Day 1 of the Festival

Session on Bengali Detective Stories  

Amartya Sen     

Today was day 1 of the Literary Festival. It was great! It started at 10am with a lot of speeches of how great the festival was and what it stood for, very self-congratulatory. We knew we have to indulge them. The Governor of the State of Rajasthan (a woman), gave an excellent speech, hitting all of the right notes about freedom, books, discussions, etc.

It was then time for the main event – the key note speaker of the festival: Nobel Prize Winner – Amartya Sen. This Bangladeshi born economist, is quite old and feeble. However, his mind in sharp and his humor is excellent and politics are leftist. Over his long life he has certainly learned how to give a great speech. He created a very funny construct, that had all of the audience laughing about him being shot into space and meeting a Goddess. This Goddess however, could only deliver medium size miracles. This was totally understandable to the Hindu audience, who of course know there are over 30 million different Hindu Gods.

He then requested 7 miracles and each one lead to a very profound and serious analysis by Sen of Indian Issues. He went into depth on each issue displaying his extraordinary intelligence. He probably spent 5 to 10 minutes on each, humorously making significant points. They ranged from his desire to see a strong right wing conservative alternative to the left that wasn’t based upon religious and racial bigotry (he thought it would make the left better to have a good opponent), to gender selection of boys over girls, to gay rights, to the sensationalism of the news media, etc. In each case he presented his ideas with great clarity and humor. All the audience enjoyed his speech immensely.

Every hour following the Keynote there were 6 different panels or speakers. We selected the ones we wanted to hear. We hit a couple of duds for us (John selected different ones and for a novice had a better selection then we did). We were slightly disappointed by the of the day.

Then the tide turned. It was a cold day and the last speaker was scheduled for 5pm. John was very cold and wanted to leave, but I said lets spend 10 minutes at the last speaker, if we don’t like him we will go. The speaker was Antony Beever, the noted World War II, historian. He had written many books including “Stalingrad” to great acclaim. He has a new book out called: World War II. It is the summation of all he knows. Not everyone can write a book. Fewer can write a book with original research. But only a select few writers are also exceptional speakers. They can hold an audience in the palm of their hand as they read from their prepared notes. This man is a fabulous speaker. It helps that he is a British scholar and can speak with that authoritative English voice. But it what he has to say that is extraordinary. He spoke globally about the War from every perspective. He had gross numbers of people killed, refugees or injured, he quoted from journals and letters, he had personal reminisces of people he has interviewed. It was a tour de force. We were enthralled. One of many, many insights he shared was how the entire events of World War II were shaped by a very small battle between the Japanese and Russians in 1936 in Siberia. The Japanese lost, and decided to not fight the Russians and turned south towards China instead. That decision profoundly changed the direction of the war.Another insight was when World War II started was all dependent upon where you lived. For the US it was 1941, For Europe it was 1939, for China it was 1937, for many it was 1914 and one continuous war. Eventually all of the sessions will be on-line, they are all videotaped, I could, and will, watch this session again. We left the Festival at 6pm cold in and high spirits.

We returned to the Haveli we are staying in and shared a bottle of wine before dinner. It turns out the Antony Beever was also staying at the Haveli. We congratulated him on his excellent speech and then asked him some questions about the morality of dropping the Atomic Bombs on Japan. There had been several questions in the Q & A after his speech and we had some additional questions. He stayed and talked to us. This is one of the great features of the Jaipur Literary Festival, the interactions with the authors. Everyday we all eat lunch together and it is easy to walk up to a world famous author and engage them in discussion.

Dinner was Veg for us tonight: Potatoes with mustard from the Tandoori, Spinach Paneer in a tomato sauce, rice and Paratha. Kulfi for dessert.

This was a perfect 1^st day!