Jaipur Literature Festival – Our city’s pride

The recent Bharat Ratna awardee Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya had said that we should fully understand our literature, culture and arts in order to know ourselves. The literature from not only our region or country but the world literature also shapes our thinking and worldview. We should always keep a good quality literary book with us of any kind, be it fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry etc, on any subject of our interest e.g. philosophy, history, science, arts, environment or any other subject. We can start with the popular novels of Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh but we also should read other Indian and foreign authors whose works are popular and/or awarded by the prestigious literary awards like the Nobel Prize in literature, Man Booker Prize, Sahitya Akademi Award etc. We are lucky that our own city hosts the world’s largest free literary festival, Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).  

This year’s JLF would take place from 21-25 January, 2015 at Diggi Palace, Jaipur. Many famous personalities like Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, Man Booker nominee Neel Mukherjee, best-selling novelist Amish Tripathi, prominent Hindi poet Kedarnath Singh, the philosophical essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb  and many others from the fields of journalism, cinema and theatre. 

Namita Gokhale, writer and co-Director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, said about JLF, “Come January, a cloud of creative energies gathers around Jaipur. Writers and thinkers from South Asia and around the world will once again debate and attempt to make sense of our changing worlds through the prism of literature. The 2015 edition will continue to nurture books, ideas and dialogue, and showcase the range and diversity of South Asian literature as well as the best in international writing.”

Literature should and must find its place in our daily life. Young minds of this country should develop the habit of debate, dialogue and discussion which make them independent and original thinkers. It is the privilege of Jaipur, an already historic city, to hold this historic event.  

Accident

The accident happens in one’s life, for better or worse. After meeting with the one, I can only tell that it, the accident, happens only for better. It is a God’s way of correcting our path and leading us into a direction which is good for us and our family. It is a chance to realize the value of life through the near experience of death. It is a test of capacity of the body to bear the pains of damaged remains. It is a process of hope, recovery, future, a new start.

We can try to find reasons why it happened only to us. We can hasten to justify the suffering inflicted upon us through various instruments such as law of karma, god’s injustice etc. But to accept it as it is, to live through it as just a phase of life is the best thing we can do with it. God has His own plans we cannot even fathom. We have a response in our hand though. There is no limit to the strength and the courage that can be derived from the incident. There is no limit to the new lessons that can be learnt from the event.  There is no limit to the gains that can be made even after the accident.

The search of the reason of the fatal event may lead us to the confused state of mind. The answer to the question can vary ranging from a very mundane, very futile, very routinely affair to the calculated, risky and already known reasons. Whatever may be the reason, just thinking about that would not take us to anywhere. The origin or the seed of the accident are lying in the Creator’s scheme of things. What He has in store for us is beyond our imagination.

This phase also enables us to understand that there is only so much that is in our hands.  We can go on to plan our whole life but the plans that He has can never be bypassed. This should increase our faith on that unworldly power, should decrease the overt faith that we have on our own faculties. This is a chance for submitting ourselves at the altar of His Holy Grace, to dedicate ourselves in the service of others.

The principle of doing our actions without any particular desire of getting something in return can truly be actualized after one goes through this phase of life. The ego, the hubris, the navel-gazing - all are badly damaged after the accident and what is left is just the vacuum where anything can be filled in. There can be anger, disdain, guilt, melancholy or there can be thankfulness, forgiveness, compassion, humanity. The choice is ours and with better choice, we can actually do something we possibly could never have done if not met with an accident. A life lived for others is a life worthwhile, Einstein said. To find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others, Gandhi quoted.

If we want to console ourselves with a reason for punishment inflicted on us, it can be the insane ego, the sole attention to self, the word I in every line of ourselves. And if we want to derive some satisfaction out of this tragic event, it is again the smashed hubris which can now be put to good use, that is, in the service of others.