The Chasing iamb

Snegum and I threw ourselves out of the house fairly early since this was going to be a packed day full of poetry and we also wanted to meet some friends in any window of time that opened up. Also, Snegum was clear that there was no way she was going home without having wet her feet in the sea.

Listen, do you have any clue what one should wear at a lit-fest? I have figured what to wear at a party thrown by gay men anywhere, to a wedding in Chennai in summer, to a play in Delhi in winter, at the World Social Forum and to lunch in Tiruvalla. What does one wear as a lit-groupie in Mumbai where one does not want to frighten people, look like a wallflower or look like one is trying too hard?

SB, writer and publisher, was wearing a black summer shift, making her look relaxed and leggy. The very lovely Tishani Doshi wore a saree immediately reminding us that she is a dancer who trained under Chandralekha. The elder statesmen of the poetry world, AK Mehrotra, Dilip Chitre and Adil Jussawala all wore neat, unremarkable pants-shirt-waistcoat combinations. Eunice D' Souza was wearing her trademark saree and smirk, making me think me of the dozens of brilliant Eunice-in-the-classroom stories I have heard. The flotsam and jetsam like me wore blindingly bright and ridiculously cheerful Tshirts and dresses. Today's venue was Prithvi theatre and its cafe. I saw KK Menon going by, looking tall and calm. What did Prithvi regulars make of the writerly lot, all of whom looked vague and few of whom looked like they got out much?


( poyums )

Mumbai is always a bit of a social confusion. Each time I am there I have to decide that I am not seeing some people whom I would dearly love to see. But I ALWAYS see Paddy whom I have known since I was ten. Paddy and I were bonded at the waist as children, holed up in rooms reading, smuggling books in and out and having hysteria over lines and passages that no one else found as funny as we did. (Particularly Rupert Baxter screaming 'Heh! Muh!' instead of 'Help! Murder' in Something New.) These days Paddy and I read very different things but she is still book addicted. Her Mahim flat is overflowing with the latest fantasy novels. At one point the kitchen shelves were full of huge, shiny books, instead of spices and vessels, something I adored her for. On Saturday after stuffing our faces at Mondy's, Paddy, Snegum and I went to a discussion at Max Mueller.   This is where I was going to catch Suniti, I hoped.

When we got there the session had not started but standing in the dark corridor outside the hall looking sweet and professorial was St.Suniti herself. She has the rare kind of face that has smiled so much at some point that it no longer needs to. Even Snegum, who is inclined to leap and start at the sight of new people, fell in love with her because she looks like her favourite kind of Maharashtrian woman.

Britain now has a poetry boy-band. Four cute boys, with wicked faces and great hair who kissed the Blarney stone. They are funny, topical-political and perform with power-point presentations unfolding behind them. Members of  Aisle16 even have their own websites. They are really very cool but they are far too available to be very exciting to the perverse lit groupie. Certainly not for the kind of pilgrimage I made to Mumbai. AK Mehrotra and Suniti Namjoshi who hid in hills and moors and whose books were impossible to find any more. They were the ones whom I had to see and whose exhaled air I needed to breathe.

I used to think all poets were Byronic--

Mad, bad and dangerous to know.
And then I met a few. (Triolet)

Wendy goes on to completely dismiss poets' potential to excite but after Kitab I have to say that poets and writers, as dull as they may be off the page, as a congregation are supremely fun to watch. Ostensibly I was looking for Suniti Namjoshi to interview her but in the meanwhile there was a carnival of novelists, poets, writers, readers, performers, middle-of-first-novel-ers and general hangers-on.

( writers etc )

Later at the same venue was a discussion between Tishani Doshi and Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. Tishani Doshi, hot young poet and winner of the Foward Prize looked pretty, irritated and distracted for most part. Nirpal SIngh Dhaliwal was hip and articulate, straight out of the cast of a Gurindher Chada movie with his accent and big Kareem shoes. I love it when people ask questions which begin " I have not read your book but..." And for this session there was a juicy one. Man with inevitably smug voice asked, " I have not read your books but will either of you progress to writing about something beyond four letter words?" I ducked to hide embarrassed giggles. Nirpal tried to clarify that it was in character for his young male characters to be less than Miss Manners-like. Tishani glared and said that she did not use any four letter words. The Smug Unread then clarified that his coyly worded enquiry was more about Nirpal and Tishani's unseemly obsession with sex in their writing. While Tishani looked like an outraged china shepherdess and seemed quite capable of flinging a lightning bolt at the dolt, Nirpal Singh looked merely baffled at the doltishness.

Day one was quiet except for the entry of Snegum, the most outrageously wonderful Gujarati food and my smiling maternally and frightening a tall, nervous boy sitting next to me. It later occured to me that the nerdy child was Jyoti Guptara one member of the Guptara twins, the Olsen twins of the writing world. He and his brother finished the first draft of their fantasy novel when they were 11! At 20 they have a publicist and are doing book tours around the world. And here I was smiling kindly at what I thought was small paapu. The only story that matches this in misguided kindness is the one about my nicely brought up Kannadiga friend who beamed a grand-daughterly beam at an extremely old man at a lecture in New York without realising he was Edward Said.

End of Day One and no sight of Suniti Namjoshi yet. The beautiful volunteer (who panicked me because I had a six degrees of seperation connection with her) said she had no clue.  Arundhati Subramanium  told me that no one knew where any one was. It was an informal non stage-managed lit fest and that was its charm but where does one find a small fabulist in vast Mumbai?