A Major Literary Festival Emerges in Jaipur, India Jaipur, India, may be called "The Pink City," but in truth it's gray and dusty, a wonderful place of crumbling beauty. Now in its fifth year, the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival, which was held inside a 200-year-old palace at the end of January, is breathing new life into this very old town. The event draws an increasingly curious cross-section of India's vibrant literary scene: authors, publishers, readers, schoolchildren, old poets, young journalists, socialites, minor royalty, major art collectors, literary aspirants, Nosy Parkers - in short anyone who has ever felt the power of a good book. Faith Singh, the woman behind the amazing Anokhi craft and textile shops scattered across India, was the original driving force behind the festival, along with Thakur Ram Pratap Singh, who owns the delightful Diggi Palace, where the event is held. He recently recalled the festival's earliest days, when 15 authors showed up in total and there were as few as 20 people at each reading. At that time, organizers had to corral family and friends to fill seats. That intimate gathering of book lovers has blossomed into a five-day event, which this year attracted more than 120,000 attendees and 260 speakers, including Micheal Ondaatje, Javed Akhtar, Katherine Boo, Richard Dawkins and Joseph Lelyveld. Inside the palace, which is painted a soft blue, conversations about books and writing take place in every corner. As a book designer, book lover and occasional writer, this was my first outing to the festival, and so thoroughly charmed was I that my return next year is guaranteed. I ran into Tom Stoppard, who graciously paused for a 20-minute conversation about, among other things, the beauty of the wintry dusk in Jaipur. I attended late-night publishing parties held in exquisite settings, ranging from the opulent Rambagh Palace, with its princely domes and vintage cars, to the oh-so-charming Raj Palace (housed within the walls of the old city) to the bejeweled private dining rooms at the peak of the ancient Amber Fort. And I was crushed against the walls of the Mughal Tent, where 1,200 fellow Indian bibliophiles listened to David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, give a talk on the "Disappointment of Obama." In a rapidly booming economy like India's, where some days everything seems to be about money, or the best path to accumulating it, an event dedicated to literature and writing feels like a rare bird, the likes of which one will never see again. And yet the event seems to get bigger each year. Chiki Sarkar, the newly appointed publisher of Penguin Books India, said the Indian reading public is becoming more sophisticated with each passing festival. "The audience this year was sharper, with smarter questions," she said, also noting that the festival awarded a $50,000 prize to a previously little-known Sri Lankan writer, Shehan Karunatilaka, whose first novel, "Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew," came out last year to raves.