A few good books

Tyler is on his way to the Jaipur Literature Festival now, meeting a friend of ours from London and another coming in from Bombay.

In 2006, William Dalrymple and another author, Namita Gokhale, started the Jaipur Literature Festival, which has grown to become the largest in Asia.  As a sign of just how large it has become, Oprah Winfrey will even be there!  She'll be joined by authors such as Amy Chua (the Tiger Mom), Michael Ondaatje, and David Remnick (WSJ guide here).  

The big question topping headlines this week is whether Salman Rushdie (whose Midnight's Children won the "Booker of Booker Prize" in 1993) will be there.  His Satanic Verses has been banned in India since publication in 1988 (with the Ayatollah of Iran issuing a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie in 1989).  I guess we'll see for sure this weekend.  Whether or not Rushdie attends, it's sure to be an amazing event, full of interesting lectures and panels.

It was an early morning today, with Tyler leaving our flat at 5:45am to catch his train to Jaipur.  I wish I were able to go to the festival this weekend... but being able to say: "See you in a few days in Bangkok!" has a nice ring to it as well.

And on the subject of Dalrymple, I am now hooked on his City of Djinns, which I started reading yesterday morning (more as a ruse to stay at my Hindi teacher's warm classroom a bit longer, drinking some more chai... my days in Delhi have now become a constant search for two things: heat and working internet!)

By the third page, I was hooked.  Dalrymple, writes about moving to Delhi with his wife, shortly after they were married.  He contrasts his experiences to those when he first came to Delhi at age 17:

"From the very beginning I was mesmerized by the great capital, so totally unlike anything I had ever seen before.  Delhi, it seemed at first, was full of riches and horrors: it was a labyrinth, a city of palaces, an open gutter, filtered light through a filigree lattice, a landscape of domes, and anarchy, a press of people, a choke of fumes, a whiff of spices."

What I love about his writing is that it combines the history of Delhi with his love for India, his fascination mixed with his everyday frustrations.  Tyler can have a nice chat with him up in Jaipur over a cup of chai...