Hay Festival 2014 — ethereal experience of the arts

Ever since its boundaries began expanding fast to include the connoisseurs in general, the field of the arts with its different genres has discovered a unique identity. Art galleries and exhibitions became a vogue in many European countries in the 18th century. Salons centring round painting and poetry turned out to be integral to the continent's socio-cultural matrix during that period. As decades passed by, the previously exclusive arts had found wider audiences in the common readers and art lovers.
At some time, organisers and sponsors entered the scene. They offered platforms to authors and artists to attend regular get-togethers. The meets were an occasion enabling painters and writers to take their work to the common people. At the same time, those were an opportunity for the writers, painters and others to share their thoughts and creative experiences with each other. Eventually, literary get-togethers and art exhibitions found wider perspectives; this helped these smaller events develop into festivals and carnivals.
After the Olympic Games began in ancient Greece in 776 BC with all its sports-related fanfare, religious rites and colourful performances, man had to wait for quite a long stretch of time to see the holding of outdoor pageants. Although the medieval Europe and Asia are known to have been accustomed to organising cultural festivals under royal patronage, the tradition developed its popular appeal much later. In modern times folk elements characterise majority of the festivals. In spite of this, pure paintings and literature have found their distinctive places among the myriad types of festivals. Apart from these two fields of the arts, music and cinema enjoy large audiences these days.
In Europe, the regions of Wales, Ireland and Scotland have long carved out their positions in the history of festivals. Against this backdrop, it is natural that Bangladesh, traditionally a festival loving country, will welcome one originating in Wales in the UK.             
The three days from November 20 to November 22 offered the literary admirers of the capital yet another rare opportunity to live through the ethereal experience of the arts and related areas. The Hay Festival 2014, its fourth edition, was held in Dhaka on the three days. The event kept hundreds of local readers, writers from home and abroad, and cultural enthusiasts in a kind of aesthetic spell. Held at the city's Bangla Academy compound, the colourful literary pageant from the very opening day began turning into a virtual literary celebration.  The festival unfolded with neatly-planned events one after another on five stages on the academy premises, some outdoors, on the three days. The festival-goers ranging from young men and women to elderly couples were seen moving from one venue to another. The crowd included a large number of students. Presentations of events from literature and allied branches, and also from completely different areas, with the participation of authors and speakers, continued daily from morning to night.
Bangla Academy has been witnessing literary-cultural festivals since its founding after the 1952 Language Movement. It organises the month-long annual Ekushey Book Fair. Apart from bringing new publications to readers, the fair also sees scores of literary events, especially book launches. The academy remains abuzz with literary-cultural programmes throughout the year. Back in 1974, the academy organised a grand literary conference. Besides Bangladeshi authors, it invited over a dozen major Indian writers. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman inaugurated the festival.
These days, Bangladesh organises a number of privately-sponsored annual literary, drama, film and music festivals. The most notable among them is Jatiya Kabita Utsab (National Poetry Festival) which is being held in Dhaka for three decades without break. In this land, the tradition of bringing foreign literary personalities to a conference was pioneered by the revered leader Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani. It was at the historic Kagmari Conference in Tangail district in 1957 that a number of noted Indian Bengali authors were invited, alongside the local ones. The conference, presided over by Maulana Bhashani, was held to mark a crucial meeting of the then Awami League. Although political in nature, the conference left a large space for authors and artistes.      
With over a hundred Bangladeshi writers, critics, commentators, academics and 60 authors, publishers and historians from thirteen countries, the Hay Festival 2014 eventually took the form of a gala get-together of persons engaged in creative activities. Given its eclectic and global character, many would like to call the festival an event that connects minds cutting across borders and regions. Perhaps thinking in the same vein former US President Bill Clinton back in 2001 defined the Hay Literary Festival as "The Woodstock of the Mind". The festival's Bangladesh chapter began quite humbly at Dhaka's British Council in 2011. This year's festival slogan was Kolponay Bishwa (Imagine the World).
As expected, Hay Festival 2014 has outshone its three previous editions in Dhaka in terms of the participants' numbers, the programmes' diversity and the size of the audience. A galaxy of literary and the arts-related celebrities graced the event this year. They included William Dalrymple, Jung Chang, Marcus du Sautoy, Lucy Hawking, Gideon Haigh, Patrick French, Michael Puett et al. Those with roots in the sub-continent included  Shashi Tharoor, Mimi Khalvati, Salil Tripathi, Zia Haider Rahman, Namita Gokhle, Javed Jahangir, Rana Dasgupta, Joy Goswami, Mirza Waheed, Aamer Hussein and Fatema Hassan. Besides them, the 3-day festival presented a number of globally noted figures such as John Ralston Saul, international president of PEN, Lyndy Cooke, director of the main Hay Literary Festival, literary critics Dwight Garner of the New York Times, Carolyn Kellogg of Los Angeles Times, Issac Fitzgerald, editor of BuzzFeed Books and a lot of others. Bangladeshi poets, novelists, essayists and academics took part in different sections of the event. Notable among them were Syed Shamsul Huq, Asad Chowdhury, Selina Hossain, Syed Manzoorul Islam, Kaisar Haq, Fakhrul Alam, Anisul Huq et al.
A Golden Age and The Good Muslim-famed novelist  Tahmima Anam and poet Sadaf Saaz Siddiqui and author Kazi Anis Ahmed supervised the massive literary carnival as the event's co-producer, director and festival adviser respectively. They participated in a few programme sessions - that came to a total 80.
The festival featured a poetry evening comprising only Bangladeshi poets, who read out their poems at the well-knit programme. The festival programmes were interspersed with events dedicated to Bangladesh's culture and heritage, social issues, science and the various aspects of its literature, performing arts, folk tradition etc. A striking feature of the 3-day festival was the large attendance at the talk shows, panel discussions and interviews on dais. Some events were held at the main stage at the Bangla Academy building, some outdoors on the lawn or Bot-tola venues.
The adda sessions between Indian novelist Shashi Tharoor, on his book The Great Indian Novel, and Kazi Anis Ahmed, and the other focusing on Zia Haider Rahman and his maiden novel In the Light of What We Know eventually turned out to be two vibrant events of the festival.    
Newly published books and book stalls have been enjoying a dominant place in the original Hay Festival since its beginning. In keeping with that tradition, the festival this year witnessed the launch of a number of books. Besides, the festival wore the look of a book fair at some corners of the ground. Although a handful of them in number, the stalls put up by famous publishing houses attracted lots of book lovers -- many leafing through new English publications or purchasing them.
Moving round the festival ground and the event venues, one couldn't but conclude that given the unalloyed passion for literature, and the arts in general, with entrepreneurial and infrastructural back-up, Bangladesh can embark on organising any literary event of international nature.
The Hay Festival is said to have been founded around a kitchen table in 1987. Since 1988 it is being organised in May-June every year in a town called Hay-on-Wye on the Wales-England border. The festival is now annually held in over 10 countries in Asia, Africa, America and Europe.
The Hay Festival 2014 in Dhaka was sponsored by the Daily Star. Like any massive event, the 3-day veritably gargantuan literary festival could not avoid lapses, though minor in nature. At times the event seemed lacking coordination. Many present at the festival were looking for printed programme schedules and brochures containing the participating authors' list and biographical sketches. But they had to be disappointed as no 'information desk' was visible. Last year, young volunteers at a small tent near the main Academy entrance were found distributing festival-related papers among interested persons.
shihabskr@ymail.com