Jaipur Literary Festival Day 1

Chauffeur taking us to Bank 

Simon Winchester

Paul Beatty

Dancers at the Palace

Our saga continues of trying to exchange our worthless rupees for valid money. The management of the Rambaugh Palace contacted the Reserve Bank of India for us and we went in style to exchange our money. They provided a chauffeur and a 1937 four door convertible to drive us to the bank. We were driven like royalty through he streets of Jaipur to the Bank. People looked at us wondering who we were. When we arrived at the RBI there were a line of people waiting to get in. We were ushered past them all into the Bank. There we were basically told you are out of luck, too bad. Only NRI (Non-Resident Indians) could exchange money. Once again we were foiled. We did, however, enjoy the ride back to Palace. We haven't given up yet!

The first session was by Simon Winchester, a prolific English writer. Although a geologist by training he has written a wide variety of non-fiction books. This was about his book about the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) entitled The Professor and Madman. There is something about hearing speakers with English accents - it augments any story and this one is a amazing and true. I can’t do it justice here, you will need to read the book, but I think I can summarize it. An American Surgeon in the Civil War, basically flips out from the carnage and is put in a mental asylum. He comes from a wealthy family and they transfer him to London. In London, he murders someone and is sent to an insane asylum - he is completely nuts. Meanwhile at Oxford they are trying to assemble the OED. This would be the first comprehensive English dictionary that defines words as they are actually used, not as they should be used. The murderer, while totally insane is also brilliant and loves books. He submits thousands of definitions that are used in the OED. Amazingly this story is now being turned into a movie starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn. I will let you guess which one plays the madman. It was an interesting and fun session.

The next session we attended was with the winner of the Mann-Booker Prize and The National Book Circle Award: Paul Beatty who wrote "The Sellout". The book apparently is very difficult to read. The author however is a very good interviewee. He is a black author from LA who now teaches at Columbia he is very astute in his observations about race, language and labels. His response to the questions by the interlocutor were convoluted and self-aware. I really enjoyed the session but I am sure I wouldn’t like the novel. John was intrigued, hopefully he will read the book and let me know his recommendation.

The last session I attended was about Foreign Correspondents. They do this panel every year at the Jaipur Literary Festival. I always enjoy it. The best take away for me, and I hope he is correct, was by a foreign correspondent of the Guardian Newspaper. He has been in harm’s way covering wars around the world. His most harrowing experiences was being posted in Moscow. He told us of the aggressive nature of the secret police bugging his hotel room and threatening his family. He says The Guardian is working on establishing the collusion between the Russian Government and the Trump Campaign. If they can establish it he believes it will lead to Trump’s impeachment. Then of course we will have Pence, but that is another issue to be dealt with. They also felt that Trump's antipathy to the established press can turn out to be a good thing. The press will feel no need to suck up to him, because they know he perceives them as the enemy. This hopefully will free the press to even more aggressive in investigating the preposterous person posing as our President.

At the Rambagh Palace we met a couple who are also attending the festival. They often travel to India from Washington DC where they live. He is a psychiatrist, she is phycologist. He has an exhibit opening in Delhi on Jews in India Cinema. It was a quite a coincidence meeting them. Unfortunately we won't be in Delhi when the show opens. We enjoyed talking to them and ran into them several times at the venue. They joined us for drinks and discussions at cocktail hour. I am sure we will see more of them.

We had dinner at the Rambaugh while John went out with our new friends to a different restaurant. It was a great first day for the festival. The exposure to new books, authors and people in Jaipur is a great experience.