Literary festivals are a very big deal in India, if Vikram Seth is to be believed. Seth made an impromptu appearance at the Mumbai literary festival last week. “The whole thing was pretty chancy. I was supposed to be in England for the launch of The Rivered Earth yesterday. I was in Mumbai for the first exhibition of my sister’s works. Anil Dharker (the festival director) plucked me off the air and got me on the cheap,” he told the First Post.
If Seth really delayed his return to England in favour giving a recital in the Tata Hotel, then it reveals something about his professional and personal priorities. Seth tells Ed Smith, in an interview with today’s Times (£), that he feels most at home “in India”. It’s an unsurprising answer in one regard, given that he was born in Calcutta and has lived in India at various periods. But it also reflects India’s emergence as a centre of culture.
Mumbai is one of several Indian cities to host an international literary festival: Delhi, Kerala, Jaipur are among the others. Each event is planned with care, despite what Seth’s apparently ad hoc gig in Mumbai suggests. The aim is to enhance economic opportunity as much as inspire cultural interchange. The Kerala Hay Festival opens next week and it is being sponsored by organisations ranging from Cambridge University to Bókmenntasjóður, the Icelandic Literary Fund. The British, French and Australian governments are all sponsors, through the cultural arms of their respective foreign services. It’s the literary equivalent of an arms delegation.
Books are big business in India. Indian firm CCI found that the book industry was worth 30 billion rupees in 2010. Retail accounted for just 7 per cent of that figure, but it is forecast to grow by 15 per cent annually thanks to the fashion of gift-giving in India. E-books are set to grow at the same rate according to some estimates. European publishers, hamstrung by contracting domestic markets, are striving to expand into the sub-continent; and Amazon has opened a warehouse in Mumbai – an indication that it intends to enter the Indian market soon.
The exact Indian literacy rate is elusive, but the general trend is assumed to be upward. But that only partially explains the boom in books. Indian society is currently gripped by conspicuous consumption and a vogue for reviving India’s cultural heritage. This brings us back to Vikram Seth, who is due to publish a sequel to A Suitable Boy in 2013, titled A Suitable Girl. It will be set, he tells the Times, in modern day India and manifest his view that the country has not become proud despite power shifting to the region. It promises to chronicle the bang of change that has erupted in the last twenty years. If so, he will be entering a crowded genre. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s latest collection of stories, A Lovesong for India, addresses the issue. And doubtless many of the speakers at this year’s literary festivals will also have written of such things in books that will never reach the West.
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