Malavika’s Mumbaistan: The Ringmaster

“I dread receiving phone calls from the team at this time because each one brings in a new calamity. A flight from Canada was preponed and the airline forgot to inform our participant, so the plane left without her. Another participant reached the airport without her passport; another one thought he had a multi-entry visa, but found it wasn’t,” said Anil Dharker, founder of Tata Lit Live and the man in the proverbial hot seat,on the eve of the unspooling of the three-day, multiple-venue, international, annual bibliophile extravaganza in the city. “We take a deep breath and say, ‘Oh well, that’s par for the course’,” said the veteran of 10 such previous jamborees already. The festival has grown from a modest start as a single venue in NCPA (we remember having participated in a poetry reading session with Gerson da Cunha and Pritish Nandy that year) to its present avatar.

One of the most anticipated sessions of this year, according to Dharker, is the opening day debate this year, on the topic: ‘National security is more important than individual privacy’. “Getting the subject right is not difficult; getting the right people is. Shashi Tharoor, one of the panellists, is always a delight, but the tough part was getting speakers from the political ‘right’, he shared. “Is there an intellectual deficit there, or do we not know the ‘right’ kind of people? We are working on that,” he said enigmatically.

About the other popular session, a literary quiz, which requires participating writers to answer questions on the books of their fellow scribes (fun for the audience for obvious reasons), he shared the challenges the organisers faced. “No writer wants to be on it. It’s clear — writers write; when they read, they only read themselves. So what would they say in a quiz?”

But this was not their only transgression: “Most writers hate filling up forms, so the most frequently asked question from the UK is ‘can you help fill up our application form?’ A bit tough to do when it’s online,” said.

Fortunately for all, what writers could do was write. “Good writers also speak well, which is wonderful for us, the audience. We can all listen to them,” said the ringmaster to the city’s popular lit fest, adding, “And some of us will go home and even read their books.”

Overheard:

Do not accept calls from an unknown number starting with +9122XXXXXXXXXX. It could be the Governor of Maharashtra asking you to form a government.

—Popular Whatsapp meme being shared on the current political situation in Maharashtra.

Double Celebrations?

It was a celebration for the hospitality industry this week as leading hoteliers from across the country and abroad flew to Jaipur to attend the grand wedding celebrations of Anish Bhatnagar to his fiancé, Nikita. Anish is the son of Marriott International’s, multi-property vice president, Mumbai and Goa, Anuraag Bhatnagar, who also is the head honcho of St Regis Hotel, Mumbai. And given the people involved, sources say that the arrangements were impeccable, with the baraat celebrations starting at the lawns of Jaipur’s Le Meridien, where the groom entered on a horse carriage, in traditional Rajput gear, replete with a sword and turban. Spotted dancing to Bollywood numbers were the likes of celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor, designer Pria Kataria Puri and restaurateur Romil Ratra.

Interestingly, it seems celebrations are in order for Bhatnagar; sources say he is on the brink of a promotion that will see him move to New Delhi to take over the position as market vice president for north India, Nepal and Bhutan for the group.

Intelligence Having Fun

The advertising industry lost, what is being described as one of its finest minds, with the passing of Ram Ray this Tuesday. The Kolkata-based Ray, a living example of the phrase “creativity is intelligence having fun”, had over the course of a long and successful four-decade-old career, been regarded as a doyen of and guru for the industry, occupying some of its highest posts. His website had introduced him as a “perpetual curator of interestingness” and noted historian Ramchandra Guha had described him as “a deeply cultured human being”, adding delightfully, “even by Bengali standards”.

We had enjoyed the privilege of working as a junior copywriter for Ray’s hot house boutique agency, Response, in Kolkata in the late eighties, when it was pushing the envelope in creativity and innovation. We’d shared the stylish office space (designed by Ray, of course), in a residential block with, amongst others, a Bengali Rastafarian, a ferociously cultured litterateur, a fan of head-banging metal and many putative Satyajit Rays. At least three of these had gone on to dominate the public discourse later. You could say Ram Ray was a perpetual curator of interesting people too.