17 October 2010

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

The first Hay Festival Maldives has just finished. It was a great success. The literary events were sparsely attended, the program was environment heavy and the key-note Carbon-Neutral-By-2020 Plan was shown to be so much solar hot air right now. But what a success.

The organisers - those in the President's Office and Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture - confided in me, and I confide in you, that what they wanted to achieve most of all was a secular space. A space where radical Islam had no censorial oversight.

It has come to the point now where some are calling for separation of men and women in public places. This radical position is an example, an example of the positions that draw the middle ground out. People look over their shoulders in Male, they self-censor. Radical Islam has the momentum. The Maldives Hay Festival was a bulwark to hold this back; a bund around a quiet lake.

 The venue was Aarah, the President's island, fifteen minutes and a million miles from Male. A beach, palm trees and open ground in the middle that used to be the former president's cricket pitch. The organisation was all very First Year - venues, food and drink, schedule changes - but nobody minded in the least because this was the first year, the first time. The atmosphere was easy, uncertain, careless in a carefree way.

When DJ Ravin started up at 8.30 the atmosphere changed. A few young ones got up close but otherwise it was sitting or twitching in chairs. Two women of standing stopped themselves dancing behind the stage, went to the broadcaster and asked them to quit filming and turn off the main light. Five minutes later this happened and the floor in front of the stage sparked with people jumping in from the sidelines. With the apprehension of live tv and facebook exposure gone, we danced and danced. DJ Ravin was obviously taken aback by the enthusiasm, his face breaking out with frequent smiles. This was no 'just another weekend' crowd. It was urgent, bordering delirious for some. It was release.