I often read, and listen to, authors’ interviews. Sometime ago, I came across on YouTube such a literary conversation of a renowned American author famous for works like The New York Trilogy (1987), and the novel 4 3 2 1 (2017): Paul Benjamin Auster.
Is the purpose of life only to eat, drink, and be merry? Or, is there a higher purpose that one ought to discover before it is too late? Surely, to know how to justify one’s own existence to oneself is to know one’s destiny. However, this is a rather difficult task which entails primarily two steps: to recognise the seeds of creativity one carries in one’s being; and then to nurture these seeds till they grow up to their full potential. And, along the way, one has to brace oneself for fierce opposition, for there are people who are ever ready to put a damper on your growing enthusiasm. And if they fail to dislodge you from your avowed path, they may indulge in activities generally known as psychic assassination.
The maiden Mussoorie Writers’ Fes¬tival was held in Woodstock, Mus¬soorieinApril2007.1t lasted five days, from 24 to 28 April Writers from different parts of the world came to attend, not to mention a sizeable number of Indian writ¬ers. I had by then met most of the writers hailing from that region and interviewed them. So, I was not exactly unknown. One of the main reasons for attending was to watch Ruskin Bond getting the Poet Laureate of Landour Award.
Grief, like a violent storm, has a span. While a storm usually spends itself after an hour or two, leaving behind a trail of devastation, the intensity of grief does not peter out that quick. It lasts for several months, in some cases for years. In most such instances, one doesn’t really know how to come to terms with it. A case in point is the moving memoir: H is for Hawk (2014), authored by Helen Macdonald.
Have you ever been to a poetry reading event? If you have, you blow how in most cases there remain in the hall more chairs unoccupied than otherwise. There is apathy towards poetry; maybe it’s got something to do with obscurity it usually entails.
The name I Allan Sealy, for those who dip into his soulful yet difficult prose, conjures up the image of a versatile writer. But the act of writing about what Allan is really known for pales somewhat when his other vocation, gardening, takes over. He beds out very uncommon and near-extinct shrubs and plants at his racecourse retreat in Dehradun. And at a time when the whole world was in a shuttered state last year, Allan was out in the open, right under the sun, tending to his favourite plants. I know this because we exchanged mails, frequently so, stuck at home as we were.
Whenever in Mussoorie, Bill and I walk the talk, mostly. At the end of any lit-meet or get-together he usually lingers a while absorbing the ambiance before making the move, and I catch him on the trot.
Imagine you are marooned in an island like the one in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Before the rescue team arrives you have only one way to keep thought of any danger at bay: To erect a tent, take shelter in it and keep each other occupied by telling and performing stories created on the spot!
It’s almost like a leaf straight out of The Naïve & the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk or Preoccupations by Seamus Heaney at the 4th Mussoorie Lit-Fest held at Woodstock campus, Landour, Mussoorie, on 5th & 6th Oct’11, where the writers, editors, poets and publishers delved deep into the art and craft of writing and publishing; into what they call finding the center or spirituality that the process of writing leads to.
When the Air India flight touched down at Devi Ahilyabai Holkar airport in Indore at around 2 pm, the temperature outside, the air-hostess announced, was 40+ degrees Celsius. Out of the airport in search of a cab for an hour’s journey to Ujjain, I just recoiled from the blistering heat. Would I be able to withstand this intense hot spell and have a good look around this holiest of holy place, hosting the Simhasth Kumbh Mahaparv 2016, I wondered.
