January 23, 2019

The grandest LITFEST

The 12th Edition of Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF / LitFest) this year is taking place with a new local government in place. This year the LitFest would be one of the biggest affairs in its history in terms of scale and magnitude.

With Sanjoy Roy

In a freewheeling session of Ek Mulakat on Tuesday, Sanjoy Roy, managing director of Teamwork and the man behind JLF, shared aspects of the LitFest not known to many.

The volume of business that JLF brings to the state is mindboggling. This year, as informed by Mr Roy, nearly 600 media persons have been given accreditation from India and across the world. A few years ago, for the first time, an economic survey was done and it was estimated that JLF contributed nearly Rs 30 crores to the local economy. Last year Ernst & Young did a basic survey in which they included jewellery, furniture, clothing, home products, restaurants and hotels and the figure was Rs 116 crores. The scale of LitFest’s contribution to the local economy can be gauged from the fact that bookstores sell over about 100,000 books, valued in crores, during JLF.

With Dominic Asquith, British Deputy High Commissioner at JLF

There are queries from many quarters that the Diggi Palace is not big enough for hosting the fest. Roy, however, feels that there is not another venue in Jaipur that provides such ambience and infrastructure to host the Festival. He had scouted for a `better venue’ but the ones he visited did not come close to the Diggi Palace. The fact that there are nearly 125 washrooms with tissue papers and toiletry to cater to the crowds in an indicator towards the kind of logistics JLF demands. Other logistical details are no less eye-popping.

Also, JLF has to factor in numerous and new issues every year. For example, the local health department team keeps doctors, staff, medicines and ambulances ready to screen people for influenza-like illness (ILI) and to provide masks and medicines to those who show symptoms.

With Ram Pratap Diggi

This year writer-historian William Dalrymple would be conspicuous by his absence. He had tweeted his apologies on January 16 saying that following the death of his father Sir Hew Fleetwood Hamilton-Dalrymple he would join a family affair. William was very active during the Mumbai curtain raiser of the LitFest in December 2018.

This year the LitFest will have one of the strongest line-up of 350 speakers cutting across different fields and genres including Nobel-prize winning structural biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (author Gene Machine), Pulitzer Award-winning heavyweight authors, feminist authors, Dalit writers and so on covering, 16 Indian and 12 International languages. This is perhaps what makes it “The grandest lit-fest in the world”.

Over the years I have witnessed the stupendous growth of Jaipur LitFest. The acorn has become a mighty Oak. I think Jaipur LitFest is like a salad-bowl model where authors, writers, politicians, foreign visitors, bureaucrats, actors, activists, artists, book lovers and the local residents come together for five days – each retaining their unique identities like different ingredients in a salad bowl – to celebrate the pulsating spirit of the Pink City.

ess bee