Zee JLF 2020 Day 4: On stage — Abhijit Banerjee, climate change and travel writing; off stage — a rowdy crowd

I would tell you all about how impossibly crowded and exceptionally rowdy Day 4 of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) 2020 was, but just the thought of it brings tears to my eyes. So, let’s just get on with the other happenings of the day. David Wallace-Wells, Marcus Moench, Navroz K Dubash and Prem Jha were among the first to take to the stage to for a discussion about climate change. Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, began with painting the grim (to put it quite mildly) picture of our planet’s future, describing in detail the devastation waiting in the wings, and how India will be one of the worst affected countries. Zee Jaipur Literature Festival 2020: Five detained for sloganeering against CAA during a session; police releases them after a warning Dubash, author of India in a Warming World, talked about the unexpectedly quick pace and high scale we are witnessing when it comes to climate change. He proceeded to talk about the challenges India will face in the coming years, be it related to agriculture or workforce productivity. He suggested India now needs to think of development in the context of climate change, and of building a new narrative which is more accessible for politicians and policymakers. Moench discussed engaging with available solutions, as well as coming up with new ones, and more importantly avoiding political chaos when working on large-scale long-term projects. Next, in a much-anticipated session, the recent winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, Abhijit V Banerjee, was in conversation with Sreenivasan Jain to discuss his work in some depth. Banerjee talked about the research work done by him and his fellow scientists in a variety of fields and how small interventions could help solve complex problems across the world. He further stressed on the approach by giving examples of and talking about Malaria prevention, reforms in the education sector and the police departments. One of the (many) curious things about the literature festivals that go on for five days is a lot of speakers feature in multiple sessions (this seems to be especially the case this year at JLF), and inevitably end up repeating themselves. Sometimes it’s just the same ideas (which is just fine), but at times a speaker will repeat himself in verbatim. Wallace-Wells, for example, seems to have a monologue prepared which he repeats no matter which session at the festival, interview or podcast he is a part of. Anyway, all I’m trying to say is, yours truly is a bit on edge at this point. [caption id=“attachment_7962751” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Glimpses from Day 4 of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) 2020. Images via Facebook/@JaipurLitFest[/caption]

As the Sunday afternoon crowds really started to press on, there was a session on artificial intelligence (AI) and creativity by Marcus du Sautoy (who was part of another session on AI just the day before) and a rather dramatic one featuring Rajdeep Sardesai and Sachin Pilot. When a guy close to me told his friend as we were moving (or rather being pushed) across the venue, ‘Celebrities dikha raha hai toh bol, warna time waste mat kar’, I hoped this somewhat lived up to his expectations. Next up was the annual travel session featuring Katie Hickman, Howard Jacobson, Elizabeth Gilbert, Peter Hessler and Suketu Mehta, in conversation with William Dalrymple. In a session always good for discovering some good writing in a genre where it is rather easy to do the opposite, each panelist read an excerpt from their book. Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love (about her attending a Lazio game), Mehta from Maximum City (about the monsoons in Mumbai), Hessler (a Jason Schwartzman doppelganger) from The Buried (about a rather curious garbageman), Jacobson from In the Land of Oz (about spending a night at the home of guy called Humpy Crocodile in Australia. Somehow, unrelated to his reading, he also managed to bring up masturbating a tiger, of course), and Hickman from Travels with a Circus (about her interaction with butterflies in Mexico). The parts read by Hessler and Hickman were the best, just in case you were curious. Dalrymple too read, for the billionth time, the same excerpt from the same book that he always does (From The Holy Mountain) during this session every year. Perhaps give someone else a chance to showcase their works? The panel also shared their favourite travel books of all time. Here’s the quick list — Mehta: AJ Liebling’s Between Meals and Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave; Dalrymple: Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia; Hessler: John McPhee’s Coming into the Country; Jacobson: DH Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy; Hickman: Colin Thubron’s Behind the Wall. Side note: I had my fingers crossed for the first three days. I was hoping for kind of a record (?) So far, this was the first time during all the audience Q&A sessions I attended that everyone went straight to their questions and didn’t go on with sad statements about their lives. The final session of the day featured Anand Gopal in conversation with Taran N Khan. (A teenager with a delegate pass, sitting close to me, was trying to convince a friend to come over, telling him it’s about ‘Woh Taliban war chal raha hai na aabhi’. Minutes later he asked me when the festival closed, and then argued it was 6.30, not 6.15. There was also a woman to my left who kept coughing. And now I’m coughing as I type this. The woman to my right was eating something which smelled funny. And, of course, I can smell it still. Yup, yup, yup.) Gopal discussed at length his book No Good Men Among the Living. He talked about how the events of 9/11 drew him to better understand the Middle East and the American foreign policy, how he ended up in Afghanistan (which has to be one of the best stories of how scam emails can lead to something of great value), how he spent time blending in, looking for leads, embedding with the Taliban and discovering things weren’t as black and white as most of us are made to believe, as is often the case in life. Anyway, I think I’m a bit sick, so this shall be it for now. Final thoughts tomorrow.