{"id":2402,"date":"2015-06-04T02:33:43","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T21:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/?p=2402"},"modified":"2015-06-04T19:05:49","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T14:05:49","slug":"dwl-london-readers-club-at-the-alchemy-festival-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/2015\/06\/dwl-london-readers-club-at-the-alchemy-festival-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"DWL London Readers’ Club at the Alchemy Festival 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

As a city, London misses no opportunity to celebrate South Asia. From the London Asian Film Festival in March to the South Asian Literature Festival in November, London\u2019s nostalgic obsession with the Subcontinent persists through the year. But for me and other members of the DWL London Readers\u2019 Club, nothing quite compares to the Alchemy Festival that takes place at the Southbank Centre each year.<\/p>\n

The Festival, now in its sixth year, brings together the best of South Asian dance, music, theatre, design, fashion, comedy and literature in a single space. With so many different ways of connecting to the region on offer, the problem with each year\u2019s Festival is deciding which sessions to attend. This year was no different. Running for eleven days from the 15th<\/sup> of May till the 25th<\/sup>, the excess of choice seemed impossible to negotiate: Should we choose to get tickled pink(y brown) by the Alchemedians<\/em> or find the courage to watch Nirbhaya? Should we attend a talk by Monica Ali in the book club sessions or take a masterclass to learn how to grow Kodu<\/em>, a Bengali vegetable?<\/p>\n

The 2015 Festival formally added another art form to its list of experiences: South Asian street food. For eleven days, the Southbank Centre and its immediate vicinity wafted in the smells of Karachi, Bombay, Dhaka and Calcutta. More than twenty odd stall owners worked to bring together (a hygienic version of) South Asian street food: from fresh coconuts to mango lassi<\/em>, from the humble bun kebab to the offer of the grand Amitabh tikka.The food added its own feel to the Festival \u2013 what can beat the pleasure of hearing writers speak of their characters with a cup of hot masala chai <\/em>cradled in one\u2019s hands, or the delight of listening to Alchemy Unplugged while consuming a chutney-dripping kebab roll or crunchy papri chaat<\/em>?<\/p>\n

The Festival is special for the members of London Readers\u2019 Club because it not only allows access to our own versions of \u201chome\u201d but because it also allows us to travel to parts of the region that we would ordinarily not see. We were especially excited about the Jaipur Literature Festival coming to London as part of the Alchemy festivities. Even though the Jaipur-on-Thames was meant to be a \u201cmini-taster platter\u201d there were around 21 sessions over two days. Those of us from the London Readers\u2019 Club tried to cover many between us.<\/p>\n

One of our favourites was the Shakespearewallahs<\/em> with Pragya Tiwari in conversation with Suhel Seth and Tim Supple. The ironic reversal in positions \u2013 quite common in literary events in London today \u2013 was what made this session so entertaining, with Suhel Seth stressing the need to maintain the purity of Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0writing by sticking to the prose and pauses of the original plays, and Tim Supple, the producer of A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream, using Indian actors and languages, talking about remaining true instead to Shakepeare\u2019s genius in taking folklore or popular stories of the present day and reinterpreting them.<\/p>\n

The session Divide and Rue: the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent<\/em> we found controversial. Partition is always an emotional topic, and became more so because the entire panel \u2013 made up of Dilip Hiro, Navtej Sarana and Andrew Whitehead, moderated by Urvashi Butalia \u2013 did not have a single person from the Pakistani or Bangladeshi community\u2026 something the audience criticized directly. And despite the best efforts of some of the panel members to direct the conversation to the question of how best to preserve the narrative about partition, politics and (visa) policy took over.<\/p>\n

The Jaipur Festival also offered an opportunity to listen to VS Naipaul talk about his craft and career. Nigham, who attended the session said, \u201cIt was a memorable experience watching a Nobel-Prize-winning author speak about his life and memories. Listening to Naipaul talk about his work, you get the overriding sense that writing has been a tortuous process for him.\u201d When asked in the session how he started writing, Naipaul said he\u2019d been asked to give up his first job because he was not very good at it. Out of this rejection, this \u201cgreat gloom\u201d as Naipaul called it, came the idea that he might write about himself and his background, which, he stated, \u201cis hard to do as you don\u2019t discover facts about yourself readily.\u201d He had a lot of trouble getting started (\u201cThose were dark days for me\u201d). Although tragic for Naipaul, it may be oddly reassuring to a new writer that writing can be an unhappy process for the best of us.<\/p>\n

In another interesting session, Clueless: Season of Crime<\/em>, Somnath Batabyal spoke to Nils Nordberg, Alison Joseph and Ashwin Sanghi about crime writing. Most of the audience\u2019s questions were directed to Ashwin\u2019s experiences about crime in India. Before the session, I was quite skeptical about whether crime writing would ever be fashionable in a region where \u201cfact\u201d is faster paced and stretches the imagination further than fiction. However, in the discussion, Alison \u2013 standing up for the crime writing genre \u2013 made an interesting point: that crime fiction is popular because it allows resolution in a way that reality cannot. From that point of view, then, perhaps crime fiction does have a future in South Asia.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the Festival this year allowed a lot of us to seek resolution for some of our feelings in a similar way. The 2015 Festival included Dil Phaink<\/em>, an audiovisual showcase by PeaceNiche, presenting Pakistan\u2019s street culture, cult cinema, visual memory, and matters of the heart. The fact that Sabeen Mahmud, the driving force behind this peace exhibit, had been fatally shot down in Karachi just\u00a0weeks prior, gave it an entirely new meaning. This was best articulated by Shazaf Fatima Haider, who had moved to London the very day of Sabeen Mahmud\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo say that I was devastated would be an understatement,\u201d Shazaf said. \u201cT2F, for me, was a large part of Karachi, and it seemed that the part of home that I had loved and cherished, the part that filled me with pride, had suddenly disappeared the minute I had looked away. I caught up on the three days of news that I had missed while moving. I read every post and gazed at every photo of Sabeen \u2013 her face was all over the media. I couldn\u2019t believe this brave, wonderful woman whom I\u2019d had the good fortune to know, was no longer alive. I realized that the only way that I could pay my tribute was to go to the PeaceNiche exhibition. A novice to the London transport system, I braved the journey by tube and got to the exhibition, saw signs of my beloved city and the exhibition itself, wrote on the Dukhi Dewaar<\/em>, and talked at length to a clearly devastated Chand. We both spoke about her for over an hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exhibition was like Sabeen: eclectic, creative, thought provoking, hilarious. I watched the compilation of news videos that traced Pakistan\u2019s military and political history, with juxtaposed scenes that formed an ironic comment of the compiler \u2013 who happened to be Sabeen herself. Little did she know that the montage would end with pictures of her own death \u2013 a lone kola puri<\/em> nestled among shattered glass. I prayed for her then, and for her mother, whose strength has me floored. In the exhibition was a small stall that had a caricature of Sabeen riding away in her scooter, an impish smile on her face. In Karachi, little acts like riding a scooter and being the only woman doing so, are in fact the hugest acts of courage and gumption. Sabeen had gumption in droves and she urged all of us to speak in our different voices and tell our different stories. She is my hero and I salute her.\u201d<\/p>\n

This particular exhibit peaked with a concert by Overload on 21st<\/sup> May. Mariam, who like many others attended the event as a tribute to Sabeen said, \u201cThe concert, like the festival, blended the familiar with the foreign perfectly. It showed that you can understand emotion from a language you can\u2019t speak, and dance to a music you don\u2019t understand. The concert was respect, passion, drumbeats, colour. It was warm and eclectic. And I am sure Sabeen smiled a million times from somewhere above, hearing the beat while reading all the messages people filled on London walls in her honour.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Alchemy Festival ended on Monday, 25th<\/sup> of May. Now we wait for the next festival and all the opportunities it brings to connect to our idea of home, connect to each other and to connect to better versions of ourselves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dil

Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche, Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Zainab at Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Pragya Tiwari in conversation with Tim Supple and Suhel Seth. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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“Revolutions of Rising Aspirations”, a\u00a0session at Alchemy Festival,\u00a02015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Sidin Vadukat and Rajdeep Sardesai, Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Divide and Rue: the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Divide and Rue: the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The joy of a bun kebab in London, Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Bodyline. Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Pulse and Bloom, Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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South Asian street food\u00a0on offer\u00a0at the Alchemy Festival 2015 including\u00a0the “Amitabh”. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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An Indian Street on Southbank, Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dil Phaink by PeaceNiche, Alchemy Festival 2015. Photo by Sumera Nizamuddin.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  As a city, London misses no opportunity to celebrate South Asia. From the London Asian Film Festival in March to the South Asian Literature Festival in November, London\u2019s nostalgic obsession with the Subcontinent persists through the year. But for me and other members of the DWL London Readers\u2019 Club, nothing quite compares to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[358,365,91],"tags":[566,575,580,576,578,571,119,581,579,574,569,584,568,582,570,573,583,567,585,586,577,572],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2451,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions\/2451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}