Jaipur Literature Festival

The Durbar Hall, one of the venues for the Literature Festival

I am overflowing with happiness, like an overflowing cup of warm honey. I have two new friends, Dan from America and Arjun from Delhi, both poets, both in love with literature and all of us staying in the wonderful Vinayak guest house, they in the new dormitory, where all the bunk beds are shrouded in curtains, with capacious lockers underneath; I in a tiny, windowless room on the ground floor. We travel together early in the morning to the Indian coffee house to meet other friends for a convivial breakfast, then walk to the Dighi Palace to sit enraptured by the early morning music which starts the festival each day.

The Jaipur Literature Festival is free and to say it is well attended is a serious understatement. Last year a third of a million people attended. This year it cannot have been less.

First thing in the morning 

But first thing in the morning it is relatively uncrowded. The day before yesterday Dan and I went to see Amy Tan and Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi, who sparkled, as they bounced off each other with their descriptions of San Francisco. Amy was inspiring, enlightening and amusing.

At midday we decided to go in search of new glasses, Dan because his were scratched, I because mine were unsatisfactory, so we headed off across town in an Uber to the Swadesh, Mansarovar, an optician, whose premises were so bright, clean and capacious that they seemed more like an apple store. The optician impressed me with the thoroughness of his testing technique and provided me with a far better pair of glasses than the ones they sold me in England. Then Dan and I took it in turns to try on frames, commenting on each other's look, until we each found the perfect frames. Dan's had special lenses in them, anti dust, anti rain, anti glare because he wears them all the time. Then the optician took his old pair of glasses and changed the lenses in them.
"Do you sell ordinary sunglasses?" I asked him.
"We have a scheme. We give everyone who enters the shop a free pair of sunglasses," he said. "Choose whichever pair you want."
"I can't because I can't see," Dan said, since they had taken his glasses to replace the lenses.
"Give me your prescription," the optician said, handing it to an assistant, who handed over two pairs of contact lenses.
"Use these to choose a pair of sunglasses."
Then we posed for photos with the optician.
How much did all this cost? I spent ten pounds and Dan spent thirty pounds.

Opening ceremony at the Jaipur Literature Festival