9 O N E S: Insider’s Mumbai:The Kala Ghoda Festival

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As festivals go, the Kala Ghoda festival (February 7-15) is more of a huddle, maybe even a cosy chat between friends. This most-Mumbai-of-all-festivals is a happy melange of literature, music, street art, heritage walks, theatre, sidewalk food and children’s events.

It does not have the glamour of the Jaipur literary festival that immediately precedes it. There are no big name authors, Bollywood stars, or princely palaces for venues. What it does have is charm, oodles of it.

Kala Ghoda is a more intimate, local festival. It’s hard to carp about a festival which features an SMS (text message) poetry contest, for instance, or a whistling performance by the Indian Whistling Association. The Kala Ghoda is where you can eat samosas and momos while watching flamenco or folk dance. Or listen to some of India’s top musicians and bands for free. Or try, try and fail again to understand the performance poetry, but have a lot of fun doing it. Or people watch as goatee-ed intellectuals rub shoulders with curious street urchins.

Or learn how to write a graphic novel, or a film script. Or have a trained guide take you around Mumbai’s heritage buildings. Or gape at the cheerily eccentric art installations. ( Last year, a massive ferris wheel made of bicycles festooned with dabbas—steel lunchboxes peculiar to India—was the focal point, while a huge “mosquito man” drew crowds of bemused onlookers) Kala Ghoda has something for everybody, albeit in a slapdash, village fair sort of way.

To attend Kala Ghoda is also to take a mini-tour of Mumbai’s past. Most events take place in and around the Kala Ghoda (black horse) Square, named after a statue of Edward VII mounted on a horse. The statue has now been removed, but the name has stuck. The Square is surrounded by the regal 150-year-old Elphinstone College, the Jehangir Art Gallery, and the baroque gargoyle-strewn facade of Mumbai University, so it’s handy for sightseeing as well. Many of the readings are held in the tiny but charming garden of the heritage David Sassoon library, frequented by cats and surrounded by jackfruit trees. The library itself, an ornate Gothic building that dates back to 1870, is straight out of Dickens, with rows of rare and musty books, and elderly gentlemen snoring gently in planter’s chairs. Music events are often held on the sweeping stairs of the Asiatic library, overlooked by eight magnificent white Doric columns, and best seen at night when it is lit up.

The literature section of the festival has always concentrated on local writers, both the unpublished and the more established. The occasional big-name author, such as Paul Theroux, Indra Sinha, or Amit Chaudhuri, does drop by. Still, this festival is about the little guys, the ones who don’t write bestsellers or make Booker shortlists, but nevertheless keep writing, and talking about writing. Regional languages are often overlooked in discussions of Indian writing, but Kala Ghoda gives Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, and Gujarati writers a say. This year’s festival features discussions about the new wave of Indian pulp fiction, writing and activism, and how writers write in times of terror, among others. The “Open Mic”, which allows anyone to read or perform their poetry for ten minutes, is an institution which features some of Mumbai’s best poets, and some of its worst exhibitionists. Kala Ghoda also gives back. At some of the many free workshops you can learn how to write poetry, compose song lyrics, put together a graphic novel, get published, write for the stage, and write for children.

A full schedule of events is at www.kalaghodaassociation.com, or check local newspapers for listings. Stop by. This is Mumbai at its muddled, muddling along, best.