god is in the details (II)
a bangalore literature festival 2023 special feature
on the 2nd and 3rd of december, i attended the bangalore literature festival. i had such a lovely time, and the panels were so amazing, that i decided to serialise everything i wanted to say.
for a few weeks, thodi will follow a blf theme, where i discuss the things that truly spoke to me during the two-day festival, and i’m very, very excited about it. i cover broader observations like the all-pervading sense of community experienced in events like these, as well as specific phrases and points covered by authors that i instantly knew i wanted to sit with and elaborate on when i heard them.
i hope you enjoy this little deviation from the regular programme. or, you know, tolerate it with an indulgent sort of smile and slowly shake your head in a very fond and exasperated manner. there you go. onward!
ps (pre-script?): the title of the series is from Dr. Abraham Verghese’s keynote address on the 2nd, where he mentioned the quote, and it has stuck with me every since i heard it on that sunny morning.
this week’s Thought (singular)
is somebody looking into the short and long-term effects of not having a tiny cat at home that you can pet whenever you want to. the apartment cats are starting to run away from me
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that their room is at the perfect temperature to fall asleep. thank you for joining us. may your fan emit just enough empty noise to gently lull you, may your blankets be warm but not too warm, and may your pillow retain its soft coolness throughout the night.
hi
welcome to part II of god is in the details, a three-part series where i discuss my time at and thoughts on the bangalore literature festival 2023. this installment is about two lovely concepts brought out in the panels i had attended. the first is the idea that a novel is a collaboration between the writer and the reader. the second is about the soft power of a city, and the key to making a new place feel like home.
in the afternoon of day 2, Dr. Abraham Verghese spoke about his novel, The Covenant of Water (which i thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend). it had been steadily drizzling throughout the day, and everything smelt like mud. there were no chairs left, so we stood on the side of the stage and listened to him discuss how the story came to be, the publishing process, his top-secret writer’s room. it was super engaging, and didn’t at all feel like half an hour had passed.
one of the things he said–and this seems so obvious and unremarkable now, but was such a pleasant revelation to me at the time–was that a novel is a collaboration between the writer’s words and the reader’s imagination. that a story entirely takes shape and exists in the mind of the reader.
this felt like such a lovely way of thinking about reading. i’ve heard people say that they prefer books to movies because the former allows them to imagine how the characters look, how the scene takes shape, play it out in their brains as they take in the words.
i adore the idea that a story lives in my mind. that the sentences i’m reading become concrete and alive once they settle inside my brain. i also adore how connected this thought makes me to the author. we are collaborating. my head is rental space and you’re filling it with words that we’re moving across the red tape markers on the floor.
one of the sessions i had attended was with Shoba Narayan about her latest book, Namma Bangalore: The Soul of a Metropolis (Feb 2024). there was a lot of lively discussion about when a New Bangalorean™ becomes an Old Bangalorean™, and how the city has evolved over the last few decades.
in the q&a, the soft power of the city was brought up, about how it holds up the culture and environment. i’ve thus concluded that the way to find community, to make a new place feel as close to home as you can, is to identify where its creativity lies. where the book clubs and the bird watchers gather, where cinema is discussed, where the handicraft exhibitions are held.
looking back, i think, in some vague and abstract way, i already knew this. my first weekend in mumbai was spent in an art gallery; just hours of looking at paintings, marvelling that a city so crowded and fast could make you feel so terribly lonely, and delighting that a day in the company of creativity could make you feel a little more kinship with the place. i also think that with every creative, satisfying engagement you make with a city, your heart will dig her heels into the sand deeper and deeper. it’s an anchor to keep you grounded, and it’s a guide to keep you from drifting.
next week, i’ll be discussing the discipline involved in consistently writing, which was brought up several times across panels. also, debate over whether better writers have a certain detachment from their work. thank you for reading!
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this week’s Song
Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3