By: Gaurav Bist

Traditional fuck-ups like ticket & train glitches, hotel & ID troubles, kabootars peeing &pooing all over me – Even my all-time favorite bitch fights between the girlfriend & the close friend who happened to be an attractive girl – didn’t happen. So is my life boring this time around in the not-so-chilly Jaipore JLF? You wish. I just have different fuck-ups this year.

I’ve taken up a job which pays twice of what my ex-job did. It is also twice as drab, degrading (I’m not a traditional prostitute but I do get screwed), dreary, and deeply depressing. But mostly it is an incessant violation of basic human rights & suppression of all human creativity at first sight. It is modern day slavery where I’m handcuffed to a chair & a mouse. My eyes are assaulted for 40 hours a week with a screen that remorselessly tries to strangle my soul.

And I’ve aggravated my two-decade old disorder of peeing more than I drink to a critical level. Sometimes I’m peeing six times without even drinking a drop of water. It is a nightmare & it fucked up my focus in multiple sessions on my first day at the Lit Fest. I barely remember any of it.

I’m also at the heart of a something like love with this deep, distant-eyed girl. This girl has a boyfriend. We’ve never kissed. I write her little letters. I think this girl & I may fall in love. If we do, And if we have a daughter, we both have decided to name her……. April.

This girl’s name is Maya. Or is it Myra or Meera or is all this my crazy imagination triggered by my lifelong desire for something that doesn’t need society’s approval, something that is beyond right or wrong. Something that can never be broken by life.

I think I’m starting to scare the shit outta you. I love it when I do that.

Everyone knows genius men of yore have suffered from schizophrenia. But there is no evidence of dumbnuts like me suffering from such high class limited edition ailments. Well, there’s always a first time. I truly make dumb people proud.

—

I always walk from my budget hotel to the princely Diggi Palace, the host of the Grande Jaipur Literature Festival {JLF}.

I always encounter two Jaipurs living together, brushing shoulders, separated by an imaginary wall called money: Jaipur & Jaypore.

Jaipur: Homeless poor people who are forgotten by everyone including god. Then there’s the ignorant lower & middle class, riddled with regressive, sick mind-set that still looks at its girl in skirt-and-stockings as a virgin toh ho hi nahi sakti ji & the salwar kameez one as the perfect bride material. Who can later be married into a lifelong sex-slash-maid-slash-babymaker-slash-do-as-you’re-told-bitch.

Jaypore: Mostly imported from the cashrich badlands of New Delhi & western countries. For this Jaypore the other Jaipur doesn’t exist.Suna toh hai, bro, parr dekha kabhi nahi. This Jaypore is a mix of selfie-chasing, ever-pouting teenage, ignorant pretty dolls & weed-happy, bed-haired, stubbled literature snobs. And high-booted, plastic-breasted, high-class regressive ladies living off husband’s money, and their husbands who’ll go to any length to buy their kids & wives things they don’t deserve or need & sickeningly go to greater lengths to deprive their workers/servants the minimum wage.

Did you notice the two ends of the spectrum aren’t that different afterall. Ignorance, regression and sickness binds them both.

It is the homeless that stand-out with nothing in common. I’ve always been able to relate with the homeless. Like them I too got forgotten by everyone. But I’ve a blanket for when it gets cold. So let’s not pretend I know what they suffer.

Day Two

In my living memory I haven’t slept this long. Fourteen fucking hours.

Entrance to JLF is clogged. Getting in near impossible. I somehow manage to sneak into the festival. Clearly stupid of me to oversleep on a Saturday when all the teenagers & wannabes flock Diggi Palace in thousands for the selfies-with-celebs & to call their cronies and shout at top of their annoying voices “guess who I just clicked with. Shashi Tharoor, the man who killed his wife. How kewl, nah.”

I look like them rich idiots today, as I’m wearing an overcoat, scarf, formal pants & branded leather shoes. What a poser.

Rajnigandha is the official sponsor of JLF this year. I can totally imagine me reading The Catcher in the Rye while stuffing my face with Rajnigandha Pan Masala. Fuck yeah!

I barge into this session; heated discussion is taking place about the Israel & Palestine conflict. One of the speakers (HishamMatar or FadyJoudah) said he has seen the change in South Africa. South Africa, with all its problems with racism, has turned a corner. He managed to find-&-click a selfie with a white beggar.

The world deserves more white beggars. Go South Africa, you beauty.

Next session was a surprise bummer as one of my favorite columnist, Indrajit Hazra turned out to be uncharismatic & tragically dull as a moderator for the session I only attended because all other sessions were running house full.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked out. I braved through a crowd of genuine ass-grabbers & celebrity stalkers. I entered an allegedly cricketing debate between minor celebrities like Tharoor, Rajdeep Sardesai et al.

They talked of Dhoni’s split personality disorder. The schizophrenia. I told you famous people love schizophrenia. Different Dhonis show up in colors of short format & the whites of the Tests.

No wonder Dhoni decided to kill off the listless, loser Dhoni of the whites. Allegedly Dhoni didn’t even tell his wife, Sakshi, of his sudden Test retirement. Or did he? Remember there’s two of him. Ha!

Tharoor said IPL is responsible for quick scoring Test matches as he remembers watching Tests in his teens where the run-rates barely touched 2.5. No, dummy, all conquering Australian team of mid-90s till mid-00s changed the way the world played Test cricket. IPL only made half-assed players rich.

But I gotta give it to Mr Tharoor for sitting calm as a well-fed cat through all the sessions. Who would’ve known he’s the prime suspect of an on-going sensational: “Did Shashi kill his wife? – India wants to Know,” murder trial.

In the next session I got distracted by the pretty girls & particularly one pretty girl. I tried to click her but my camera is getting too old, like me.

The worst thing that can ever happen to a girl is being breath-taking pretty. Once you’re that good looking, everything else you do in life gets diluted by your beauty. And you can never tell if the boy who fell in love & married you actually fell in love with you or your picture-perfectness & perky breasts. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with falling in love with breasts. It’s just that they will eventually go down & so will your marriage.

Day Three

I over-slept again. I woke at 8, then at 10, 11 & finally victoriously climbed outta bed at noon. Now I’m here sitting in the session about rape & other bad things.

When I walked in there was a book launch from a local author named CP Surendran. He not only forgot a crucial plot of his book but also the names of the major characters. Heartening to know I’m not the only brain-dead writer.

American novelist, Gilbert King gave a heartfelt pictorial narration of the harrowing story of his non-fiction book: The Devil in the Grove. It drew parallels with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. And it is slated to be turned into a film. I can’t wait.

In the next session, Shobhaa Dé walked in holding Ram Jethmalani in arms to a rapturous applause. Expectedly his introduction by Dé drew a thunderous applause. And expectedly Ram turned out to be a tireless narcissist. Arrogance notwithstanding, Ram is clearly an extraordinary man of 91. Born in Karachi, Ram got his law degree at the tender age of 17.

He claimed ninety percent of his work continues to be pro bono {free}. In 84 Sikh riots, Ram took dying Sikhs to the hospitals. He was disheartened when doctors disgracefully declined to treat the critically injured Sikhs. He then took them to the private hospitals at his expense.

Rest of the session was filled with his funny, ostentatious anecdotes.

Here’s the best of Ram Jethmalani:

Between God & Devil, I’ve some respect for the devil.

Ram met Indira {Gandhi} in her bedroom at 11pm for an official meeting, alone. They called for coffee. Indira coughed as she took the first sip of coffee. ‘I think you’re allergic to coffee,’ Ram stated. Indira shrugged & said ‘No, I’m allergic to you’. Ram retorted ‘But that can’t be, I never got as close to you as the coffee cup.’

Ex-PM Morarji Desai told Ram he gave up his sex life at age 28. Ram countered ‘I’d have given up sex by 18 if Gujraben (Morarji’s wife) was my wife.’

This man had the chutzpah.

Here’s some more ‘Quick Bites’ from the JLF twenty-fifteen.

Patterned stockings were everywhere. I think I’m falling madly in love with patterned stockings. Can anything be sexier?

Speakers (writers) continued to go missing from sessions. Some never turned up & some turned up late by 30 minutes (Javier Moro) in an hour session.

Poet, Jeet Thayil was back at JLF after being whisked away from India in the middle of JLF 2013. His crime: He read phrases from Salman Rushdie’s Satanical Verses. Whoa! Whoa!……Jihad, baby!

For the first time like ever, ever I got good looking chicks sitting next to me. Over & Over. It was almost as if god was trying to make up for all his unfairness toward me all at once. Save some for later, for god’s sake, will ya 

William Dalrymple displayed a stylish beard. As stylish as a big-bellied old historian can get. He continued to sit on the grass; continued to resemble a cow.

I spotted a teenage chic with grey hair. All salt-&-pepper as if she was the daughter of Karan Thapar. Again my camera failed to click her.

Sonam Kapoor arrived on the last day for a book launch. A book she hasn’t read nor has any intention of reading. “Yaar time hi nahi milta, you know. And oh my god, Deepika is such a bitch. Heehee.”

With that my 5^th straight JLF came to an end. It continued to throw up something new at me.

It is time to go back. I already know the first I will do once I’m back in Delhi. Resign. Enough of the trivial pursuit of making money to buy things I don’t care about. Give me back my happy state of unemployment & good old black coffee.

I will resume writing my third book 143 days. And I also gotta figure out if this Maya, Myra or Meera is a real girl or something more surreal than us mortals can decipher.