A room of our own?
FN
Ruskin Bond recently commented on a paradox from today's
India: all over the country, bookshops are closing down. And
all over lit fests are springing up. There's another paradox
here too: everyone claims to be doing so much for the written
word, but so little is actually happening. Few people notice
a new book when it's published, and books still struggle to
find a decent audience.
In recent years, even tiny Goa has had its fair
share of lit fests. Last year there were two. We've
had the GALF annually for the past five years. This
year, the children's lit fest, Bookaroo also came
to Goa only last weekend. While interestingly
organised, the audiences were poor.
These festivals are in addition to the more traditional
literary festivals, focussed on either Konkani (usually
Devanagari) or Marathi, and known as sahitya sammelans, or
something similar. Many sahitya sammelans might have done
little to promote books and writing, but they did take quite
a few political stands. Some stands against English education
emerged here, before becoming part of State policy, now
thankfully abandoned, but after Goa paid a heavy price.
The new form of lit fests are just more glamorous, better
funded, and pull in participants (usually communicating with
each other in English) not only from from distant pockets of
the country, but even from abroad.
In a place like Goa specially, events which offer space to
the written word in English do need space. For too long, this
language has received step-motherly treatment here.
Actually, Goa doesn't even have a direct colonial connect
with English. Yet, the language plays a critical role in
education, news dissemination, idea generation, creative
expression and more.
While the 'regional' languages (or 'mother
tongues') have garnered support and incentives --
not that this has really helped their growth -- the
language that the largest part of Goa uses to
communicate has been treated as a step-child.
There are no State awards for writers in English here.
Despite its widespread use, it is still seen as 'foreign' and
somehow not worthy of support. Never mind that India is today
the second largest producer worldwide of English books, and
this language helps us communicate across boundaries.
The official website of the Directorate of Art and Culture
has sections -- written, ironically enough, in English --
focusing on the 'Konkani Literature of Goa' and the 'Marathi
Literature from Goa: An overview'. Browsing here, you might
believe that no cultural expression happens in English. It is
time even the Vishnu Wagh-headed Kala Academy begins
recognising contributions made in the English language too.
In such a context, having a lit fest that focusses on English
(but has space to talk with, and listen to, other languages
too) could have been a blessing. But is this really the case?
Participants in the event often have good things to say about
the GALF. What we see depends on where we stand.
One count last year said India had sixty or so literary
festivals, an average of over one each week. Global events
like the Edinburgh Festival, the arts and cultural summer
festival in the Scottish capital -- serve as the role for the
bigger lit fests in India. These, in turn, act as the
templates for the smaller ones, as Indrajit Hazra wrote for
aljazeera.com.
Way back in 2010, the then Director and Chief Executive of
The International Centre, Goa, Nandini Sahai, suggested a
literary festival in Goa. Getting a crowd for events
discussing serious issues can be tough in Goa; and this was
the experience of the GALF too.
Like most serious events in Goa, initially the struggle was
to get a decent crowd to attend. Over the years, that has
improved, but three concerns still remain.
Sponsorships, including official ones, have helped in some
way. It is not clear how much gets spent on the events,
because the International Centre Goa claims it is not covered
by the Right to Information Act.
But, three big challenges face events like the
GALF: avoiding artificial hierarchies in
classifying literature; becoming less top-down and
arbitrary in its functioning; and creating a more
participative approach.
For decades, the creative process in Goa has been stymied by
the lack of a market, of production facilities, of free
speech (for a significant part of the 20th century), and even
a shortage of role models. It was not much different from
what Virginia Woolf describes, in quite another context, in A
Room of One's Own.
Goa needs to create rooms of its own to spur on the creative
process. But, now, just when writers from here have an
enhanced chance of getting heard, we could be building new
hierarchies. Local work needs to be validated by the tastes
of someone in New Delhi or New York, before it can be deemed
as significant and ha
