There are a handful of classy literary festivals worldwide held in special places, but surely none has such an exotic location as the one held at Galle, a fort city redolent of history far beyond the confines of physical appearance. Naturally, I refer to the internationally-hailed Galle Literary Festival, which, after just two consecutive January outings, has become associated with the opening month of the year alongside the more traditional Thai Pongal and Sri Pada pilgrimage.
The third GLF -"you know it's a success when it's commonly referred to by its acronym" as a friend remarked - runs from January 28 to February 1. The festival opens at the Martin Wickremasinghe Museum, where Tissa Abeysekera will pay homage to Wickremasinghe and Romesh Gunesekera will introduce new Sri Lankan English writing.
Participants from abroad include feminist icon Germaine Greer, who will give a talk titled Who Put the Post into Post-Feminism? during which, the programme notes assert, "she will speak her mind" (but when doesn't she?). No doubt this will be GLF 2009's most popular event. In addition, Greer and Tarun Tejpal, author of The Alchemy of Desire (2005), will discuss sex, self-consciousness and censorship.
Edna O'Brien, who has the distinction of having her first novel, Country Girls (1960), banned and even burned due to its sexual frankness, will reveal her reading habits. Thomas Keneally, of Schindler's List fame, will introduce his lesser-known novels and non-fiction. Travel writer Pico Iyer will reflect on global life and give an account of his travels with the Dalai Lama. Authors MJ Akbar and homegrown Ameena Hussein - check out her The Moon in the Water (2009) - will talk of writing about Muslim households. Moses Isegawa will read from his Abyssinian Chronicles (2001) and present new African writing. Travel writer Colin Thubron will recount his journey along the ancient Silk Road from China to Turkey. And Romesh Gunesekera - whose Booker-shortlisted Reef (1994) has become part of the International Baccalaureate Diploma syllabus - will read a story about an island.
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| Arts Cafe in the Fort: Picture from 2008 Gall literary Festival, courtesy Juliet Coombe |
There will be non-literary offerings from performers and experts in varied fields. David Robson and Dominic Sansoni will tour Bevis and Geoffrey Bawa's gardens. Somasiri Devendra will identify Sri Lankan shipwrecks. The Sunday Times' very own Kumudini Hettiarachchi and chic Colombo's very own Ashok Ferrey will interview Anne Ranasinghe. My fellow-lexicographer Michael Meyler will lead a workshop on Sri Lankan English. Ismeth Raheem, Dr. Roland Silva and others will debate whether Sri Lanka has adopted the right approach to conservation. Channa Daswatte will conduct a walking tour of Galle Fort. The Chamber Music Society of Colombo will play in the Dutch Reformed Church. There's an evening of poetry in performance directed by Tracy Holsinger followed by a debate on theatre in Sri Lanka. And BAFTA-wining film-maker Asitha Ameresekere will hold a workshop on screen-writing.
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The only participant from abroad I know personally is Pico Iyer, who I met in 2006 during his stay in Colombo to write a feature on Sri Lanka for Time magazine. I found him to be a delightfully warm, communicative, intelligent and yet unassuming person.
His publications include Falling Off the Map (1994), Tropical Classical (1998), Global Soul (2000) - "an astonishing and amusing view of the globalization of East and West, as the author beholds how cultures fuse without completely losing their identities" - Video Night in Kathmandu (2001) - "on the often bizarre effects of Western influences on the Far East", Sushi in Bombay, Jetlag in LA (2002), and The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (2008).
What captured my attention, however, was a classic travel quotation from his collection of writings Wanderlust (2000): "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again - to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more."
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Travel: there was a time when Galle was synonymous with this, as Iyer describes it, complex human activity. During the port's prime, 700 passengers a day landed there. For many it provided a first glimpse of the East. Sightseers, who stayed at The Pavilion, The Eglington, and Loret's, thronged the streets and bazaars of this city-within-a-fort. But then came the decline after the construction of the breakwater at Colombo.
For four days in January during the past two years, Galle Fort partly regained the cosmopolitan atmosphere of one hundred and fifty years ago. The place bustled with 'passengers', but instead of carrying curios, this twenty-first century variety, who stayed at a new generation of boutique hotels such as The Fort Printers and The Galle Fort, clutched freshly-purchased books.
For many participants and attendees of the GLF from abroad and Colombo, it all begins with The Convergence, the southern journey to Galle - a sobering encounter with the Galle Road and the ghosts of the tsunami. Everything appears reasonably normal, but you are aware of the damaged hearts and minds behind the mended walls.
Before entering Galle last year I lunched at the Lighthouse Hotel, where some of the 90 participants were accommodated. However, the restaurant was totally deserted except for Punyakante Wijenaike - a writer's ideal circumstance if wrestling with a character trait or plot dimension.
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| Pico Iyer |
On the terrace, also alone except for his carer, I spied chief guest Gore Vidal. According to Arthur C. Clarke, in 1970, during Vidal's previous island visit, both were travelling south on the Galle Road when the axle of a CTB bus detached itself and nearly hit their vehicle. Imagine the global literary deprivation that could have resulted. I was tempted to ask Vidal about this incident, but his facial expression matched his black suit, so I refrained. (As is now well-known, he was, to put it diplomatically, extremely agitated about his lost luggage for much of the festival.)
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One of my talks at GLF 2008 was about the legendary traveller Sindbad, who visited Serendib twice in the 1001 Arabian Nights. My fellow-speaker was Tim Severin who wrote The Sindbad Voyage after retracing the hero's journeys, including making landfall at Galle. Severin, like Iyer, I found to be a charming person and post-GLF he sent me this revealing email:
"I view literary festivals in a simplistic way, an opportunity to meet people whose names are familiar and/or books I have read. And in that regard I thoroughly enjoyed Galle. I'm a 'people watcher' by inclination, and it was four days of pure self-indulgence. Also the organization was impressive - not always the case at literary festivals. Finally, it was a reason to re-visit Sri Lanka, and whereas I am always conscious of the risk of disappointment in re-visits, this occasion only increased my fondness for the country and its people."
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It is an astonishing coincidence that the organizers of GLF 2009 decided to commence events on January 28 as this date is of considerable yet little-known literary significance to Sri Lanka. Most importantly, on January 28, 1754, Horace Walpole coined the word most associated with Sri Lanka, "serendipity" - thus enriching the English language until, regrettably, the word became hackneyed and devoid of meaning. And in fiction, Jules Verne chose January 28, 1868, as the day Captain Nemo and his fellow submariners aboard the Nautilus first caught sight of the island in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869).
Leaving aside calendar connections, Verne epitomizes the surprising number of major Western novelists - Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, Dennis Wheatley, Arthur C. Clarke - who have used the island as a location to varying degree. This is the subject of my talk at GLF 2009.
Although Galle has been described in travel books since the early 19th century, it has hardly entered the realm of fiction despite the potential of its location. (For instance, the Argentine writer Jorge Louis Borges could have concocted one of his magical stories set within the confines of the fort.) Imagine last year's participant, Alexander McCall Smith, shifting his detective Precious Mamotswe from Botswana to Galle for an extraordinary case. I can just see her in a three-wheeler, speeding down Rampart Street in quest of the truth. But the time when a participant takes literary advantage of their visit to Galle has yet to arrive. When it does, this fiction will be a great addition to the festival's achievements.
www.galleliteraryfestival.com.
Anthology, Galle Literary Festival, Sri Lanka, 2007-2008, a selection of writings from the participants of the 2007 and 2008 festivals, will be available at GLF 2009. |
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