The non-Jaipurwallahs

Are all roads leading to the desert for the Jaipur Literature Festival? Not quite. Orhan Pamuk will be in Mumbai on January 30 and 31 before going for a Goan tan. Friend Kiran Desai is likely to fly down to show him around the big city and the beaches. While Istanbul’s raconteur is taking in the sea,the bad boy of Edinburgh,crime-fiction writer Ian Rankin,too will be doing his non-Jaipur round. Rankin,who exited Inspector Rebus and got in Malcolm Fox in his thrillers,is in the country as part of the British Council’s Lit Sutra programme. He has been busy tweeting about his itinerary that spreads from Chandigarh to Chennai. On Friday,he will be giving a talk at the British Council,Delhi,at 7 pm,but the entry is by invitation only. So if you haven’t procured one,take the next train to Jaipur. You can have pilaf with Wole Soyinka,Vikram Chandra,Anne Enright,Hanif Kureishi,Roddy Doyle,Alexander McCall Smith,Mahasweta Devi,Steve Coll,Amit Chaudhuri and other Jaipurwallahs .