Every festival is a vacation

Whether it is the Cannes Film Festival or the Jaipur Literary Festival, it can become a holiday to remember

Let’s hear it for festival tourism. Yes, I know what you are thinking. And you are wrong. When I say ‘festival tourism’, I don’t mean going away for Holi or Diwali or Christmas. That’s always been fun. But these days when people talk about festival holidays, they mean something entirely different. As I write, the madness has begun in Cannes. The French seaside town is best known for the Cannes Film Festival, a celebration of life, madness and sometimes, cinema.

I went to the Cannes Film Festival only once—in 2013—and I have never forgotten quite how enjoyable and surreal the experience was. I suspect I was not the only one to feel that way. The town was overrun by thousands of people, many of them with only the tiniest of connections to the film industry. They were there because Cannes, when it shines, can be the greatest show on earth.

That’s what I call a festival holiday.

Festival tourism is a big thing these days. I am willing to bet that many of those at Cannes this year also had little to do with the film industry. When I went, years ago, it was to shoot a TV documentary on the festival and I had the full Cannes experience. Landing in Nice, helicoptering to Cannes, staying first at the Martinez and watching the stars gather in the lobby and then at the Carlton where agents and producers thronged the lift, eating nearly every meal at the Michelin two-star La Palme D’OR while gazing down at the crowds from its balcony, walking the red carpet as the paparazzi clicked away (on the off-chance that I might be a movie star who had gone to seed) and lunching on the yachts that dotted the bay.

But what I remember most now is the energy on the Croisette, the seafront walkway (like Mumbai’s Marine Drive). You might find Vanessa Paradis performing for free; a contingent of drag queens rushing along; make-up artists pulling their valises as they went from one assignment to another; men in full evening dress waiting for their dates to arrive and street performances of all kinds.

If work ever took me back to Cannes, I would gladly forsake the choppers, the Michelin star-meals and the suites at the Martinez and the Carlton, just to walk the dizzy streets when the festival was on.

You don’t have to go to Cannes to enjoy a festival. In 2007, I was a delegate at one of the functions to mark the India@60 celebrations in New York City. It was the kind of festival of India that made you proud to be an Indian. New York buses were painted in the colours of our flag, the percussionist Sivamani stopped traffic at Times Square, dancers performed Kathakali at the exits to Grand Central Station, and Bryant Park became a centre of modern Indian culture as such artistes as the Colonial Cousins performed.

It was one of the more dazzling celebrations that New York—a city that is used to dazzle—had ever seen and it symbolised the hope that Indian democracy and pluralism represented.

I know people who now plan entire holidays around festivals of one

POSTCARD FROM MALDIVES

This year, the Jaipur Literature Festival was held at Soneva Fushi in the Maldives