Literary scene in climate chnage.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Oops! Only one person as audience in the hall for a literary gathering. See photo.

Blame the heat. Temperatures are in the 40s. The heat index makes it feel above 50. The programme is due to begin at 5pm.

It is the monthly prose meet at Central Delhi’s Ghalib Academy. Open to all, every participant is invited to the podium to read a short story, essay or some such piece of prose that they have written, in any language. But before anyone can read, there has to be an audience.

Yes, dear reader, this is what some of the literary life can look like during Delhi’s extreme summer.

Just weeks earlier, despite the oppressive weather, the academy’s monthly literary gathering had drawn a higher-than-moderate crowd. This evening is different. The heat is harsher, the air heavier, and even die-hard regulars seem to have stayed home.

To be sure, Delhi’s literary calendar does not stop for summer. Most venues rely on air conditioning. Author talks, poetry readings and book launches continue through the hottest weeks at AC-equipped institutions like India International Centre and India Habitat Centre, and in citywide bookstores like Quill and Canvas in Gurugram and Kunzum in South Delhi. Many other citizens pursue bookish interests inside the air-conditioned interiors of calmly spaces like the British Council library in Central Delhi. But Ghalib Academy has no AC. Fans clamped high on the walls do diligently turn their blades, but this evening they are only stirring warm air.

Whatever, waiting for more minutes for the hall to fill up with at least a few people would be a discourtesy to the elderly citizen who dared to brave the heat, and arrived on time. So the meet begins. On stage are writers Parveen Vyas, who drove from Gulmohar Park, Chashma Farooqui from Jamia Nagar, Khursheed Hayatt from Greater Noida, and Seema Kaushik from Faridabad.

This prose meet is the younger of the academy’s two monthly literary traditions. It began two years ago. The Academy’s popular poetry session is much older and has been held every second Saturday since 1996. Both were started by Ghalib Academy secretary Aqil Ahmad, a poetry scholar, who wanted to create a space where people from different walks of life could meet through literature. Opening the proceedings, the mild-mannered scholar spends a few minutes talking about the day’s extreme heat, gently blaming it for the low attendance. Then he smiles and reminds the very few present in the hall that the literary meet is being streamed live on Facebook. The lone man in the audience is not the only audience after all, he seems to suggest.

Dheere dheere, more people arrive. The empty seats no longer dominate the room. After the meet ends at 7.30pm, about 20 people step out of the hall into the tired city’s still uncomfortably warm evening.