Tale of two Lit fests: Sunita Williams’ Kerala visit ignites a high-stakes literary showdown
The announcement sent shock waves through Kerala’s literary establishment, where competing festivals take the war for celebrity guests rather seriously. The Mathrubhumi Group, a prominent media house that runs its own competing festival, says they had also been pursuing Williams. Now they watched helplessly as their rival locked down the uniquely highprofile guest. What followed was a campaign of unsparing hustle.
Rival festival managers clutched oversized bouquets and Malayalam posters in hotel lobbies, hoping to intercept the astronaut for their own event, unmindful of the spacefarer’s inability to comprehend the local script. When Williams, who was about to board a boat, spotted Mathrubhumi journalists already seated inside, she refused to get on until every reporter was ejected.
Backroom parleys were in full swing. An IAS officer attempted to set up a meeting with the chief minister, while a Congress leader pressured KLF organisers for a session at the fest, all presumably seeking a photo opportunity ahead of the upcoming state elections. All were politely declined.
Finally, in a last-ditch effort, a senior Mathrubhumi editor called DC Books, requesting Williams’ appearance at their festival as a personal favour. The answer was a swift and unequivocal “No”. According to festival gossip that rippled through Kerala’s literary circles, the editor was inconsolable.
BATTLE IS LIT
Welcome to India’s most competitive literary battleground. While the Jaipur Literature Festival draws global attention as India’s foremost literary gathering, Kerala has quietly become the country’s lit-fest capital by sheer volume and fervour. The state, which boasts universal literacy, hosts four major literary festivals, with smaller ones sprouting in every district. DC’s festival drew 700,000 visitors this year, the organisers say. Mathrubhumi’s competing event, the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (MBIFL) or Ka Festival, pulls massive crowds in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram. The newspaper Malayala Manorama runs a festival in Kochi, named Hortus. Then there is the Kerala Legislature International Book Festival, held by the state legislative assembly, also in the state capital.
In a state where writers command rockstar status and families now plan annual vacations around lit-fest schedules, securing the right celebrity author means the difference between triumph and public humiliation. (Full disclosure: this journalist has worked with both KLF and Mathrubhumi’s festival in various capacities over the years, from guest coordination to session planning, witnessing this rivalry from inside the tent.)
The Williams saga reveals how the literary arms race works. For Williams, who hadn’t visited India since 2016, the timing with KLF aligned perfectly, both personally and professionally. While Mathrubhumi sources claim they had reached out to Williams even before DC had, chances are her participation at a 2023 event in Sharjah, through DC, tipped the scales in its favour. DC’s publisher Ravi Deecee, who leads the charge, dispatches his two sons after every festival to secure international authors and lock down sponsors for the next.
DC had been seeking Williams’ presence at their events since 2019, but she said she could only visit during personal holidays or after retirement. Routing invitations through NASA’s bureaucracy and arranging official security would have been cumbersome. When her retirement eventually came, DC quickly moved to lock her in, catching rivals off guard. When confirmation of Williams’ Kerala visit leaked, apparently through a sponsor common to both festivals, everyone wanted her.
KERALA ODYSSEY
Bringing Williams to Kerala required elaborate logistics. DC, concerned about the Iran airspace and cancellation of Indigo flights, cancelled her Etihad trip via Abu Dhabi, and rerouted her through other cities to Delhi, Bengaluru and finally Kozhikode. From Delhi, DC’s staff accompanied her throughout the trip.
For privacy, Williams asked for a secondary phone. The number was mostly known only to the DC staff.
KLF happens on a narrow seaside strip in Kozhikode, with stages lining the seafront. Usually, authors walk between venues or take auto-rickshaws for the kilometre-long stretch. For Williams, the crowd swelled beyond control. Panicked parents, unable to spot a child in the crush, requested an announcement from the stage. The child was found safe nearby. One person fainted and people quickly made way for him to be taken care of. The usual transport for authors proved impossible for Williams. Finally, organisers hired a speedboat that drew a dramatic semi-circle through the gentle waves to reach the venue just a few hundred metres away.
Given Williams’ popularity and social media hype, hilarious scenes erupted everywhere. CISF personnel at the airport thought she’d be perfect to inaugurate their local cycling event. Hotel staff surprised her after a massage, requesting a feedback video while she was still in her robes.
The poaching attempts weren’t limited to Williams. Ben Johnson, a former Canadian sprinter who was once the world’s fastest man, received in his hotel room a call claiming to be from DD Malayalam, the public broadcaster. The DC staff checked the credentials and discovered they were from a private competitor.
WHOSE PEN IS MIGHTIER?
The rivalry between DC Books and Mathrubhumi in publishing is fierce and long-running. DC started its literature festival in Kozhikode in 2016, encroaching on the home turf of Mathrubhumi , the venerable old lady of Malayalam print media. DC had done everything from clearing truckloads of garbage to convincing speakers and a sceptical local population unfamiliar with the concept of a literary festival.
Ironically, V Venu, the former state chief secretary who helped DC navigate gover nment machinery in those early days, now curates Mathrubhumi’s festival. In December, he called Ravi, suggesting collaboration. That moment of conciliation didn’t last.
The competition soon descended into a ruthless one-upmanship. DC announced a 5 km run in T hir uvananthapuram on January 11.
Mathrubhumi responded with a similar one in Kozhikode on the same date. When DC held a curtain-raiser at Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s Delhi residence, the newspaper took it as an encroachment of territory as Tharoor was a patron of the Mathrubhumi festival. In what felt t o Mathrubhumi like adding insult to injury, DC took Williams to Thiruvananthapuram, Mathrubhumi’s festival city, for an ISRO-related lecture just two days before the newspaper’s festival was to begin. A top Mathrubhumi executive tried calling her hotel room directly, only to discover this move had been preempted and Do Not Disturb activated.
The Williams experience was unusual in its intensity although the festival circuit has evolved into a strategic game where literary credibility and star power intersect. While Malayalam authors command deep respect and draw loyal audiences across all festivals, once-in-a-lifetime international guests like Williams or Nobel laureates create the kind of buzz that elevates a festival’s profile for years.
KLF usually secures more international faces, including Nobel laureates and Booker Prize winners. This year featured Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales, Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Abdulrazak Gurnah, as well as Booker winners Kiran Desai, Daisy Rockwell, Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi. In a rarity, Salman Rushdie also appeared on a giant screen, joining the event virtually.
STAR-STRUCK
The competition has intensified as festivals chase film personalities. KLF had filmmaker Mani Ratnam last year and director Pa Ranjith this year. But the Mathrubhumi Group and the Malayala Manorama Group, with their deep entertainment industry roots through their magazine titles such as Grihalakshmi and Vanitha , leverage their media clout more effectively for celebrity booking. Manorama’s coup was securing the triumvirate of Mohanlal, Mammootty and Kamal Haasan for their Hortus festival. Mathrubhumi regularly outshines KLF in star power, featuring Shabana Azmi, directors Priyadarshan and Sathyan Anthikkad along with the latter’s son Akhil Sathyan (fresh off delivering a box-office hit), actors Jayaram and his son Kalidasan, social media influencers, singers and live performances that turn their festival into a cultural spectacle. The strategy works. Mathrubhumi’s festival consistently draws large crowds for its marquee sessions, with their entertainment-heavy programming creating viral social media moments that DC’s more literary-focused approach struggles to match.
The problem with this celebrity chase, organisers admit, is sustainability.
There’s no guarantee the stars will return next year, and crowds who come for celebrity sightings rather than literary engagement may not develop a loyal following that sustains festivals in the long run. “Celebrity appearances create fleeting crowds. You bring Mohanlal once, the crowd expects him every year,” explains a festival insider.
CASH OF THE TITANS
The economics underlying this warfare is precarious. DC’s festival barely breaks even despite drawing 7 lakh visitors. For these lit fests, money comes from two main sources: sponsors and book sales. Corporate biggies, banks, PSUs and local businesses compete to back the major festivals, viewing them as brand-positioning opportunities.
Mathrubhumi charges delegates ₹1,049 for a four-day pass with early bird discounts, generating direct revenue that DC’s free model doesn’t. DC benefits significantly from their extensive publishing catalogue, while Manorama, with a smaller book list, sells competitors’ titles at their festival.
Legacy media houses have turned sponsorship into a complex game, offering sweeteners that provide additional publicity at discounted rates. Mathrubhumi’s festival sponsors get year-round visibility across their newspaper, magazines and digital platforms, a package DC’s standalone festival model cannot replicate.
The pressure intensifies as celebrity demands escalate. Film and television personalities expect five-star accommodation and elaborate arrangements for their entourages. This year, three major events happening simultaneously in Thiruvananthapuram created room shortages in a city with around a dozen five-star hotels, forcing organisers to book in satellite towns. The accommodation crunch reveals how the festivals have grown beyond Kerala’s infrastructure capacity, yet nobody is looking to scale back.
PAGE RAGE
Writers, who signed up for a solitary pursuit, are mostly delighted by the star treatment, with book signings that draw crowds worthy of film premieres. Japanese author Satoshi Yagisawa, celebrated for his Morisaki Bookshop series, watched in amazement as hundreds queued up for his autographs at KLF. More than 1,000 copies of his novel, priced at ₹899, flew off the shelves in four days.
Malayalam literature is, meanwhile, experiencing its own renaissance. The latest books by literary heavyweights K R Meera and T D Ramakrishnan, both featured at KLF, generated pre-order numbers that rivalled those for Arundhati Roy’s internationally acclaimed memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me in Kerala, a stunning achievement for regional novels. The success story that refuses to end belongs to Akhil P Dharmajan, whose novel Ram C/o Anandhi continues its victory lap three years after publication. The book sold over 4 lakh copies, transforming the 30-year-old workshop mechanic into a crorepati.
These numbers offer a pointed response to The Guardian ’s February 9 article questioning why India hosts 100+ literature festivals when it has allegedly low rates of reading-for-pleasure. While the piece sparked heated debate, with Jaipur Literature Festival’s William Dalrymple calling it “ignorant and irritating”, Kerala provides its own answer. On the other end of DC’s success with Dharmajan’s coming-of-age novel is Mathrubhumi, which just sold over 1,000 copies of literary critic M Krishnan Nair’s six-volume works at ₹7,000 per set. That is ₹70 lakh sales for a writer who died in 2006.
The readers flocking to these festivals seem as oblivious to international scepticism as they are to backstage drama, focused instead on unprecedented literary access. They travel from across Kerala and beyond, notebooks in hand, treating these festivals like intellectual pilgrimages to cleanse the mind of the rot from doomscrolling. Even the least attended sessions buzz with energy.
The conversations are serious, sometimes heated. People challenging speakers with provocative questions during sessions, then continuing the debate over chai on the sidelines. “This isn’t in our literature,” you’ll overhear someone declare passionately, defending or dismissing a particular work or perspective. What emerges is a form of engaged civil society where citizens read deeply, think critically and aren’t afraid to debate ideas in public spaces.
Years ago, as this literary festival boom began, Malayalam poet S Kalesh observed that these events were becoming spaces where literature and social responsibility intertwined, where audiences “collect ideas as a farmer would collect seeds”. Historian Manu S Pillai once noted the striking involvement of people, especially youngsters, and recalled his own conversations with a Chennai nurse who read between work shifts and travelled to attend every possible literary gathering in Kerala.
Perhaps this is the unexpected result of the literary wars: thousands who show up, notebook in hand, hungry for ideas in a world increasingly short of them.
The writer is a Kerala-based journalist.
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