JLF booklover's wishlist

19 January, 2017, Jaipur: The mother of all litfests in India - Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) - flags off today for the tenth year. There is a striking parallel. Almost everyone visiting the India International Centre in Delhi seems to have an intellectual aura. Likewise, those at the Jaipur Litfest think and act like die-hard book lovers. Many people who have seldom bought a book or read one are regulars here at the event. The real book lovers are greatly outnumbered.

Many of us who have been regulars at the JLF over the years and are familiar with its ways have a wish list. We pray our wishes come true in 2017. To begin with, one wish it seems has already been answered. This year there is going to be a cashless option with adequate facilities for easing online transactions. Let's hope all else in our wishlist also comes true.

The price of the famed Diggi Puri Chai in traditional kulhad has gone up year-on-year. I wish this year the price of the chai, the most popular item in the Litfest, remains the same as last year. Even my modest knowledge of economics tells me that given the scale of sales, each kulhad would rake in a neat profit.

I wish JLF would come up with a mechanism to stop those early-bird book lovers who come to the venue and block seats for their late-comer friends by placing bags and articles on the seats and pre-empting others who come on time from being seated.

If you are a Jaipurite you wish you don't get any calls from friends and relatives for booking hotels and procuring entry passes. You can consider yourself lucky if you have not received any such calls. With the shortage of hotel rooms and zooming rates, requests for homestays and being your guest is very obvious. That's the pull of JLF.

Another wish is that the author gets to sign a copy of your book. Often, the queue of signature seekers is so long that the author is whisked off to another session before your turn comes.

Yet another wish is that organizers should arrange for proper personnel to conduct the sessions, especially for the regional authors' session. Last time there was this incident in which a foreign announcer, not very familiar with the Hindi terms and names, had, in one of the sessions, announced the name of the book, author and publisher wrongly. I wish this would not happen again.

A scenario. You are hungry but you aren't entitled to lunch since you had a normal entry to the Litfest. It makes sense to go home, have lunch and come back. But this is not possible given the sea of humanity and the traffic outside. You wish that suddenly Ram Pratap Singh Diggi appears and in his inimitable style asks you for lunch by making the lunch area accessible.

In the times of Swachh Bharat we wish the washrooms are usable if not clean.

Also, you wake up early, get ready, reach the venue on time all the while wishing that the gates for the session would be open.

Last but not the least, I wish the organizers should seriously make adequate facilities for the elderly and those visitors with special needs so that they too can experience a hassle-free Litfest.

ess bee