The first omen, that this was not going to be any run-of-the-mill literary festival, occurred the night I missed the flight. Twenty years of flying in all directions, thou–sands of hours of flying time docked, countless hours of waiting at airports and I have never missed a plane. But here I was in the wee hours of the day clutching an e-ticket and wondering at a deserted ‘International Departures’ lounge. Whatever had happened to the long line I had expected? The line that usually snaked its way out of the airport onto the kerb outside....

The flight, the appalled security guards informed me, had left about three hours earlier. Look at this, they said, pointing at the two zeroes I had missed. I had read the flight departure time as 05 instead of 00.05. What do I do now, I asked myself, more bemused than shocked. I had never before been in a situation like this…. But then, a strange machinery sprang to life. A ‘get-Anita-to-Singapore-somehow’ gear engineered by the most unlikely of people…the ground staff of another airline who was a fan of my work, a kind airline check-in staff of the airline I was flying and the security guards. Looks were exchanged, heads nodded, computer keys pressed and finally my ticket was reconfirmed for the next day.... Meanwhile, my telephone trilled again and again. There was utter panic at Singapore where I was headed.

I will be there next day, same time, same place, I promised not knowing that given the nature of my ticket, what I had pulled off was a minor miracle….Somewhere the voice of ennui boomed. In the last couple of years, I had been to several literary festivals. The first ever book festival of Poland at Kracow; the Borders Festival at Hague, the Bogota Book Fair, the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Turin festival, a Danish Literary Festival.... Very often, I do ask myself why do I go?

It is a lot like the book launches that I go to. A long time ago, I made a decision to attend any book event I was invited to. And if I had been invited by the author, I would go even if there was a cyclone outside blowing the rooftops away. When my first book, a collection of short stories, was released, in that first flush of author-power and the belief that here was the beginning to the end of my advertising career, I disdained my advertising acquain–tances and invited all kinds of strange people. I had also asked my family to stay away because I wished my public humiliation (the fear that no one will turn up begins to haunt you the day you set up a reading) to remain private. Now of course on hindsight, I wish I hadn’t been so priggishly smug or stupid. What I should have done was invite just about anyone I knew. From family and friends to the chauffeur to the gardener to the next door neighbour whether they actually read a book or not. Eventually when people turned up, the bulk of them were faces I hadn’t ever seen before. And most of them hadn’t been invited. They were those who I have learnt to respectfully refer to as the ‘unknown readers’. And the bulwark of a literary career.

But in that first half hour between the time I got to the venue (a smallish-sized bookshop luckily for me) and waiting for the room to fill up, I understood where that clichéd image of soon-to-be fathers pacing outside the labour room originated from. It must have been a writer who thought of that first....‘What if no one turned up? What if no one turned up?’ was the chorus that sang in my head. Occasionally I would peer outside and when some one sauntered in, I would wonder if they were here to hear me read or to merely browse. (And you know your name means nothing to them when they pick up your book and scan its entire 200 pages and then put it down and pick up a John Grisham.)

So, when the first group of people straggled in, I was ready to throw my arms around them and weep in sheer relief. Thank God, I wasn’t going to read to the bookshop owner, attendants and the bookshelves...I think it was at that point that I made a prom-ise to myself that if there ever was a book event I was invited to, I would go.

I made it to the festival on time. The Sing–apore Writers Festival was held at the Arts House, a beautiful old building. But, perhaps due to the confusion I caused by my late arrival, the organisers forgot about opening the hall out for my morning event. I walked into a strangely deserted Arts House. Not even the janitor was around. A sense of déjà vu set in.... People began trickling in. I huddled deeper and deeper into a jewel-blue sofa in the hallway while my friend in a state of utter panic quietly had kittens on the side.

In the end, what began as every writer’s nightmare turned into a dream come true. A young man who had come to hear me took charge. He opened the hall and set up the sound system. A representative from the literary agents set about herding people the right way, to the hall where they found me…someone else ushered the people in. And that was all it needed. No formal introductions. No pompous speeches. A room full of people: some clutching their copies of my books, some holding computer printouts of articles I had written but each one there because they knew my work and it, in turn, had spoken to them.

I talked. I laughed. I confessed. I free–wheeled between matters literary and per–sonal…. I knocked a bottle of water down and watched as someone rushed to mop it up. And I knew as I sat there, I knew that literary festivals are not about the celebrity writers one bumps into: Fay Weldon at Edinburgh, William Styron at Borders, Vandana Shiva at Turin or Jung Chang at Singapore but that moment of kinship with readers who I may have otherwise never encountered.