Having spent 30 years here, well-known travel writer William Dalrymple, also the co-director of the Jaipur literature Festival, says he has embraced the country whole-heartedly. He talks to Karan Bhardwaj about the art of managing time and his next book on India’s greatest cultural moments
It was quite a task to get through to William Dalrymple during the Jaipur literature Festival. A well-known travel writer and the festival co-director, he had been running from pillar to post to ensure everything takes off and finishes on time. After postponing the interview for three days, he finally called us for an evening tea during the penultimate moments of the festival, and while scratching his head and shoulder, he apologised for his unavailability. Dalrymple is like an one-man army for the foreign authors who look at him for any query — small or big. “But it’s like a big team effort. My job, in comparison to Sanjoy Roy (producer) and Namita Gokhale (co-director) is so less. I handle around 60 foreign participants while Namita takes care of over 200 Indian authors and artistes. Sanjoy indulges in everyday logistics and much more than that,” he said.
It was around 30 years ago when he first came to India, precisely Delhi, to research on his book City of Djinns, and instantly fell in love with the country. The multi-culturalism and sporadic contradictions fascinated him so much that today he takes pride in calling India his “home”. “It has been unique. It opens up as well as closes opportunities. There’s certainly a baggage of colonialism which India suffered for centuries. But over the years, it has warmed up to me and in fact, is the largest consumer of my books. India has been generous to me. People at JlF often wonder where this firangi, who runs here and there, has come from,” he said.
Handling one of the biggest literary festivals across Asia must be the mind-boggling task. On top of that, Dalrymple travels a lot for his books. But he shared his strategy which make things sorted. “We start with the best writers that we get, who are in the news at the moment and then we start putting them together. We try mixing international and desi and keep a balance. We then interchange the grid so that at any moment of the session you will find a fair balance of fiction writer, a non-fiction writer and poets from India and abroad. This is a conscious effort to entertain and attract a wide spectrum of people. By November the grid is set and we send it out. Normally, with luck, everything — right from the flight booking to hotel reservations are all locked by early December,” he said.
But isn’t it difficult to keep a tap on all writersIJ “I do not have a system or a visitor card but I have Evernote (a software designed for note taking and archiving) where I have the list of all the people I will be interacting with and all the authors who I find good. I make a note of authors who are very good moderators or who win the Booker Prize, too,” he shared.
The Jaipur literature Festival, which began on a small note some seven years ago, has now become one of the most popular events in India, thanks to the controversies that hijack the literature platform almost every year. But Dalrymple enjoys controversies the least. “There is a conspiracy out there that people manufacture these days. We dread them and try to avoid them. The most frustrating thing is to imagine when you get an amazing genius and people don’t know about it. People only get to know about Oprah coming and Salman Rushdie not coming,” he said. He also objected to the media reportings which only stated sensational stories and didn’t highlight the real literature spirit.
“We have hundreds of journalists and almost two third of them are not interested in books and are not even familiar with the world of books. So they do not build stories on the subject they just create news stories. One of the saddest part is that there aren’t many literary journalists in India. There are about only 30 odd reviewers in India who are extremely literate and know what they are writing about. Then there is a fallout. Whatever is being written now are not just bad reviews, they are badly written stupid reviews. I am also saddened by coverage which are celebrity-driven. Often there are amazing sessions where you have a rapt audience and you get a standing ovation which do not make it to the media at all. The image of the festival has to change in the eyes of the press,” he said.
Dalrymple wears many hats. He’s a historian, artiste, documentary maker, brodcaster, travel writer, curator and festival director. Time management must be a challenge for him. “I get up early,” he quipped. “I’m totally off everything when I am writing. My method of working is slow. In the first year, I research a lot. The next year goes into looking for archiving, selecting relevant portions and noting everything down. I write in third year. So it takes a lot time. I get up early early and make notes in morning, then jog a little bit and then write till 4pm,” he said.
Dalrymple is now writing a cultural travelogue on India. “It’s about India’s art history and the greatest cultural moments,” he said.