Mountain Echoes: Bhutan’s literary festival

‘Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.’

This isn’t the right description of how I ended up staring out of a window of Hotel Namgay Heritage in Thimpu for  hours last week. My journey into the great wide open as part of a group of writers, journos, publishers, filmmakers and general riff raff (read: non-venture capitalists) was less ‘beat’ than the aforequoted journeyman’s. But Jack Kerouac’s opening lines from The Dharma Bums retrofit perfectly with my state of being as I contemplated the clouds that rolled in to cover the hilltops above me for four days.

The May 20-23 Mountain Echoes Literary Festival in the Bhutanese capital was a deep-bowled noodle soup of writers talking about their craft, experts sharing their fears and excitements about the future of reading, and audiences being given a guided tour of the world that lies behind the world wide web of infotainment of which books are only one (shrinking?) vehicle.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Words hold centrestage

Bhutan's first ever literary festival Mountain Echoes was eloquent testimony to literature's ability to cross borders.

For three days, the hills of Bhutan — or more precisely the town of Thimphu — quiet, beautiful and green, came alive not with the sound of music but the sound of literature and reading, with the conversation of authors and readers.

There was music too, just as there was archery (a national sport), food and drink (with the national dish, cheese and chillies, having pride of place) and animated discussions on the nature of Gross National Happiness, Bhutan's signature ‘export' that has had much of the world talking about exactly what it is.

Mountain Echoes, the appropriately named literary festival at which these discussions took place, was the first ever literary celebration in a country just beginning to come to an awareness of its literary potential and just taking the first hesitant steps into transforming from an oral culture to one that also values print.

Full report here Hindu

The honesty of Bhutanese writers

Like the recently held SAARC summit, the Bhutanese environment seems to be having quite an effect on visiting writers attending the ongoing literary festival, Mountain Echoes.

But perhaps because it involves writers, instead of politicians, sexual jokes, night hunting and gossip accompanied some of the topics during the second day of the literary festival being held here in Thimphu.
“I’ve heard most of the Indian writers before, but here they seemed more relaxed and better engaged with the audience,” said publisher and editor-in-chief of Penguin India, Ravi Singh, who has attended several other such literary festivals in India.

“I don’t want to sound condescending, but I’ve been impressed by every single Bhutanese speaker as well,” said the publishing company’s editor. So far, Bhutanese writers such as Kunzang Choden, Dasho Karma Ura, Dasho Kinley Dorji, parliament member Sonam Kinga, opposition leader Tshering Tobgay, and Siok Sian Pek Dorji have spoken at the festival.

Ravi Singh said he had observed that Bhutanese writers were trying to find their way in this new landscape, in reference to the first ever literary festival being held in Bhutan. “There’s no self indulgence,” he said, adding that the Bhutanese speakers have been thinking “outside the sphere” and in a “deep” and “honest” way.

Full report here Kuensel

Bhutan Literary Festival: Day 2

The Bhutan Literary Festival had an unexpected visitor today when King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth king, said he wanted to meet writers from India. At a hastily convened tea, that included home-made samosas, at India House, the residence of Indian Ambassador Pavan Varma, the king dressed in a traditional black gho and accompanied by the Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck who is a published author and a patron of the festival, mingled with writers, finally settling down to an impromptu poetry reading by Gulzar in Varma's drawing room.

Gulzar read his poems in Hindustani while Pavan Varma did the translations in English. The smallish crowd included writer and historian Patrick French whose biography of Francis Younghusband apparently impressed the Queen Mother to such a degree that French and his India-born wife, Meru Gokhale were among the few foreign guests she invited to the king's coronation in 2008.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Mountain echoes

Talk about journalistic privilege. Ambassador and writer Pavan Varma's beautiful, willowy daughter Batasha looks at me sympathetically when I whisper to her: "I really have to file." So, notwithstanding her seven-inch heels, she gamely takes me up through the kitchen and service area to her father's fabulous wood-panelled study, sits me down on his computer and five minutes later I am in business. Batasha, incidentally, is a journalist, so the empathy is easy to understand.

Earlier this evening, the Queen Mother, Arshi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, the 'chief royal patron' of Bhutan's first-ever literature festival delivers the keynote address at the India House Auditorium. With the clear voice of a very young girl, she talks of Bhutan's rich tradition of oral literature and how the arts play a crucial role in the understanding of culture.

There's only a hint of disapproval when she mentions that Bhutanese youth are somewhat more inclined towards 'television and other distractions' and hopes that the litfest will 'inspire creative writing in our youth'.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Literature in High Places

The list of Asian literature festivals is ever-expanding

Bhutan, as you probably know, is the only country in the world to measure the Gross National Happiness of its citizens. For its book lovers, there’s going to be a spike in the graph, come May, when its capital, Thimphu, plays host to the India-Bhutan Foundation’s Mountain Echoes, the country’s first literary festival.
It joins the ever-expanding list of Asian literature festivals — there were jamborees in Hong Kong, Dubai and Karachi in the past month alone — and features some of the usual suspects: Namita Gokhale is programme consultant, Mita Kapur’s Siyahi is an associate, and Pavan Varma, the writer-diplomat who is currently India’s ambassador to Bhutan, is one of the lead movers behind it.

The procession on stage will be led by the Queen Mother, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck and the PM, Lyonpo Jigmi Yoser Thinley. Other names on the roster include Urvashi Butalia, Omair Ahmad, Mitali Saran, Bulbul Sharma, Rajkumar Hirani (mandatory Bollywood presence), Chetan Bhagat (alas, not in the same event as Hirani), Gulzar, Sampurna Chattarji, Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao, Patrick French, Sadanand Dhume, Penguin India’s Ravi Singh, Leila Seth and Sarnath Bannerjee.

Full report here Moneycontrol.com