Litfesting in the lap of the Himalayas

Hindustan Times | By
Jan 03, 2020 07:58 PM IST

The IME Nepal Literature Festival, which hosted the $25,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature this year, featured interesting sessions that were well attended


It’s always interesting to attend literature festivals in the South Asian neighbourhood. They provide the visitor with the chance to understand the differences and the points of similarities between cultures of the region. In Dhaka two years ago, what stood out was the pan Bengali love for Rabindra sangeet, Bangladesh’s efforts to accommodate the Rohingyas who had just begun fleeing Myanmar, the nation’s deep ethnic pride, and the enthusiastic audiences that thronged the festival venue at the Bangla Academy.

Amitabha Bagchi(L) receiving the DSC Prize from Pradeep Gyawali, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nepal, in the presence of DSC prize founder Surina Narula and Harish Trivedi, jury chair of the prize for 2019.(DSC Prize for South Asian Literature)
Amitabha Bagchi(L) receiving the DSC Prize from Pradeep Gyawali, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nepal, in the presence of DSC prize founder Surina Narula and Harish Trivedi, jury chair of the prize for 2019.(DSC Prize for South Asian Literature)

The Mountain Echoes Literary Festival in Thimphu, Bhutan, is calm, polite, and in keeping with the country’s reputation, actually happy and good natured. Indian attendees are the only ones sparring over and choking on politics at informal events on the side.

And then there’s the IME Nepal Literature Festival that was held from December 13 to 16 on the banks of the Fewa Lake in Pokhara. Surrounded by the snow capped Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges, this spectacular venue has you staring upwards in wonderment. Nepal, like Bhutan, was not colonized by a European power and seems to have benefitted a great deal in terms of cultural confidence as a result. Both countries were monarchies until recently and both have to deal with India and China. As an overwhelmingly Hindu nation but one that is not currently overly fond of its southern neighbour, Nepal is both familiar and strange at once, and entirely interesting – mirrored in your own experience of reading local pamphlets in Devnagari but understanding very little because, well, Nepali is not Hindi. The IME Nepal Literature Festival attracts real readers, its book shop, full of numerous titles in the native language and in English, did brisk business, and sessions in both languages were well attended.

The well attended sessions at the IME Nepal Literature Festival (Courtesy the DSC Prize For South Asian Literature )
The well attended sessions at the IME Nepal Literature Festival (Courtesy the DSC Prize For South Asian Literature )

Especially interesting was the conversation on Selfie Journalism between Kunda Dixit, editor of Nepali Times, and one of the members of the jury for the $25,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and Raj Kamal Jha, editor of the Indian Express, and author of The City and the Sea, one of the books nominated for the prize. Jha contended that journalists taking pictures with the subjects of their stories, a growing phenomenon, “upends the fundamental compact (of journalists) as story tellers – to not be at the centre of the story”.

Afghan American Jamir Jan Kochai spoke on “Writing Home and the Homeland” and Jeremy Tambling, one of the DSC prize jury members – others were Harish Trivedi, Carmen Wickramagamage and Rifat Munim – made astute observations on writing in the age of populism.

Amitabha Bagchi, author of Half the Night is Gone – which moderator Ajapa Sharma pointed out is an “intertextual text” where an author is writing a book within the book -- spoke about his work being an effort to “thank those who have come before us – Jayasi, Ghalib, Adam Gondvi.” “Things have come to a boil, hatred created by sucking poetry out of our daily lives… when we write books we try to inject poetry back into life,” he said.

Read more: Magic in the mountains: A look back at the stimulating sessions of the Mountain Echoes Festival 2019

A professor at IIT Delhi in the computer science and engineering department – his home page says his research interests are data algorithmics and analytics, probability and networks -- Bagchi fought off competition from Jamir Jan Kochai (99 Nights in Logar), Madhuri Vijay (The Far Field, which won the JCB Prize this year), Manoranjan Byapari (There’s Gunpowder in the Air translated into English by Arunava Sinha), Raj Kamal Jha, and Sadia Abbas (The Empty Room) to win the DSC prize this year. The announcement was the grand finale of the festival and the crowd waited till the end, cheering especially enthusiastically for Dalit Bengali author Manoranjan Byapari.

Not one for reckless living, Bagchi, who was accompanied by his wife Ratika Kapur (author of the excellent The Private Life of Mrs Sharma) and their son, intends to put the money in a respectable fixed deposit. “I have a day job, of course, so I’m happy to get the money and maybe it will buy me some more time to write,” he said.

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