First Edition

The peaceful environs of the Kanakakunnu Palace in Trivandrum has come alive with the rustle of literature. Writers from across the world,readers from the city and literary buffs from the rest of India have converged on the grounds to be part of the buzz that is the Hay Festival. An annual fixture in the calendar of Hay-on-Wye village in Wales for 20 years,this is the first time the literary event has travelled to India. Among the melee of figures who swarm the handsome palace,there is “Mughal” William Dalrymple,politician-author Mani Shankar Aiyar,poet K Satchidanandan,Gillian Clarke,considered among the best poets of Welsh literature,Bob Geldof,the Irish singer,songwriter and author,as well as Sebastian Faulks,Basharat Peer,Marcus du Sautoy,Tishani Doshi and Vikram Seth. The festival will end on November 14.

Marcus du Sautoy’s session opened to a packed house on Friday — not surprising since this professor of Mathematics at Oxford University has made numbers fun in his book The Num8er My5teries. “The book is for everybody from the age of one to 101,” he says over telephone. Apart from how to win at Monopoly to winning a lottery,the book has unsolved mathematical questions. “If one could solve any of those,one could win one million dollars in prize,” he says,adding that his book talks about how “maths could be used as a tool to solve the world’s problems”.

No wonder,readers,even those who are uncomfortable around calculations,thronged to meet the writer. Among du Sautoy’s admirers is Adam Pushkin of the British Council,which is organising the festival along with Hay Festival and Teamwork Productions. Pushkin is also looking forward to Faulks on Sunday as well as Clarke because,“Literature from Wales,the only bilingual part of Britain,offers a fascinating connection with literature from India,where more than one language co-exists”. The event also includes the screening of a lecture by economist Nicholas Stern on climate change and,performance by a local group called Asima. “Bob Geldof will perform Irish folk rock and,if we’re lucky,a little punk as well,” says Pushkin. Any wonder then that Bill Clinton called Hay Festival the “Woodstock of the mind”?