Literary festivals and appearances, 2008

January 26-27
Jaipur Literary Festival, Jaipur, India

Feb 1-2
New Delhi Book Fair, India

Feb 3-10
Kala Ghoda Festival, Bombay, India

Feb 21-24
Kitab Festival,
Bombay, India

April 23-27
Cúirt International Festival, Galway, Eire

May 2-4
Book launch,
Lisbon, Portugal

May 16-19
Franschhoek Literary Festival, South Africa

May 24
Annual Creative Writing Lecture, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

October 14-19
Ubud Festival, Bali

November 8
EU conference Bruxelles

November 21-23
Oslo Book Fair

The Booker 40th party, the Prince's Rainforest dinner and brainstorming 25 years of Bhopal

Report from our recent trip to England coming soon to the blog. Find out what this picture is all about.

Defining Moments by Rajendra Shekhar

Rajendra Shekhar used to be India's top policeman. Vickie and I met him at a gathering of old boys of Mayo College during our trip to India in January and were pleased to be given a copy of his entertaining memoir, Defining Moments.

My review, which you may read here, is haunted by the unlikely figure of Colonel Kesri Singh, author of Hints on Tiger Shooting.

Le jardin, lieu paradisiaque au coeur du village,
Le jardin, lieu de réflexion et de spiritualité,
Le jardin, simple et complexe à la fois,
Le jardin, á l’image de notre belle bastide.

Thanks to friends in France and all over the world who have supported us on the fast

Tonight, on BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves programme, I spoke of how people in our village in southern France took up the fast on my behalf when for medical reasons I was compelled to stop after 7 days. There has also been tremendous support from other writers, friends in Greece and all over the world, for which I am deeply and humbly grateful. The fast in Delhi continues into its 15th day with five of the hunger strikers now recording ketones in their blood. We hope that the government, which is facing considerable political turmoil, accedes to the survivors' proper, reasonable and long overdue demands for proper health care, safe water and for the law suits currently pending against Union Carbide Corporation and the Dow Chemical Company to be allowed to proceed without obstruction.

For the latest information on the hunger strike or to join the fast for a day or two, please visit www.bhopal.net

Please join us in the fast for justice in Bhopal

I've written a piece for The Guardian on why I joined the Bhopalis on hunger strike. It's on the Guardian website, and a slightly fuller version is here.

Please visit bhopal.net and sign up for one or two days fasting in support of our friends in Bhopal. Unless you have a medical reason not to, giving up food for a day or two can actually be of great benefit to the health. Thanks to all the Greek friends who have rallied in support. Vickie and I are very moved and hope to meet up in Greece later this year.

Support the Bhopalis, join the fast for a day or two
Fasting safely
Fasting pros and cons

An open letter to the Prime Minister and government of India

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has received a letter from almost one hundred writers, musicians and creative artists, reflecting the overwhelming opinion not just in the arts but in wider society that the continuing suffering in Bhopal is unacceptable and that the Indian government should now do all in its power to end it.

The letter appeared in the Guardian on April 11, 2008. My thanks to all who joined me in signing it.

Text and full list of signatories

Christine Jordis speaks about Tibet

 
A moving message from Christine Jordis, an editor at Gallimard in Paris, about the unhappy situation in Tibet. Vickie and I met Christine at the Kitab Festival in Bombay at the end of February. English translation coming.

Tibet Support Groups worldwide
Support Free Tibet Campaign

Jeffery Stride: Painting the Lot

The exhibition is on Tuesday 8th April at the Galleria, Royal Opera Arcade, Pall Mall, London

Jeff writes: “These landscapes will provide an ambience for an evening conference organised by the French Tourist Board but until then I have the place to myself.

“Sally and I would be very happy to welcome you during the afternoon and show you the new paintings or, if this is inconvenient, you could try to gatecrash the evening session. If you’d like to know more please write to me at jeff(at)jeffstride.net.

“This may well be my last London show when I won’t have to add a gallery commission to the price tag.”

Preview the paintings here.

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize: a dedication

Animal's People has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Europe and South Asia in the Best Book category. (GUARDIAN REPORT) Thanks to all who supported the novel, which now goes to the final in South Africa in May.

Animal, sculpture by Eleanor Stride, photographed in Vers, France.
Read the Khaufpur Gazette's interview with Animal here.

Animal's People is a story about poor people coping with tragedy and injustice. The book could have been set anywhere where the chemical industry has destroyed people's lives. I had considered calling the city Receio and setting it in Brazil. It could just as easily have been set in central or south America, west Africa or the Philippines. In the end it was Khaufpur and India.

Bhopali woman at the free Sambhavna Clinic.
I don't know your name, but this prize is for you

Whether Receio or Khaufpur the background to Animal's People is clearly based on Bhopal and I am pleased that the attention the novel has got has reminded people of the continuing double disaster in that all-too-real city – first the gas leak itself which has killed around 23,000 people directly and through lingering illness. The second disaster is the mass poisoning of the water supply of 30,000 more by chemicals leaking from the abandoned, never-cleaned factory. Babies are being born in affected communities with deformities and brain damage. The company responsible refuses to clean the factory or compensate those its chemicals are poisoning.

Injustice is itself a deadly poison: anger eats into the spirit and turns to despair and desperation. Why do we never learn this lesson? Our friends in Bhopal are dedicated to Gandhian non-violent resistance. We should not fail them.

Walking to Delhi in 2006. Now they must do it again because the Prime Minister did not keep his promises

Leaving Agra before dawn, the 2008 march
gains its first bovine member

For the second time in three years, Bhopali survivors are walking to Delhi to ask the Prime Minister to keep the promises he and his government made in 2006 and have failed to keep.They need our support, you can help by visiting bhopal.net, bhopal.org and www.studentsforbhopal.org

More than 100,000 in the city remain chronically ill. Our Sambhavna clinic has to date given free medical care to around 30,000 of them. We have had great success combining modern medicine with non-drug therapies like yoga, massage, yogic breathing and traditional Indian herbal medicine. The results are encouraging and we now want to share what we have learned with other communities around the world whose health has been destroyed by chemicals.

To all of these people, Bhopalis and others, I would like to dedicate this Commonwealth Prize for Animal's People.

A literary passage to India

What a good idea to miss the Lotois winter, where night temperatures can dive to -15C, and spend three months in India. Vickie and I had invitations to three literary festivals and a book fair in five weeks, and there were not a few unscheduled cultural fêtes, melas and parties. We saw José Feliçiano in Goa, met dozens of exciting people, caught up with many old friends. A highlight was hearing raga Miyan ki Malhar sung for us by Anand Thakore, a distinguished professional singer who is also a fine poet in English. (Hear Anand sing raga Puriya Kalyan.)

John Berendt reads from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
in the durbar hall at the Diggi Palace, Jaipur

At the Kala Ghoda festival in Bombay, my reading followed immediately on a discussion with Rashida Bee and Sathyu Sarangi from Bhopal, both of whom were shortly to set out with 80 other Bhopalis, among them many old, frail and ill people, to walk 800 kilometers to Delhi.

As I write this they are still on the road. They are going to ask the Prime Minister and his government to obey a Supreme Court order now four years old to provide clean water to those whose wells have been poisoned by the derelict Union Carbide factory. They will also ask Dr Manmohan Singh to keep the promises he and his ministers made two years ago, last time the Bhopalis walked to Delhi.

Setting out before dawn to miss the heat. The milestone shows
185 kilometers to Agra.

India trip, January - March 2008

Vickie and I will be travelling through Rajasthan before taking part in the Jaipur Festival, the New Delhi Book Fair, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and Kitab 2008 (the latter two in Mumbai). Our itinerary starts in Udaipur, taking in Bundi, Ranthambhore, Tonk, Jaipur, Ajmer, Pushkar and New Delhi, followed by sojourns in Bombay and Goa. I'll be writing about our experiences for magazines in the UK, US and France. More on the blog from time to time, but am a hopelessly erratic blogger, so don't hold your breath.

Animal, by Eleanor Stride

Eleanor Stride is currently at the New York Studio School having spent seven years studying sculpture at the universities of Bologna and Athens. My interview with this exciting and powerful young sculptor will follow soon.