Jaipur Literary Festival Day 1

Dancers at opening sessions

On Violence, Maya Jassanoff on right

Painted Tuk-Tuk

Spice Court Restaurant

Cocktails and Dessert, Rambagh

Butter Scotch Liquor, who knew?

Day one of the Jaipur Literary Festival started with opening ceremonies that included singing, dancing, lighting of symbolic flames, etc.

The Key Note Speech was by Pico Iyer. His speech centered on how reading transcends artificial borders and allows one to imagine how others experience life. He strongly disagrees with the current sentiments about cultural appropriation. As a writer he feels he should be allowed to assume different cultural identities, and it is a great value for him to imagine himself as say a Chinese woman and write from her perspective. Wish our president would read anything except twitter. Actually, if I am wishing, I wish our president wasn’t president.

We then went to a panel entitled: On Violence. We didn’t like some of the panelist who were trying to put an ancient religious cast on the use of violence. They were overly narrow in their view, we were blown away by Maya Jassanoff, a Harvard Professor, who is brilliant and a facile speaker. She has the ability to weave together arguments and take a broader view.

Her basic arguments were cogent and stimulating. She has a new book out that has rave reviews: The Dawn Watch, a biography of Joseph Conrad that is stepping off point for her to discuss colonialism and other subjects. Read the review linked above, the book sounds amazing.

We heard an amazing interview with Suki Kim. She is the ONLY reporter who has gone undercover in North Korea. She showed us videos and slides of the school where she taught the students of the North Korean elite English. Being there was a ruse for her, so that she could learn about the horrors of North Korea. It is worse then you can imagine. Think of the entire country as one big prison. The people basically have become zombies worshiping the Dear Leader. It was an amazing act of courage for her to do this. If discovered she would have been executed. Her book is: Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite.

This was followed by lunch and then we went to another panel that Maya was on. We have become Maya groupies! We then experienced a very sad lecture. The subject was on Women in the Resistance in France in World War 2. The subject of the book is fascinating and the true-life spy stories of the gallant women is inspiring. The author was a pedantic English Professor who has no ability to relate to his audience. It’s a shame he droned on about an interesting topic, boring everyone.

We attended one final panel. To try and bridge the language gap of the audience (a probably small percentage don’t speak English) the discussion was half in English, half in India. On the surface this sounds like a good idea, but English only speakers were at a disadvantage, Hindi only speakers were at a disadvantage, the only people who could truly understand were bilingual Hindi-English members of the audience. That is however a large percentage in India among literate people who would be attending this event. We found this ineffective for us and left.

After returning to The Rambagh Palace, we went to Spice Court for Indian Food. We took Uber both ways, it is very easy to use in India, with one twist: you can order a tuk-tuk Uber! We had drinks and dessert outside (the weather in Jaipur this year is warmer than last year). I saw Butter Scotch Liqueur on the drink menu. I asked for a sample because I had never knew it existed. It tasted just like butterscotch. Note to self: it would be perfect over ice-cream! I declined ordering it after sampling it and had my usual 10-year-old Talisker Scotch. It was then off to bed for us.