Bibliofile

Royal Hay 

Let’s hope Shashi Tharoor’s other idea for his native land of Kerala does more for him than the IPL team. It was Tharoor who first invited the Hay Festival to open shop in Kerala and if all the experts that the Hay’s UK directors have been consulting over the past few months are to be believed, it’s going to be a litfest to watch out for. It’s smaller in scale than the Jaipur litfest, but what will probably pull in the crowds is the central venue—a royal palace within Trivandrum. And the fact that the directors are focusing on local writers as much as international stars. Among those who have confirmed are Vikram Seth and Tharoor himself.

Metre For Measure

Nearly seven years after it was published, Leila Seth’s autobiography On Balance is now being launched in a Hindi translation. But guess what’s the biggest challenge the translator faced? Not Seth senior’s transparent prose but her son Vikram’s poems she quoted in the book. Vikram, who is very particular about the metre of his poems, was so unhappy with the initial translation that the publisher had to eventually find a young translator to work with him.