JOIN USI remember my first ever lit fest experience with great fondness. It was an exciting start: you know how any event starts for women — we went shopping. This was because when we checked our wardrobes, we did not have a thing to wear.
So, I was there, dressed in my new salwaar kameez, all set to make my debut. Immediately, on arrival, I noticed, that there were three kinds of people:
Writers: All of them seemed to know each other. They met, hugged, air-kissed and shared about their recent literary accomplishments.
Organisers: They looked busy and overworked. They talked nicely to the writers and sized the rest of us up, with confused, supercilious looks.
Media people: They wore media-looking clothes — crumpled and classy, carried large totes, and knew who was who.
Now, I searched for the category I could relate to: wannabe writers, but there seemed to be none. I must have been standing out like sore thumb, and really needed to belong to some group or the other.
I tried entering the writers’ group, particularly around lunch time. I must have been snooping for a while where lunch was being served whereupon the next speaker, a celebrity Guruji, breezed out with his entourage, and headed towards the stage, for his session. He mistook me to be reverential follower and blessed me with a raised, open palm. I immediately, replaced my hungry, wannabe looks with those denoting piety and reverence, and folded my palms. I noticed my friend, also caught unawares, folding her palms over her Bisleri bottle, her cheeks swollen with water she was too pious to gulp down. In the scramble, her dupatta fell. Guruji blessed her twice.
I could never make it to that lunch room, despite my writer friend assuring me that we belonged there. So, after the guards escorted us out, we headed towards the street-food kiosks. By this time, I was worried that I had not yet gotten the opportunity to showcase my literary prowess.
“One chhola bhatura, madam?”
I corrected him, with a patient, elegant admonition:
“You should say, one plate chhola bhatura,” I smiled my gracious, literary smile.
He ignored me, doling out the greasy stuff on plates made with dried leaves. Shobha De, by now, was, I am sure, eating off gold-rimmed china in the authors’ lounge.
The sun was beating down, and the canopies were occupied. People were crawling under trees, shrubs, bellies of large people, hogging every spot of shade. Beads of sweat were trickling down my torso, making me fidget, which I disguised, skilfully, as applause.
One more trip to the food stalls, with some more literary inputs — “A cup of tea with some cream please. You know, ‘cream’ really means ‘milk’...”
And I was now, thirsty and tired, and not feeling literary any more.
We continued to look for a spot of shade. My friend was now looking like a terrorist with her white dupatta wrapped round her head and face, exposing just her eyes behind sinister-looking sun-shades. It was really hot. We spotted a low, gnarly tree. My writer friend, fatigued with the heat, walked right into a stumpy branch, almost getting impaled. As she screamed, my flora-educated terrorist, perhaps hazy with the heat, exclaimed, inappropriately, “I think it’s a cherry tree.”
We were in no mood for empathy, also because we were now disoriented with dehydration. Luckily the scream was masked as the crowd roared: Farhan Akhtar was on stage. We did not bother to check if my writer friend was alive under the cherry tree. We rushed to the stage, aunties jostling the volunteer students out of our way.
Sweat streaming down my face, and smelling like what Milkha Singh would have after a day’s worth of running, I was yelling, “Farhan, Farhan.”