In the room they put me up, the ac is making so much
noise, I might have been in a boiler room. Past midnight I open my eyes
and find a naked young man looking down at me in horror. Ola, I say
in Spanish, which I speak when frightened. The apparition screams once
and vanishes. A few minutes later the door opens, and a face draws close
to my body. Is some one going to give me oral pleasure? It turns out
to be the pretty Pablo Ganguli, the young man whose gay enterprise Kitab
is.
All through the festival,
the young audience ran into their hundreds and was appreciative
of whatever was on offer |
Did a naked man
come this way, Pablo asks?
A perturbed spirit did make his presence felt, I say.
I am sorry, Pablo says.
Not at all, I say, keep coming in at regular intervals.
The incident of
the Nude turned out to be the high point for me during the festival
staged across Bombay over the weekend. The evening before, Nick Pearson,
editorial director of Fourth Estate, UK, released my book of poems,
Portraits of the Space We Occupy, and I sorely suffered from a hangover
from my own reading for the next twenty-four hours. The collection was
launched at Oxford Book Shop, Churchgate. What this really means is
that just as you begin to read, the grinder goes into action at the
Cha Bar at your elbow on your right. And of course the mike, as er,
has its own agenda. So what you read comes out as a vengeful gurgle.
In between poems,
I catch sight of Amit Chaudhuri, the brilliant writer and singer, who
are also the president of Kitab Board, at the Cha Bar. I gesticulate
wildly at him. The mike, the mike, I mime endlessly like a moron. But
Amit coldly looks through me. His eyes glint. Is he thinking of a review
of mine of one of his works?
Later Sean Mahoney,
former editor of Inside Outside, UK, who was reading the poems with
me, says, no, not to worry, you read well. I know, I say, the Coffee
Machine was just too good, no?
But the crowd was
good and patient. And that makes you think All through the Kitab Festival,
all over the venues — the National Centre For Performing Arts,
Oxford, Prithvi Theatre — the overwhelmingly young audience ran
into their hundreds, and was generously appreciative of whatever was
on offer. Just goes to show that there is a market for culture out there
even in a crass city like Bombay. And neither ancient rigs like Sahitya
Akademi nor the very well-funded iccr has a clue how to tap it.
