By Henry White
Stephen Alter (Left) and Sonora Jha (Middle) speaking with library bookstore owner Arsen Kashkashian (Right). (Henry White/Radio 1190)
The Jaipur Literature Festival is an annual event held at the Boulder Public Library. For 11 years the festival has hosted writers and thinkers with diverse perspectives, all with an appreciation for Indian and south asian culture. The festival is unique from others of its kind through its emphasis on the cultural exchange between America and India.
The festival lasted two days, from Saturday, Sept. 13 to Sunday, Sept. 14. I went on Sunday. The library’s entrance was decorated with multicolored pennant streamers. The front desk was lined with infographics and programs, as well as an array of beautiful, hand-made dupattas – a type of large scarf – furnished to donors. The whole library was decorated with traditional Indian fabrics, the air rich with fragrances from the biryani and curry being served for lunch.
The lectures held this year were incredibly intriguing. Talks ranged from the process of writing fiction and nonfiction to the institutionalized famine in soviet-era Kazakhstan.
“[JLF is special] because it’s free,” Marcus du Sautoy, an Oxford math professor visiting Boulder said. “I think literary festivals can be a bit exclusive if they’ve got a price tag to them.”
Sautoy’s lecture on how mathematics can aid the creative process stood out to me in particular. He spoke about the patterned salience of prime numbers, the commonality of infinity within math and creative fields, and Mozart and Bach’s use of mathematics in their music.
In addition to multiple US local festivals, the flagship festival, held in Jaipur, is a seminal modern literature event collecting thousands of well-travelled intellectuals and domestic laymen alike. “They invite not just the obvious kind of novelists and poets, but they invite politicians, scientists, like myself,” Sautoy said. “And so I think it’s the valuing stories from a whole range of activities that has been really important.”
A volunteer pointed me to a concert hall where the morning music was about to start. After a brief introduction, the two musicians, Anupama Bhagway and Nabin Shrestha, came out, took up their instruments and settled on their cushion. The sitar rang out floridly, an entire band of sounds produced by one instrument. Then, Nabin joined in with his tabla, tipping and slapping a frantic beat, bringing measurement to the raw sound of the sitar.
After the show I walked back to the front desk and conversed with a JLF volunteer named Jess. “This is my third year,” she said. “I think it’s a tool for connection. It’s amazing to be able to have such prestigious and diverse thinkers in our library. Sometimes you forget how big the world is.”
As I wandered the festival, conversations floated around me, mixing with each other into a cloud of ideas and laughter. The JLF was many things, but above all it was a home for writers of all stripes.
“Writing is a very solitary thing,” Sautoy said.”To spend time with other authors is really important to understand their process, difficulties, that kind of empathy is really good.”