Times Litfest
At one session, an expert on Hindu mythology, Devdutt Pattanaik, was in conversation with Siddharth Vardarajan. He said that various mythologies in the world are quite identical to each other, therefore in order to understand one mythology you have to understand other mythologies. He added if foreigners write about Hindu mythology it’s high time we start writing about theirs.
Vardarajan asked him about his views on or pralay and would he call them the anger of the gods? In answer, Pattanaik said, ‘there is no anger which causes pralay, it is cycling of nature. It is not punitive.’
Asked about the ambiguity in Hindu mythology, he said that Hinduism is like an open source file. People keep adding good things into it as time progresses. Asked about reincarnation, he said that Egyptians didn’t believe in reincarnation, they believed in afterlife. On being asked if god is discriminative, he said that ‘god loves the child who is stupid because he knows he might become king one day’. He went on to add, ‘truth is a religious word while fact is a scientific word’. The popular writer took potshots at people from the corporate world and asked them to not consider their excel sheets as the universe. He got the entire audience to laugh by saying, ‘Money is the greatest fiction and we all know it by now.’
Bond is the Best
Veteran writer Ruskin Bond, well known for his stories for children, was conferred with Lifetime Achievement Award at the Times Lit Fest. In a session in conversation with Paro Anand, another well-known children’s writer, he later said that it’s the enthusiasm of his readers both young and old which has inspired him and kept him going. He still writes with a pen and did confess that it is very difficult for his publishers in the current technology-driven world.
On being asked when did he decide to take writing as his career, he said he had made up his mind just before receiving the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. Even though his mother had told him to join the army, his family was very supportive once he finally decided to pursue writing as his career.
Ruskin Bond said he firmly believed that children‘s literature cannot be bifurcated for different-different age groups. He also said he was never stubborn about the editorial changes and has no hesitation in accepting the suggestions for his books, including the covers. On being asked about his personal life, the forever bachelor said that he had fallen in love many times and was often stalked.
One child asked Bond what would be his three wishes if he was given a magic lamp. Ruskin’s answer, ‘first, the world should have more opportunities for young people. Second, that there be more greenery around us. Third, that ATMS around Mussorie are full of cash.’
Answering another question on if he has any plans to do a Graphic novel, he said that ‘yes’ but that there is no such proposal in front him now although he understood the role of technology in the day-to-day life of children.
Dalrymple on travel writing
Author William Dalrymple, in a session, talked about his journey as a travel writer and noted that ‘travel writing’ happens to be one of the most ancient form of literature. He went on to name noted travel writers of the past like Megasthanese and Fa-hsien who spent a lot of their time in India.
He also recalled how as a student at Cambridge University, he had got £ 750 as scholarship for his Silk Route trip. How his first book was written on his way to Jeursalam from Scotland which never got published because, according to him, ‘it was very horribly written’. He gave writing tips to the audience and said travel writers should never consider themselves to be on a holiday. They must smell the soil while they are writing and interact with people like journalists do to get an idea.
On Delhi, he noted how people from different classes have different lifestyles and yet they co-existed. ‘ I cannot say Delhi is boring and smokey’, he said. Dalrymple also talked about his critically acclaimed new book, The Writer’s Eye. He discussed a character in this book, Amid Ali who lived in Karachi and how he was unable to get rid from the bitter memories of partition and the fragrance of his beloved city Delhi.
Can we be friends with Pak?
The former ambassador of Pakistan to Sri Lanka and the United States, Husain Haqqani was invited to express his views on a very sensitive topic; that of the relationship between India and Pakistan. An expert commentator on the geo-political relations between South Asian countries, Haqqani was in conversation with Shekhar Gupta, a seasoned journalist and himself an acute observer of current political trends.
Nationalistic tendencies have a way of seeping into human behaviour when the relationship between two neighbouring countries who have a shared history is brought into context. Haqqani and Gupta tried to bridge this gap by bringing an alternate discourse which tries and looks at this troubled relationship through a less spiteful dynamic.
‘I am a Pakistani, and the love for my country is what prompts me to come to India and reassure the people here, that even in the worst of times when tension are high along both the LOC and among the common man, that Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed are not the only faces of Pakistan,’ said Haqqani, advocating that unity and strength is the way to go to fight against divisive politics. ‘We should concentrate on and recognise our five thousand years of shared history, rather than the quibble over the 70 years of partition,’ he further added.
Pointing out the fall-outs of such neighbouring state conflicts, Haqqani said, ‘Between USA, Canada and Mexico, they share 50 per cent of the trade among themselves. Similarly, ASEAN countries and countries in the EU share the majority of their trade with each other. However, for South-Asian countries, beginning from Afghanistan and going all the way to Bangladesh and Philippines, the trade share is less than 5 per cent.’
Economics through literature
Talking about how he can be a vehicle for transmitting to the audience all that he has read and learned from literature about economic development, and how literature actually plays a role in understanding it, Arvind Subramanian quoted from CLR James’ memoir Beyond Boundaries, ‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know,’ suggesting in its essence that a person needs to be well read beyond his own subject to fully understand it, and literature is a great medium to enable that.
During the session, he cited several examples of literary pieces that have been influential in his understanding of economic development. ‘My first academic paper was actually on Mauritius being India’s largest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).’ After writing his paper though, Subramanian discovered that there were a number of literary pieces on Mauritius which he was unaware of like VS Naipaul’s essay The Overcrowded Barracoon or The Prospector by Le Clézio. ‘Mark Twain has also written about Mauritius and so has Joseph Conrad and Amitav Ghosh.’ This led him to a moment of epiphany where he realised that ‘not only could literature have intrinsic value, but also instrumental value where I could learn more about what I was working on through literature.’
Talking about a series of papers he had written with Raghuram Rajan, Subramanian said he came across American author Philip Gourevitch’s work We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. ‘I realised that the analysis which Raghu and I had done in our paper paled in comparison to Gourevitch’s insightful understanding of the matter.’
