“We settle at the café for a while and my son is hooked to some cookies like a greedy little monster. With every bite he passes a delightful smile as I sit there too, powerless to restrict his intake. He is being thoroughly indulged and pampered by the staff. A group of young guys and girls are sitting close by in the lounge. Probably they are college mates who have come for a vacation and are enjoying their time together. They are playing Dumb Charades. Not sure when everyone in the café started participating in the game, trying to guess the words they are trying to enact. Almost 30 of us have created a menace now – shouting, guessing, laughing, trying, failing and succeeding with weird words that the guys were bringing out from the most remote spaces of their vocabulary.”
I had written this on the night of May 6, 2015, when I was at the Khyber Resort in Gulmarg. Six years after when I received an invitation from the team of Gulmarg Literary Festival, a flood of memories came rushing. How much I had wondered sitting by the large windows in 2015, how beautiful it would be to bonfire around with books to read. It felt like something I had thought and told no one, was suddenly happening!
A group of authors were being flown in to the location, many of whom were friends already. Those from Mumbai flocked together happily, right through the journey to Srinagar and further till Gulmarg. We didn’t know a day before that we had so much to talk about. At 11.30am, we were at Khyber. And we were eager to dump the luggage in the room and venture out.
Soon the calls started coming, knocks on the door got frequent. Author friends from other locations had started reaching. This was our first lit fest after the pandemic. We were delighted to catch up with each other and do what authors do – share the stories and review each others’ recent works. We were seated at the same place where I had played Dumb Charades with strangers in 2015. The lounge was now redesigned as the dinner place.
The next morning was action time. After a quick breakfast we sneaked into the backyard to get some group photographs with the snow-capped mountains in the background. For those that had been there from Mumbai, the weather was a fascinating break from the hot and humid commercial capital. We shivered in cold, we still left our shawls behind and tried to look less winter-struck. The winds were chilly and we were thrilled. When our WhatsApp beeped, we dashed to the auditorium. The panel discussions were about to begin.
Ours was the first where the vibrant Arjun Gaind (graphic novelist) was chairing a session titled Becoming an Author: Debut to Bestseller. The panelists included Kanchana Banerjee (thrillers), Neil D’Silva (horror), Anuja Chandramouli (classicist) and me (multi-genre, ecocritical narratives). While each of us had a lot of stories to share from our journeys, each panelist added their exclusive learning and a unique vision in driving their writing career. It was fascinating.
After the session we divided our time between listening to the panel discussions and sneaking out for a cup of kahwa. Here was a book stall with the works of all the authors beautifully displayed. We were taken out into the open for short interviews with News18 and CNBC and News18 Urdu. I have promised them that next time when I go back, I shall be able to speak to them in their language, at least a bit if not fluently!
My next session was on Writing & Publishing Post Pandemic, chaired by the very erudite Neil D’Silva. My co-panelists were Pradeepika Saraswat (do check her book on Kashmir), Renu Kaul (Vitasta Publishing) and Ruchira Chaudhary (leadership book). This was again an insightful discussion on how the publishing scene looks like post lockdown and how authors plan to swim through it. Neil was kind to bring up here the context of my digital publishing platform www.tellmeyourstory.biz, which is constantly trying to create opportunities for aspiring authors. The auditorium was full of enthusiastic audience, reacting to our thoughts and asking questions, seeking to know more, with dreams to be on the same stage that we occupied.
How much I would love to see a day when a junior author comes up to me and says, he/she had heard us speaking at Gulmarg Literary Festival and now he/she is an established author from the Valley. Amen to such a possibility.
All the panel discussions were rich and engaging. What kept my mind occupied was the thorough planning and routing of a festival of this scale that must have taken sleep off the heads for the executing team. When I met Khushboo Mattoo, Siddhartha Gigoo or Danish Rana, I found smiles and excitement – not a stain of nervousness. Perhaps that comes with passion, dedication and the kind of hard work that seldom goes wrong. Hats off to the wonderful team and heartiest congratulations to all those we didn’t get to meet, but they too must have put their heads and hearts together to make this festival happen. From the airport pick up to putting up a book stall, the panel discussions to media coverage, everything was such an impeccable arrangement that October 27 seemed to pass in less than 24 hours.
As I write my Sati series now, Ahalya and Kunti being up on the shelves, I couldn’t stop myself from recreating various scenes of the Valley, especially in Ahalya. Kashmir undoubtedly is the land of magic realism and anyone who has been to the place once can’t withdraw if a context is to be set in the mountains. It was an impossible dream to sit with Ahalya and Kunti on my lap, looking at the peaks and thanking them for capturing my imagination so vividly. I still find it strange that such a moment happened in reality. The portico of Khyber resort overlooked the pine forests, wooden cottages of the hotel with protruding balconies and electric lanterns lit at regular intervals. Candle lanterns were hanging from the lower branches of the pine trees. A heavenly aroma spread through my senses that made me turn.
A boy was carrying some burning fibre. I asked him what he had put in it. Coconut fibre with camphor, cinnamon, elaichi and some locally manufactured perfume to keep off insects. He said. “It spreads positivity madam, and also warms your soul. What are you reading? Can I see?” he asked. I held the two books towards him. “Do you read books?” He flipped through the pages. I discovered that he was studying in a college in Punjab, back home for some holidays, driving around with his father in a jeep. “I do, but don’t get much time. The college curriculum is monstrous. I read books when I am home. Urdu and English.” Actually, he didn’t say ‘monstrous’. He used a slang in chaste Punjabi, readers can keeping guessing which one. He read aloud my name written on the cover. “Two books by the same author?” He opened the first page of Ahalya and started reading. I told him to keep the books.
I don’t know whether he’ll read the books or whether he’ll like if he reads. Joy is, two of my books have entered the heartland of Kashmir. Even after I came back from Gulmarg, participants from the audience have tagged and followed me on Twitter and Instagram. The driver (I am not naming him purposely) who drove us from Srinagar to Gulmarg and back has kept in touch. “Madam ji, call me once you reach safely to Mumbai.” Words that dear ones forget saying, strangers mention with ease. I hope I can go back to this land again and again, to be in the company of the innocence that is as beautiful as the place itself.
Koral Dasgupta is an Indian author and literary entrepreneur. She is currently working on a five-book Sati series – a retelling of the stories of the Pancha Kanya from Indian mythology. She was a participant author in Network18’s first edition of the Gulmarg Literary Festival.
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