Blink and you would miss the yacht anchored off Cannes. Most of the yachts (white like an admiral’s uniform) docked in the azure blue of the Mediterranean Sea are many-tiered mammoths. They belong to the biggies: nouveau-tycoons and you know those American producers with huge cigars whose soirees at sea flaunt the sexiest starlets – both male and female. But it is the Lilliputian yacht that held the most mystery for the handful of desis in town a few years ago for the Cannes Film Festival.

Surina Narula, the mysterious, rich Indian lady with long tresses and a yacht, hosted soirees in Cannes, when she was not playing hostess in London –displacing Ramola Bachchan who had returned to Bharat desh and found a quasi-perch on the various avatars of Page 3 in her frocks and generous smile. To compensate for the dearth of Bollywood star power, Surina had huge cardboard cut-outs of Nargis, Dilip Kumar and Shashi Kapoor on board.

But the star world was not enough.

Surina and her spouse, construction magnate HS Narula, soon switched their energies to the luminaries of the written word: they took over as primary sponsors of the Jaipur Literature Festival, rechristened last year as the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival. Mr Narula owns the DSC Group. And, it in turn owns the DSC South Asian Literature Festival based in the UK.

Mobile literature
You see, the Force is now with writers. Even the wannabe littérateurs, the pretend-writers, the high-speed bloggers and the compulsive twitter-rati who are self-congratulatory about their staccato streaming-of-consciousness – dear reader please excuse the last bit of oxymoronic banter. Come to think of it we are in the era of mobile literature. There is an evolving species of Homo sapiens that writes on the move, as it were, juggling thought (however little), writing and walking, and sometimes even talking. Those quick-on-the-draw twitterers, like the suave former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor who is never at a loss for words, would feel quite naked without their weapons of mass instruction.

What if, God forbid, a thought were left to drift in the air, vaporise, without taking the form of words? The world would be a poorer, less enlightened place if those tweeted sweet somethings did not enter the consciousness of another being. For instance, if Mr Tharoor’s thoughts on the state of the world or reflections of the day’s news or Mr Suhel’s totally-in-the-know verbal pitter-patter of what the VVVIPs were up to just the moment before or at the swell party spilling over with power-brokers the night before, the world would be a duller place.

Ah, being-in-the-know is the most valuable currency of our times. Forget gold, other things that glitter, accounts in overseas banks that our getting-long arms of the law can’t get to, or arm candy (either sex). Forget the brands, the villas, the yachts, the holidays to places even Mick Jagger hasn’t been to. Or even giving the impression of being one person removed from Sonia Gandhi. The next Johnny or Jane-come-lately (and they are springing up with alarming alacrity) will soon get there and nudge you aside, off your gilded couch. You have to be-in-the-know and let the world at large know you are. To know and not tell is a crime in our electronically interconnected world.

Lipstick notes
No thought is too trivial to die prematurely without being alphabetised. Beauty titan Shahnaz Husain – the exotic she of the big, brazen hair, tonnage of kajal and imperial stride – once told me, in the underdeveloped era when Palmpilots and BBMs were not even a glint in the eye, that she kept a little notebook and pencil by her bedside. Every so often during the course of the night, she would sit up straight with a start: she had had a Eureka moment of insight. Usually, about some new potion that would reduce those ‘crinklies’ round the eyes or some other vulnerable place. She had to jot it down immediately or it would evaporate. And if there were no pencil at hand she used her Shahnaz Husain lipstick.

Our venerable icon Amitabh Bachchan was ever a man of few words. Perhaps somebody had told him that brevity and gravitas went together. Or, perhaps he was too much in awe of his father’s masterly verse (despite his own masterly voice) to put his thoughts on paper. For nearly a decade the thespian refused to talk to the press; he kept something akin to a vow of silence when it came to the Fourth Estate. It now appears that with the coming of age of the blog a dam has burst and he is making up for the lost time – and words. There is no stopping the torrent of words flooding the blogosphere: all kinds of thoughts from the lofty to the trivial, from the profound to the petty, verbal settling of accounts, from comments on the state of the world to the state of his domestic world – and at times with surprising intimacy, an intimacy shared with millions.

Everywhere one turns, there is a budding writer waiting for a pat on the back for some semi-literate attempt at aphorisms. I write, therefore I am, kind-of-thing. The urge to regurgitate words of wisdom or smart aleck remarks – or even repartees that crash before they even take off – seems to have gone viral like Kolaveri di, the nonsensical but catchy lyrics sung by Dhanush in a language that defies codification, let alone understanding.

Grey is the new black. The other day a socialite with haute couture cheekbones and Farah Fawcett hair – her usual habitat is Page 3 (art openings, book launches, Botox lunches, a new or re-jigged bar, even a new shoe shop) – stopped me mid-conversation to say that she was actually a published poet. The next day a copy, albeit self-published, arrived with a liveried chauffeur. Then there is this talented fashion designer who makes it a point to tell me every time we meet that she writes short stories – has been doing so from the time she still had some milk teeth. She even loiters with intent through art books for inspiration, even working some of the isms (impressionism, cubism, abstract expressionism, pointillism) of 20th century art into her clothes. (Actually, I was quite impressed.)

Thinking woman
Brain seems to be stealing a bit of a march over brawn, at least for the time being. This is the time to let some brain-cleavage show. Lit fests have become, as author Mayank Austen Soofi puts it with his characteristic bite, ‘a thinking man’s party’. Actually, make that thinking woman’s party too, where the Page 3 lot converges: a few of whom are socialites-turned-columnists with engineered pouts and leveraged lips and other parts of the anatomy. Enfin, however briefly, the pen is mightier than – Botox. The most coveted crumpets for either sex are writers. No wonder there’s a stampede towards lit fests – not to forget all the idea conferences, conclaves, and, yes, the Goa Thinkfest.

Just look at the number of literature festivals sprouting all over the country like a rash. As I write, another one must have popped up, adding to the existing list: DSC Jaipur literature Festival, the Deccan Chronicle Kovalam Literary Festival, Alchemist Hay Festival Thiruvanthapuram, Lit for Life organized by the Hindu, the Fully Booked Times Literary Carnival, the forthcoming Hyderabad Literary Festival, the Apeejay Kolkata Lit Fest, and Anil Dharker’s Literature Live.

No region of the country – even neighbouring Bhutan – is immune to the Lit fests. Up in our hills, there is The Mussourie Writers Festival, organised by the Winterline Centre for the Arts. While the literature festival that was supposed to be held in Srinagar last autumn was cancelled, there are plans to have one in Guwahati for English writers from the north-east. The SAARC Festival of Literature was held last year, as was the Penguin Books India’s The Spring Fever Festival. Kochi also held the first Kochi Letters International Festival (LIFE) this year.

Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, called the Jaipur Literature Festival ‘The greatest literary show on earth’. She hit the right spot: many of these lit fests mix ’n’ match writers with stars and thinking celebrities with high GQs (glamour quotients) like Aamir Khan, Gulzar, the ubiquitous Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar. And then there’s all that music…singers and dancers. For those who trot from one lit fest to another, life is just one continuous party. Please book me for the next one.

Writers are the new sex symbols. Perhaps we are now giving a twist to actress Raquel Welch’s priceless observation that ‘the mind can also be an erogenous zone’.

MADHU JAIN IS AN AUTHOR AND A JOURNALIST. SHE WRITES FOR SEVERAL PUBLICATIONS AND IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON HER SECOND BOOK. SHE ALSO CURATES ART SHOWS.

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