“The three day long literary festival just concluded in Jammu, is the most thrilling event in my life of eight decades spent as a state subject in Jammu and Kashmir. Besides, I have never been so overwhelmed in my literary career of six decades”, exults Khalid Hussain, the lone Sahitya Akademi Award winner from the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, in Punjabi language.
Khalid, a retired bureaucrat, is a proud Dogra from Udhampur area. He was referring to the three day long celebrations of literature held at the cultural academy complex, from 29 to 31 March. ” I can vouch it is the first time a literary festival of such a large scale has taken place in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. I feel gratified thet I was a part of this successful event”, adds the joyous writer of Punjabi short stories.
You may define a literary festival as a gathering of writers and readers, typically on an annual basis, in a particular city. Such festivals usually feature a variety of presentations and readings by authors. Several sessions of poetic soirees as well as musical performances can be a part of a literary festival. But, the primary objectives remain as promoting the authors’ books and fostering a love of literature and writing.
Incidentally, Cheltenham Literature Festival ( CLF ) of the United Kingdom is credited to be the world’s first literature festival. Supported by the national newspapers of England ( The Times and Sunday Times ), the CLF started in 1949 and is presently known as The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival.
A literature festival is the real way forward in celebrating the written and spoken word. It aims at presenting the best new voices in fiction and poetry alongside literary greats and high-profile speakers. The CLF is held in the town of Cheltenham, in England. The town is barely 140 kilometres from London with an estimated population of 1, 20, 000 Lakh.
One has to pay an entrance fee to visit tha Cheltenham literature festival. If you book the tickets online, in advance, you pay about 300 Indian rupees a ticket. Otherwise, you may pay about INR 150 as the entry fee at the festival venue.
The recorded ticket sales of the year 2019 amounted to 1,40,000 tickets sold for the ten-day-long period. Therefore, the festival must have earned 30 Lakh Indian rupees on each day of the festival, just through the entry fees ! In the initial years, however, this festival was held only for three to four days.
However, unlike CLF, there was no entry fee charged for the just concluded Tawi Sahitya Lok Utsav ( TSLU ) organised by Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages ( Academy ) in collaboration with Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts ( IGNCA ) through its regional centre located in Jammu.
Jammu, the second largest city of J and K, has an estimated population of 8,00,000. Only 3,000 people visited giving us an average of 1,000 visitors per day. In other words, less than 0.5 percent of the population came to the LitFest over three days ( about 0.2 percent per day ).
Population of Cheltenham is barely 1,20,000. Just compare the figures to understand how much value we attach to buying and reading the books.The government spent over one crore rupees on this LitFest, which only 3000 people visited. Usually the governments fail the people. Would you like to agree, the people failed the government, in this case ?
The festivities of this three day event will linger long in my nemory. I am informed that nearly 500 visitors partook of free lunch catered at the expense of the government each day of the LitFest. Besides, free tea was served at least twice. And visitors spent no money for the drinking water as well. This alone would have cost the Academy nearly five Lakh rupees. To my mind, no other festival provides free tea and lunch to the visitors. I wonder if the citizens of Jammu appreciate such free facilities.
” It was a pleasant sight watching visitors at the book stalls, browsing the books, making purchases of their chosen books, meeting friends, listening to authors face to face and enjoying the bonhomie created by interactions amongst the educated elite of the city”, said Dr Shahnawaz , the man at the centrestage of the memorable event.
You could see him welcoming the visitors, managing the crowds, ensuring regular supply of drinking water, tea and food , conducting the various interactions with a smile . If we consider the event a war, he certainly was the one-man-army of the cultural academy.,amicably firefighting all hurdles of eventual administrative glitches and blown-up egos.
Interestingly, the Jaipur Literature Festival is the world’s largest free, I repeat free, literary festival, held annually in Jaipur, India. On the other hand, the Edinburgh International Book Festival is the largest book festival in the world, held annually in August. The festival attracts more than 900 authors from around the world, and features a diverse range of events, including book readings, panel discussions, and debates.
My dear readers, more than mere books, a LitFest ( Literary Festival ) is a matter of unforgettable experience : the experience of mingling with the fellow educated lot of the society, the aroma of books of different languages, genres, sizes, wearing jackets in attractive colors. Hanging a band, the lanyard of the LitFest, along with your identity label, just like holding a passport in your hand before boarding a flight for a destination of your cherished desires. These are some of my cherished memories from the various literary and film festival I have attended over the past several decades.
Overall, the estimated budget allocation by the government was over one crore rupees. Interestingly, the power to allocate, spend and approve any kind of expenditure is vested only in the secretary of the Academy who reports directly to the appointed lieutenant governor or the elected chief minister.
Soon after the formal assent of the lieutenant governor for holding this LitFest, the secretary Bharat Singh Manhas ( BSM )was admitted to the government medical college hospital. After a week, he was shifted to Dayanand Medical College hospital in Ludhiana. This sudden illness of BSM put the fate of the festival in doldrums. The fate became unknown to the organising committee since none except BSM could sanction the expenditure involved and he was under treatment in the ICU ( Intensive Care Unit ).
Jammu does not boast of good reading habits. Though there is large amount of money in the hands of the citizens, their reading habits are poor. They spend thousands of rupees guzzling liquor every day as is evident from the number of wine shops in the city. But, they will not spend even a few hundred rupees to purchase books in the entire year !
The Academy had lined up poetic soirees in Dogri, Punjabi, Urdu, Gojri, Hindi, Kashmiri and Pahari languages. Budding poets were seen rubbing shoulders with the their seniors, in these mushairas. Besides, several cultural performances too were staged during the three days of literary festivities.
” We are gratified to co-host the TSLU with the Academy. At every step of planning and execution, the Academy stood by us shoulder-to-shoulder. We would like to thank the entire team of the Academy, especially Bharat Ji who monitored the festival activities from his hospital bed and gave the requisite sanctions in time frames expected”, says Ms Shruti Awasthi, the dynamic regional director of the IGNCA.
She is, however, not happy with the sales of the books made at the festival. “The publishers and the book distributors who put up their stalls were disheartened that the visitors made very low purchases of the books during the three days of the festival”, she informs.
One of the highlights of this lok utsav was a village created using mud bricks, hay, wood, and bamboo to showcase rural Dogra life to reconnect urban dwellers, especially the youth, with their cultural heritage. Traditional huts, walls, and storage structures adorned with authentic artifacts highlighted Dogra lifestyle, providing awareness and appreciation of ancestral roots of the Duggar.
Over 100 poets, old, young, new, seniors and juniors from seven languages ( Dogri, Punjabi, Pahari, Gojri, Hindi, Urdu, Kashmiri ) participated in poetic soirees organised by the Academy. Competitions in making rangoli, painting, singing and dancing were also held to bring the youth closer to the arts and culture.
Other interesting and innovative events included workshops on English- Kashmiri and English -Dogri translations held by the National Book Trust. Another workshop held was on cultural journalism to boost tourism and cultural awareness.
The response of the citizens to such an unusual event is nothing to write home about. Such festivals deserve huge response from the citizenry with greater enthusiasm. One of the reasons, perhaps, is lack of advance publicity for the festival. These events need a bigger publicity campaign.
Next time, the organisers must reach out to all the educational institutions well in advance emphasing maximum participations, especially from the students and the youth. Posters and hoardings at the important intersections of the city should be displayed a week before the event. Likewise, attractive flexes must be displayed in the educational institutions.
So sad that there are three universities and several colleges within a radius of one kilometer from the venue of TSLU, yet no more than three thousand visited the three day fair. It reflects poorly on the intelligentsia of the city where education is provided almost free right up to post graduate levels, if we compare the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir with the prevalent fee structures in the rest of the country.
The Prime Minister has been sanitising the masses with importance of “swachhata” ( hygiene and sanitation ) in public and private lives for a decade now, but, still, much more needs to be done. Therefore, we must give Jammu at least five years to develop healthy habits of reading and also buying books, which must be considered as essential as spending money for cooking gas, washing soap and toothpaste.
Friends, first volume of Jammu Jottings in the book form was put on display on the last day of the LitFest. It sold a record 102 copies within a time span of five hours. And, the visitors witnessed a unique sight. Several of the buyers of the book queued up for an autograph session by yours truly.
Let me say a big “thank you” quoting famed Urdu poet and film lyricist Raja Mehdi Ali Khan:
Jee, humein manzoor hai aapka yeh faisla /
Keh rahi hai har nazar, banda parwar shukriya //
( I accept your decision of bestowing love on me, with indebtness /
Each breath of mine expresses gratitude in abundance)
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