next book:
"I am writing about the president of a country which is tied like an undersea elastic to India. The Book is called 'The Incredible Adventures of Mr Hindama.' No publisher in Sri Lanka wanted to publish but one brave guy in Chennai agreed to do it.

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

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....

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 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.

GALLE LIT FEST ONLINE

Watch it all here

WHO TAUGHT?

I joined the old Lady of Boribundar in the good old days. When copy had to be edited on actual scripts which took a painstakingly long time to emerge out of the printer. The salmon sheets had to be attached to the copy with an indication of the font size, the upper lower cases marked for the heading and the sub-heading. Once you did all of that it would be sent to the Chief Sub-Editor, who if you were a newbie, would routinely spike your copy.

If you were lucky, it would make it to the copy checker, who would in a sheer demonstration of prowess make a couple more changes then put it back in a red tray to send it back for the Chief Sub to look at. All of that would then make it to the type-setter, bromides would emerge from a freezing room. They would be put back on a tray, sent back to the desk. The Chief Sub would look at his clock. If he was the confident sort, he'd take the lead and get cracking on his pages. The not so self-assured ones would wait for the Bombay Times headlines to arrive before deciding on their pages. Then with lotsa bromides in hand, we would all march to the paste-up room to start making the pages. Once that process was completed, it would go the camera room for the negative of the real page which would then make it to the press located strategically on the other side of time.

Those were the days. Laborious but lots of fun. We discovered so many things, often by looking at the negatives. On night, for instance, just as we were walking out I glanced at the negative and felt the R.K. Laxman was ulta-pulta. Imagine that! I told the Chief Sub about it who shrugged it off as the 'paper is upside down no'. So we walked to our waiting van and had driven past C.G. Road, when the Chief Sub started having his doubts. Given that we didn't have the luxury of cell phones, we had to turn the van back to get to the newsroom. The page was on its way to press and we intercepted it just in time to realise the said cartoon was indeed upside down.

A lot has changed since then. Blogs, for instance, give you total control of your content (in a sense) and the medium itself. You can cut, copy, paste without having to go through the whole selection and rejection change. Getting content out there is almost as easy or as difficult as the speed at which you - the writer can generate it. We spoke about this, after the blog panel got on, then off, then on again at the Ubud Writers Festival. A comment on media, straddling between three - print, TV and blogs was something that stirred one of the participants there who first mentioned the word 'workshop.'

Having never addressed anyone beyond my children and facing rejection as a teacher in the extreme degree when it came to teaching them, I wasn't sure if I was entirely upto. But you never know till you try. So when Libby asked if I'd like to do a workshop at the Galle Literary Festival, I decided it was time to get my act together and go through the world of print, TV and blogs - worlds I live in.


The venue provided by Amangalla was perfect for straddling between worlds as it were. And my master-class even more so. There were two students on holiday from Melbourne and their enthusiasm and ability to pick the right angles as well as pitches for stories was amazing. The Brandix team taught me so many ways of pitching more than just their own products. Rohanti Alahakoon, an award-winning poet entrusted me with some of her work. Sanjiva Gauthamadasa from 'The Lighthouse' taught me more than a thing or two about marketing 'single estate tea.'


Gehan de Sliva (a separate post on him shall follow) turned out to be an eco-warrior in corporate clothing. Janet de Neefe, as always touched me by her sheer presence. And at the end of the three hours, I'd learnt as much from the charged participants as I hope they did for me.

So when the question was asked : "Would you do again?"
I responded, "If you give me the platform, absolutely."

MEETING MARK TULLY

I shall forever kick myself for having missed out on the chance to moderate Mark Tully's session. Such are the exigencies of schedules that it ended up clashing with my workshop.

So I just couldn't believe my luck when the man himself decided to take a stroll of the picturesque Amangalla and reached our little space just as I was desperately trying to fit the laptop back into the bag. In the ensuing excitement, I forgot to yank out the zip disk which went khatak into two. I ask him if he is he in a tearing hurry. Prompt comes the reply 'bilkul nahin'.

So can I take a picture with you?
Sure.
So here is the star-struck picture of yours truly with the man himself.


Can I get my books signed?
Sure.
So out came the books.

You've actually been carrying all these around?
Absolutely (in the hope of bumping into you, I tell myself).

For years, I tell the media legend, I've been waiting for this moment. Now, that it is here, it sure seems larger than life. I tell him about his book (co-authored with Satish Jacob) on Operation Blue Star - 'Amritsar, Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle' and what a deep impact it had on me. It was then and is even now widely considered an authoritative word on what happened in 1984 at The Golden Temple. The gun-fire that was exchanged changed so many lives forever. Families ran away from homes, shops were razed to the ground, thousands of innocent lives were lost. My Dad who had fought in the war endured the saga of searches from his own men. All because he was a Sikh. But that didn't stop him from making several trips from Dalhouse (where he was attending a NCC Camp) to Amritsar and back to get as many stranded people out of the hills. I told him about the Punjab I'd never seen before. Brought to a standstill all the way from Pathankot with tanks lining the roads and then coming back to Amritsar to the booming sound of guns. Try as hard as one might, these things just don't go away.

Tully knows. He has seen and lived through it all and tells me about some of those battles, about what happened at Ganganagar and what it took to get some of those stories out.

A gripping conversationalist, he has me hanging on to his every word.

From the days of Blue Star to covering every conceivable disaster on television, he goes on to delve on the current state of television reporting.
"So much has changed," he says and I know the next thing that's coming is not in a good way.

We talk of Page 3 becoming Page 1. Movie stars engagements, birthdays et al passing off as headline news when so much is happening in the world around us. Worse still is seeing pictures thrown on to scripts that don't come together.

Then we talk a little bit about how much India has changed, the economy, the booming and 'my rising rent'.

Why is he still living on rent, I wonder, only to have my question answered the next day.

At 'The Englishman Abroad' which brought together the likes of Arthur C Clarke, William Darlymple and Tully, he stands out like a true son of the soil.

He hasn't ever attempted to run away from the Indian weather like his fellow panelist. He loves the sights, sounds and smells. He speaks of the Indian text and writing in Indian languages with an unmatched fervour and passion. He truly stands up for everything Indian, even the seeming weaknesses. He is beyond the pretension of the starched kurta. For all of that and a whole lot more, I give him my humble salaam.

POST FEST MUSINGS....

The fun, they say, usually begins after the festival. In this case it was the smiles. Founder of the Galle Literary Festival, Geoffrey Dobbs (behind Kiran) had reason to be happy. Together with Libby Southwell (who even at this point in time was sorting out someone's transport!) had pulled it off in a record time of four months. The critics had finally been silenced. The writers seemed happy as did the audience. It was a festival that had taken inspiration from Ubud - the Fest Director Janet de Neefe is here and also got lots of advice from the Founder of the Hong Kong Lit Fest Nury Vittachi.

Well, inspiration is one thing, bringing it to life quite another. And the writers did a fine job of that. Collectively, Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta and Romesh Gunesekera shone at their respective sessions. They also ended up taking the discussions at the last panel 'An Englishman Abroad' to another level. A lot of fun ensued here.

Sir Arthur C Clarke couldn't hear half the things that were said, perhaps that drove him to poetry and tales from another galaxy. Mark Tully and William Darlymple happily agreed to disagree - who doesn't love a writerly disagreement?

As part of the conversation William D also announced Suketu's book on New York and dragged both Kiran and Suketu into the 'Insider, Outsider' debate. Smart way to stretch the debate I say. Thoughts were shared on their stories, their writing, their styles, though in the end it was Romesh who stole the thunder by posing the profound question 'Is there a South Asia in London?' I hear the issue is still being debated.

Also on the sidelines, I was mistaken for Kiran Desai twice.
Once before our session, when two lovely ladies walked upto me with their pens and said "Are you signing books now?"
Since I haven't written any books, award-winning or otherwise, I replied, "You know I'd love to do just that if only Kiran would part with half of her Booker.""Oh my God! You are NOT Kiran?"
Then they flip to the last page and show me the picture I've seen so many times before and went: "Gosh, you look just like her."

I didn't have the heart to disagree, though to set the record straight, Kiran is whole lot slimmer, taller, nicer. I'm a grouch most mornings. More importantly, she has written theee book, I haven't.

Just when I thought the case of crossed identities was over, the next morning as I am rushing to set up my camera for the last session, a gentleman walks upto me and proclaims with the utmost seriousness of purpose:
"I don't mean this as a criticism of you but it's not fair that your session drew over 300 people."
A happy problem indeed!

So I tell him he'd do well to say that to that lovely lady in brown sitting quietly in one of the seats there.

"You mean...."

MEETING YASMINE GOONERATNE

Another session I greatly enjoyed was with Professor Emeritus Yasmine Gooneratne. We exchanged several emails before our session and I almost felt like I knew her before I met her. It helped that she gave me a spontaneous pat on my back by saying "I was a fine moderator" during the session itself. Usually, such words, should they be merited at all follow in subsequent emails. But Yasmine has spent a life-time grooming people - students and writers alike. And just like her writing, her real life has taken on many forms. A University Professor, literary critic, editor, bibliographer, award winning novelist, essayist and poet, she has published 20 books so far.

She has won several awards for her distinguished work. These include the Marjorie Barnard Prize for Fiction, India's Raja Rao Award for outstanding contribution to the Literature of the South Asian diaspora and the Order of Australia for her services to literature and education. Many of her books have been commended internationally and 'The Pleasures of Conquest' was shortlisted for the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize.


Despite her busy schedule, Yasmine hasn't just stopped at writing. She runs 'Guardian Angels' (more on it in the interview) and together with her husband, Dr Brendon Gooneratne, she established 'The Pemberley House' http://www.pemberleyhouse.com/ in Haputale, on a tea plantation 4,000 feet above sea level. The House which was inspired by their stays at some writers residencies also hosts 'The Pemberley International Study Centre' which opens for Residential Scholars from June-August. Over they years, Yasmine tells me how this labour of love has played host to writers, poets, musicians and just about anyone interested in the creative arts.

Strangely or not quite, all Yasmine ever wanted to do was to be a Cordon Bleu chef. That's till she expressed her thoughts to her teachers. They ensured the knives would be laid to rest, her bags would be firmly packed and life would point in the direction of a literary career. So cooking's loss, has been writing's gain. Most of this is from an email interview and I've added what I can remember from the session. Trouble is, we got lost while getting to Lunuganga. I barely made in time to get this session started and in the flurry that was marked by pulling the tripod, fixing the camera, yanking the tapes, I forgot thee most important thing - the battery. Not all is lost though since I still have the email interview with Yasmine. Here are the excerpts:

Q : You dreamt of being a chef and ended up being drawn to the world of writing and teaching. How did the best laid plans change?
A : Due to the influence of two English teachers, and the University Arts Scholarship, awarded on my Finals at Peradeniya, which took me to Cambridge University rather than to cookery school in Paris or London.

Q : And absolutely no regrets about the shift?
A : None at all.

Q : Can you still combine dream cooking with writing?
A : Yes. A character in my new novel (Latha) does this too.

Q : How big a role did your family, your school and your teachers have in helping you discover your creative self?
A : An essential role. My husband, especially. My family are all great readers, and wide reading is, after all, the foundation of good writing.

Q : You have always been quick to express your gratitude about growing up in Sri Lanka - "the biggest influence on my writing as regards to
subject matter has inevitably been the fact that I had the good fortune to have been born in Sri Lanka, and to grow up and be educated there at a "golden" period in the island's cultural life." So much has changed in the island, how does it reflect in your writing?
A : One cannot expect life in the island - or anywhere, for that matter - to stand still. But I have discovered that I can recapture and recreate lost Edens and Arcadies through writing fiction. That was a really happy discovery, especially when I found I was able to 'recover' people I had loved as a child, and give them a permanent life in my book 'Relative Merits'.
(In 'Relative Merits' nostalgia, research, detail are matched by the charm and intimacy of personal reminiscences. Delightful anecdotes bring to life an array of eccentric uncles and the rest of her family.)

Q : Given such a rich and varied up-bringing, it is no surprise that you have a multi-faceted professional life. How do you combine all these roles?
A : Teaching, research and creative writing have all dovetailed satisfactorily in my experience. I think I've been very lucky in this.

Q : You've said and I quote: "To write poetry, you have to be pushed into it by some deep emotion - it could be love, happiness, despair or dislike, but it has to be strong enough to resonate in your poetry. " What pushed you to it?
A : A death in the family. My father died in 1969. I was his youngest child, and we were very close.
(Her father's death led her to pen a poem called 'Review' and she ended up writing poetry almost non-stop resulting in the first volume of poetry 'Word Bird Motif' in 1971.)

Q : When you wrote to me, you mentioned that you never consciously set out to be a 'writer' or even a 'teacher'. What other experiences shaped your writing?
A : Travel, expatriation, and a love of reading 18th century English authors and 20th century Indian authors are three of them.

Q : What was the point when you stopped thinking that 'fiction was for other people' to write?
A : When I wrote my first story that was entirely set in Australia.

Q : A dear friend and a writer whose work I admire a lot - Meira Chand - discovered her writing self when she moved to India and there was no stopping her after that. You moved to Australia and discovered you could barely write any poetry. What was that period like?
A : A barren desert. Fortunately, it didn't last very long. My enjoyment in teaching carried me through it.

Q : How did being in Australia impact your writing?
A : Australia provided a new perspective on life, introduced me to people from a variety of backgrounds, and removed me from what had been a somewhat confined society in Sri Lanka.

Q : In fact, it was during this period that you wrote your first short story wholly set in Australia - 'How Barry Changed his Image'. What predicament were you trying to portray through this story?
A : The predicament of immigrants who find they must change themselves in order to settle comfortably into a new and unfamiliar society and participate fully in it. It's a challenge that demands a great deal of the newcomer, and not everyone can meet such challenges, or wants to do so. Many immigrants prefer to retreat into the safety provided by numbers, live a ghetto existence, and dream of returning 'home', not realizing very often that 'home' has changed, and is no longer what they once knew.

Q : That story became Chapter 15 of your first novel 'A Change of Skies' (1992) - did it inspire work on the novel?
A : The opening sentence of the story, 'My husband was having problems with his image', spoken by my narrator, a young and pretty young woman who comes to Australia from Sri Lanka, was the starting point of the novel.
(The novel won the Marjorie Barnard Literary Award for Fiction that year. It has since been reprinted several times and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize.)

Q : It is never easy to write about family. Often readers love such books, but there will be at least one person in the family who will be invariably unhappy. At the Ubud Writers Festival, Michael Ondaatje had narrated this hilarious incident from 'Running in The Family' where an aunt had to be in an 'either, or' situation due to pressure from the family. Did you experience anything like that when when you wrote 'Relative Merits' (1986)?
A : Not at all. On the other hand, editing it was not easy - there was so much marvellous material ready to hand, and I could not use all of it. So some things had to go. But I was - and still am - very happy with the result. And no one has sued me yet for libel!

Q : Your third novel - 'The Sweet and Simple Kind' has some real life parallels - what did you hope to capture through it?
A : I wanted to capture - or recapture - the 1950s, a period on which I look back as a kind of Golden Age in Sri Lanka.

Q : Through your writing you have delved into so many issues of our times. Do you think the future is still filled with possibilities?
A : I think you are referring here to political issues. If so, you have got me wrong - I don't write about political issues, I write about human issues, and human personalities. As for the future: where writing is concerned, there are always possibilities, if one keeps an open mind.

Q : Being a Professor you are constantly interacting with students, you are in a public space as it were, what happens when you have to do your serious writing. How do you isolate it from your real life role or is there no conflict of sorts?
A: I am not conscious of any conflict or difference at all.

Q : You are an author of studies on Jane Austen, Alexander Pope, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Leonard Woolf among others - what drew you to their work?
A : In each case, excellence and sincerity. Pretentious writing - what is sometimes called 'beautiful writing' - turns me off. But I read and re-read the writers I admire: Austen, Pope, Jhabvala, Leonard Woolf. There is always something to discover and to learn.

Q : Apart from these authors, which other author/authors work has inspired you?
A : R.K. Narayan, V.S. Naipaul, Paul Scott, Dr Samuel Johnson. Among Sri Lankan authors, I believe that by writing and publishing 'The Jam Fruit Tree' Carl Muller liberated Sri Lankan writers from convention and hypocrisy. I'm personally very grateful for that, and I think the first two books of his 'Burgher Trilogy' should be required reading for beginning authors.

Q : Criticism isn't always easy to handle - so whose advice do you take most seriously?
A : My family are my first readers and my most reliable critics. But I have two or three close friends outside the family whose advice and criticism have always proved worth taking.

Q : You are also an avid traveller and movie buff, which places have had the maximum impact on your writing?
A : India, most of all. America provided good material for satire. And Australia and Sri Lanka, of course.


Q : Have movies been part of your text?
A : Yes, indeed. I have had the pleasure of teaching Ruth Jhabvala's novels to third-year and Honours students in Australia. (In fact, I put her novel 'A Backward Place' on my text list long before she won the Booker Prize with 'Heat and Dust'.) Part of my interest in her work focuses on her ability to bring her screenplay-writing technique into her writing of fiction. Her novels 'A New Dominion' and 'Heat and Dust' are especially interesting in that regard.

Q : Ever experienced the dreaded writers block?
A : Never experienced it, I'm glad to say. But if I ever did, I'd turn to work of some kind that doesn't engage the emotions - tutoring, editing, compiling bibliographies and activities of that kind - and wait for the inspiration to start flowing again.

Q : I shouldn't even be asking this, but what's next?
A : Who knows? Maybe I'll go back to my first ambition, and write a cookery book, as one of my characters - Jean - does in my first novel, 'A Change of Skies'.

Q : And before we wrap this up, let's hear about another project that's been keeping you busy - 'Guardian Angels'.
A : Yes, I find literary editing a very satisfying activity. It's also very restful to focus on someone else's writing; and after completing 'The Sweet and Simple Kind', which went into over 600 pages, I've needed a rest. I have gained a great deal myself from the help given me by Australian literary editors when I was writing my first two novels, and I'm very much aware that writers in Sri Lanka don't have the benefit of such expert assistance. I really love making someone else's writing sparkle and shine; and if I think highly of a work, I'd be ready to spend a lot of time and effort on it. I felt like that about Nihal de Silva's book 'The Road From Elephant Pass', and also about the little sketches about a village boy and his friends that he wrote for The Sunday Times. I suggested the issuing of the Paduma stories in the form of a children's book.

See related posts on Nihal here:
http://readatpeace.blogspot.com/search?q=nihal+de+silva