Non Religious Festivals of Goa.

There are a string of festivals in Goa. I attended the Marathi film festival in the monsoons, the film festival on mental health, children’s films, the guru-purnima ‘do’ at the KA, the events at Sunaparat (Altinho), the Art Chamber (Calangute), Thinkfest, IFFI, the Goa Art and Literary Festival (GALF)… and now the Lusofonia games, there’s life beyond Goa’s beaches and restaurants.

First, the controversial Thinkfest. For two years I treated myself for free (and paid Rs 1000 bucks this third time) to three days of music (this year the Intrepreti Venecia played), talks given by inventors, researchers, scientists, historians, politicians (they talked sense, incredibly), actors (Amitabh B and Robert de Niro were both boring), authors and… the soonthwali chai served in small glass ‘tumblers’.

I heard Garry Kasparov speak his mind. Met Kaifa Zangana.  Getting people like Louise Leakey is a feat. Getting someone like Medha Patkar an even bigger one, for she is particular about hating bottled water and all that it stands for (exploitation of land/ water/ people).

         As much as the precision in organizing an event of this size, and getting elusive persons to talk live, I was impressed by the spectrum of subjects. From medicine to astronomy, religion to economics, the marathon sessions covered in three days what might have taken me a year plus to read about.

         Jerry Sander’s idea of a floating, non-polluting public transport system (which is likely to take off in Kerala soon), Mansoor Khan’s take on the energy-bank and economics, hearing rape victims tell their stories of fighting back (how ironic that seems now) was an education of sorts. New Zealander Sharad Paul shared his knowledge about the curious history of the human skin. Farhan Akhtar and Shekhar Kapur described difficulties faced whilst living the roles of people dead (Queen Elizabeth) or alive (Milkha Singh) whilst making a film.

Conscious-keeper and documentary-film-maker John Pilger, made Shoma Chaudhury squirm when he said that money should not rule journalists/ media/ information. 

         Alan Russel’s talk on how to grow back an amputated limb through stem cell treatment was as fascinating as Moran Cerf’s lecture on how to read a mind (‘brain-hacking’). Zach Hoeken Smith’s 3-D printer drew a crowd outside the hall when he set up his invention to demonstrate what it could do.

         I’m still figuring out how algorithms are determining my life and what the clutter (or lack of it) in my room tells visitors about me.  Exposure to such research was paisa vasool. I would like to see the stand up comedian, Vir Das again, and know more about Shai Schiller’s methods of tracking criminals (terrorists) online.

         The session that attracted maximum attention, which was continued on the following day thanks to public demand, and which evoked a lot of responses on the Net, was the one that had ex-Taliban founder Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef and ex CIA chief, Robert Grenier sitting together on stage, in dialogue. Tweeters thought he would go snooping around discovering niches to lay traps for future bomb-blasts in Goa!! India doesn’t need an external affairs ministry or experts in foreign/ security affairs, it needs armchair know-it-alls who won’t take the trouble to expand OMG on their posts. It was the session that earned the festival respect: it’s nigh impossible to get these guys to talk, and together, live… a possible beginning to resolve a conflict.

          Thinkfest might not happen again. Pity.

         IFFI. This was one time when the goras got less bhaav than the brown-skin. Susan Sarandon (the VIPs called her Miss Saridon) was the chief guest for IFFI’s inaugural function, but the hosts preferred running after Bollywoodies.

         I watched an average of four films per day. There were chat-n-chai sessions, open forums and master-classes to attend in between, so I could learn what went into making a film. Getting tickets was a problem because the number of registered delegates was higher than the number of seats available. Next year we could have govinda-pyramids for those who can’t get in but are still keen on watching a film of choice.

Interestingly, some of the out-of-Goa delegates had managed to get bed-&-breakfast accommodation for as low as 100 bucks/night at places like Anjuna. But they didn’t get the time to visit the beaches or bars. 

Some selected the films based on the category: Master Strokes, Country of Focus, Cinema of the World, International Competition, etc. I chose based on screening timings and availably of seats. 

If the easiest way to travel the world is through film-experiences, then I’ve done a ‘round-the-planet’ three times in ten days. I shared the lives of people on different latitudes and longitudes. I cried with the Israeli officer (A Place In Heaven) when his status as national hero was shattered after forty years. His once heroic deed had become a ‘war crime’. We point fingers at ‘violent’ acts done by the men in uniform. If they didn’t do those, would we be safe? In ‘Grigris’ I saw how African slum-dwellers survived. ‘When Evening Falls on Bucharest’ showed the other end of the economic spectrum. ‘Les Apaches’, ‘Hush, Girls Don’t Scream’, ‘When a Man Desires a Fifth Wife’ introduced me to cultures and people whilst I snuggled in a/c’d comfort right here in Goa.

Polish and German films covering the early 1900s showed that suddenness of change, lifestyles and attitudes caused by the World Wars can’t be matched even by the I-net revolution. In contrast, ‘Quai d’orsay’ was hilarious, poking fun at a French politician.  

The country of focus, Japan, threw in some surprises. ‘Recipes of Diet Diaries’ was mildly funny and predictable. In ‘Like Father, Like Son’, an ambitious corporate manager discovers that his six-year-old son wasn’t his: two baby boys born on the same day, in the same hospital, had got swapped by mistake.

Every evening, there were live music and dance performances in the Inox courtyard, on the pavement outside and in the Kingfisher Village, adding to the ambience and coffers of hearing-aid manufacturers. They helped national integration: there was someone singing Marathi folk songs outside, dancing to Punjabi beats in the Inox compound whilst Kingfisher village was belting out English numbers. Cacophony zindabad.

At the closing ceremony, Remo Fernandes announced he’d crossed the landmark of sixty years. Retirement age, I thought to myself happily.

A Festival must have food. The kebabwala from Mumbai was the biggest draw. The north-eastern one attracted the curious. The Goan fare had enthusiastic village women trying to desperately keep up with the number of orders. Last year, they had recycled the disposable earthen matki.  

Talking of food: the film ‘The Fifth Season’ was about famine. What if spring didn’t follow winter? Considering in India we have droughts and floods every alternate year, it wasn’t an unreal theme. Another familiar story was ‘The Promise’, a Bollywood idea: rich old man marries beautiful young woman. Poor but bright young orphan comes into their lives, then goes away for seven years. Rich man dies, young man returns, film over.

The most memorable picture was ‘Stray Dogs’. Ten minutes per frame. No sound, no movement. Seriously thought I was in outer space. An audience of over five hundred people was in deep slumber for over an hour. Well deserved rest for those like me, because “for the ten days of IFFI my true love said to me:…nine frozen dinners, eight snacks-n-smoothies, seven kinds of popcorn… and some beers that came free.’

Last month there was the Goa Art and Literary Festival or GALF held at the International Centre, Dona Paula.

At the first GALF, I hadn’t a clue what LitFest was. In a film festival one sees films. Does one sit reading books at a LitFest, I wondered. 

 On a small budget and with volunteer help from the GoaWriters, it has managed to get to Goa some impressive names: Mridula Garg and Gulzar, for example. Over three days, I heard people discuss books and matters of national and cultural interest.  I chatted with the authors in the lawns, under the benign December sun, on topics like “is the short story really a form of literature”? After Alice Munro’s Nobel, the answer is clearly ‘yes’.

Last GALF, a Kashmiri writers’ contingent had come over. And some had come from the North East. This year we had Pakistanis.

All who have attended any edition of GALF agree that the attraction is its non-commercial, intimate, stimulating nature.

This year, on 4^th December, at the Institute Menezes Braganza, Maria Aurora Couto launched “Filomena’s Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family and a Culture”.  At the inaugural function at Kala Academy, amidst the unavoidable lot of speeches, more books were launched: by authors Lord Meghnad Desai, Meera Kosambi and Damodar Mauzo. More than twenty books were launched over four days.

There was a dance performance by the famous Uttar Kamalabari Satra troupe from the largest river island in the world, the Brahmaputra’s Majuli island. Then a Konkani ‘comedy’: even the school-kids’ guru-purnima function at the KA comes up trumps compared to these absurd ‘comedies’ and ‘cultural’ stuff that bore and embarrass.  We have the talent and the skill in the performing arts, why not put our best foot forward at times like these?  The Pakistani play that was cancelled without notice and postponed to another time and venue was a good one: “Yesterday an Incident Occurred”, written by Mark Ravenhill and acted by Nimra Bucha and Adnan Jaffar of the Desi Writers’ Lounge (DWL).

A group of Pakistanis run DWL as a labour of love. They bring out “Papercuts”, a magazine that showcases short stories, essays, poetry, plays and other expressions of thoughts and emotions by South Asian authors. In one session they shared their fund-raising experiments with a packed audience.

Meena Kandaswamy read her poetry with passion. That’s the only way to read her verse (shocking to some, exciting to others), Nandita Haksar, whose “Travels Through the Chicken’s Neck” is likely to be read by anyone interested in Nagaland and its sister states. She has made Goa her home. Bina Ramani earned fame through her difficult days as witness to Jessica Lal’s murder. She penned her experiences in jail and in dealing with the mighty monsters of Power in Delhi in “Bird in a Banyan Tree”. Sikkim’s Prajwal Parajuly had come here but a few months ago to launch his award-winning “A Gorkha’s Daughter”; this time he was here with his novel, “Land Where I Flee”. Shashi Deshpande told us how, where, when, why, she wrote and about whom. I wish the invited, outside authors had been given as much time as was given for the launch of “Taalgudi, Ghusmat and Clear Cut”.

Quiet and modest Saxticar Jose Lourenco didn’t tell people that the story of the film “Zor” was his. Goans are extremes. The ones who are modest are overtly so and the others….  

Claude and Norma Alvares’ son, Rahul, told us how long each picture took in his “Birds of Goa”. George Menezes’ “The Naked Liberal” was a collection of his satirical essays. I’m going to watch out for Rajay Pawar’s humourous, earthy and hard-hitting poetry. Patricia Sethi, a Newsweek ex-chief correspondent launched Ramesh Chauhan’s biography “Thunder Unbottled: From Thums Up to Bisleri”.

By the time this goes into print, the Fundacao Short Story Competition results would be out and Goa will be gearing up for the Kosambi lectures (which, like ‘Swarmangesh’), should be ticketed, not fukat and the South Asia Film Festival.

So much happening and they say Goa’s susegaad.