Why book readings are special to me
I love being read to and reading out from a favourite book whenever I get the chance. I suppose it is a common-enough experience for many of us from bookish families to be read to as children. My earliest memories of this rite of passage are readings from Amar Chitra Katha, Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, a book of Russian fairy tales, Thakumar Jhuli, and the epics in Bangla. Every member of the family read to us children whenever they felt the need to calm us down and have us rein in nervous energy and sit in one place. It usually worked.
Today, as a publishing professional who attends many book events and lit fests, I find I respond with my childhood veneration to an author reading from her work. I stop fidgeting, and I feel I could listen forever. Of course, there are good readings, and not such good readings. But in these days of mushrooming lit fests and book events, readings abound. What is wonderful for those of us who enjoy book readings is that they say so much about the author herself. What is even more interesting is the body language or undertone or particular inflection she chooses to bring to her reading. At a recent lit fest I found myself cataloguing the readings I attended into various genres. I found this exercise rather useful, it helped me note certain things that I might have glossed over had I approached all the readings in one swathe of wordy emissions. I also found that I remembered the readings better this way. Much later I thought back to some stand out readings I have attended in my last two decades in the book trade and catalogued them in the same manner.
The hot-under-your-collar reading
Rosalyn D'Mello's A Handbook For My Lover is nearing publication in November. Years ago, she read an early extract from it at my then-bookstore Yodakin. On a hot June evening, about 50 of us sat in close, sweaty proximity listening to Rosalyn's breathy voice enunciating every syllable with care as she read about a young woman's encounter with an older man. As she read out a bit about his hand resting on her inner thigh, a young man behind me sighed audibly and immediately after looked terribly embarrassed as my friend and I turned to look at him.
The WTF reading
Once again at Yodakin, the Penguin author Ambarish Satwik read his vignette on why the shapely duality of breasts is far more appealing to most men than the formidable singularity of the chest. The reading was accompanied by projections of explicit, animated visuals drawn by a leading graphic artist which would appear alongside the vignette when it is published in book-form. Many in the audience were particularly tickled to have a diminutive, bespectacled man with tousled hair and bhalo-chele good looks read out such salacious stuff with an utterly deadpan expression. The effect and affect were marvellous for most, but not sadly for two fellow-feminists who posed sharp questions at him about objectifying the female body and left the store in a huff.
In October 2012, I was asked by the Goethe-Institut to curate a small literary corner at the mammoth Indian-German Mela held at Indraprastha Park near the Yamuna. As the readings began, we found that getting an audience of more than 20 avid listeners was difficult given that we had Bosch and Deutsche Bank tents for competition, not to speak of the open-air café run by the Taj at the opposite corner of the venue. When Jeet Thayil got up to read, there were just ten of us in the audience reclining on cushions thoughtfully provided by the Goethe-Institut people, on a rolling hillock around a peepal we had christened the Novel Tree. Sensing that he needed to perk up the audience's attention, Jeet read an extract from his Booker-shortlisted novel Narcopolis that went something like this: "This ch**t country, c*nt country, how the f*ck are you supposed to live here without drugs… Look at the Gujaratis, ch**ts, kemchho ch**ts…."
Soon, the audience was no longer reclining, we were sitting up first in tense apprehension as the microphones bellowed his words across the public park and then someone chortled loudly as Jeet read, "… Bengalis? Bengalis are beyond your average category of ch*tiadom… First-quality bhadralok ch*tiyos", and others joined in. Before we knew it, the audience had gone up to 50, people were jostling for cushions, and a visibly annoyed young mother led her bemused ten-year-old son away from our suddenly buzzing literary corner.
The goosefleshy reading
When I was a student in London I happened to attend my first mushaira with a dear Pakistani friend. The famous poet Zehra Nigah recited her ghazals there, in a soft yet firm voice, with the most graceful gestures, and her Urdu like a babbling brook. I sat through it all with gooseflesh.
In 2011, Coetzee read a short story at the Jaipur Literature Festival which left many of us speechless. Coetzee reads in a tempered, clear voice which displays little emotion just like his straight-frame unruffled-air body language, which made the reading even more poignant for me, as it did for the thousands collected there in the front garden. Shockingly, not a whisper or ringing cell phone intruded as Coetzee read for a full 40 minutes.
Vikram Seth's reading of the final performance by the quartet of which the narrator is a part in An Equal Music at the Delhi launch of the book was another thrilling one to hear. Seth reads with no undue emphasis on any particular word, rather making whole lines and passages stand out in his crystal-clear delivery, making one feel as if one were looking at the words and reading oneself, in one's mind, and not being read to at all.
Another soft-spoken reader I shall never forget is Günter Grass. In October 2006, I watched him reading from his autobiography Peeling the Onion at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Naturally, I did not understand a word since he read entirely in German. I don't know whether it was because I was in the presence of such an enormous institution of a writer, or because it was just two months after his brave revelation that he had been part of the youth wing of the SS in the 1940s, or because he read so softly, his German sounding to me like mellifluous Farsi, that I was left with a lump the size of my fist in my throat.
The battery-charger reading
Normally, any baithak where Faiz is recited is a battery-charger for me. But there are some memorable readings which manage their spot in the same league. For me these were always poetry readings though.
Mamta Sagar writes poetry in Kannada and recites it as if poetry were performance itself. At the launch of the first collection of her poetry in English during the World Book Fair in Delhi in 2014, she recited her verses in Kannada. I understood nothing but such is the power in her little frame when she recites, in her strong voice which turns guttural at points as she communicates rhythm and sound as if her voice box were producing a riff, I found, without being aware of it, I had stood up in the middle of the recitation, and was tapping my feet.
Poetry is the one thing I enjoy even if it is read out by someone other than the author. Perhaps this is because all the great poets are long dead and one has little choice but to find good renditions of poetry one loves. Like Sudhanva Deshpande reciting the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish at my own Yodakin. Or at a Bangla theatre event a few years ago, when one of the actors magnificently recited a part of Kazi Nazrul's iconic poem "Bidrohi" (The Rebel). Listening to him, I felt I could take on the world.