Jaipur and All That

I've been warned that the Jaipur Literature Festival is no longer the cozy and cheerfully eccentric fest of my memories--"darling, it'll be like Polo Season out there," a friend said darkly, packing her pearls as she spoke. But I'm still fond of it for two reasons: 1) I don't have to travel to Edinburgh to listen to the likes of Jamaica Kincaid, Wole Soyinka, Vikram Chandra and Anne Applebaum and 2) the Jaipur Fest has a palace cat and horses. Off whenever the fog clears in the afternoon, or I find my pearls, whichever comes first.

Here's the list of speakers for 2010; and here's the rest of the program. I'm doing the Art of Criticism panel with Amit Chaudhuri, Geoff Dyer, Amitava Kumar and Andrew O' Hagan on the 21st, a session with Claire Tomalin and Andrew Lycett on Austen and Kipling on the 23rd, and a discussion of the short story with Mridula Koshy, Nighat Gandhi and Marc Parent on the 25th. I plan to spend the rest of the fest in a hammock, chaise-lounge, or howdah, according to availability.

Here are some posts from previous years:

1) On the delights of Diggi

2) On the "elbows out" school of poetry reading
3) On Salmagundi

Don't miss Jai's set of posts on Jaipur, here.