I have attended the Jaipur Literature Festival twice before, but this was the first time I attended it without a “press pass” – that lovely little card you put around your neck that allows you to skip queues, move around with an air of importance and urgency and, above all, start drinking wine from 12 pm to 12 am. (I hear drinks were rationed this time, though — four drinks per journalist for the soiree — but no one was complaining. “You need some sort of sanity to work ya, four drinks are enough,” a journalist told me.)

The reason I went without a press accreditation was partly because of my last-minute sort of personality and partly because with great press access comes the great burden of filing stories and deadlines.

I had to try this thing out once without being bogged down with, well, work. And I think it’s something all presswalahs should try. Here’s why:

• Bheed is not that bad

Those of you who have been covering JLF are probably conditioned to believe the experience would be horrible without the press card simply because of the massive bheed. (It’s the Kumbh of all lit fests, after all.) Queues are something that crowds do and crowds are horrible to negotiate. But, to the credit of JLF organisers and volunteers, it’s really fast and simple to get in, even on the weekends. In that sense, this is really a democratic space and there’s nothing you miss out on in terms of convenience and access.

Sure, you don’t get to go to the “press terrace”, a pretty little part of Diggy Palace near the Front Lawn where journalists can file stories and interview authors. But then you explore other lovely little corners that you wouldn’t otherwise – like the beer and pizza place near Charbagh. You also end up having some genuine conversations with people because you’re not filing the “what’s-the-lit-fest-crowd-all-about” story.

• ‘News ban jaegi, yaar’

So, JLF is not a place reporters cover to just write about books and authors. It’s a place for “controversies” that you can milk for days and days on the basis of which you can file multiple reports and opinion pieces. Salman Rushdie, Ashis Nandy, you get the drift?

An edit meeting before the sessions begin would typically have journalists anticipate controversies and attend sessions accordingly. And these sessions are nothing more than a calmer version of prime-time news – totally avoidable. So, while a journalist friend had to go hear Shashi Tharoor talk about Swachh Bharat because he may just say something about Modi and that could become “news yaar”, I could attend a session on desire in the ancient world that had absolutely no “news value”. The world is your oyster at JLF if you’re not chasing news.

• The joy of discovery

When you’re covering the Lit Fest, you have to know everything about the sessions and authors. In case you haven’t read some of them, you Google the hell out of them to have enough questions to interview them or place the session you’re covering in context for the story you’d have to file. There’s no serendipity in all of this, no chance discovery – you’re just not allowed to have that “oh-wow-I-didn’t-know-that” moment.

Confession time: I knew nothing about Stephen Fry apart from the fact that he played Oscar Wilde in the movie, Wilde. I hadn’t read any of his books, and since I watch next to no TV, I knew nothing about his sketches or shows. But I was told by friends (mostly journalists) that he was the “star attraction” for JLF 2016.

Now, if I was covering the festival, I would’ve had to know about him before I attended any of his sessions to write competently about them or may be even interview him – I’d watch a few sketches, try and read excerpts from some of his books, or read reviews and interviews. Since I wasn’t covering it, I didn’t bother with any of this. I just attended one of his sessions – The Fry Chronicles – and quite liked what I heard. I then decided I’d like to hear him talk about Oscar Wilde because, hey, I love Oscar Wilde and I think this Fry guy is interesting enough.

The session, Fry on Wilde, was the first time at JLF that I got up to give a standing ovation, along with everyone present. (I highly recommend you watch it once it’s out on YouTube.) I thought it was brilliant and I was unusually thrilled after attending it may be because I wasn’t expecting anything. It was nice to not know for once.

• They don’t really care about us

Jokes on journalists and how lousy they are elicited maximum laughter and applause from the audience this time. Many sessions had panelists taking potshots at journos. Ronnie Screwvala, on a panel with Shobhaa De, asserted quite simply that media was the problem and said something to the effect — kahan hai intolerance, sab media ka kara karaya hai. Clearly, journalists are convenient punching bags and I suppose no one will miss our pesky presence if we don’t cover an almost decade-old lit fest. Let Screwvala talk about his book and his ideas without any journalist taking notes. Newspapers can move onto other news, while we take a little time out for ourselves and experience JLF like non-hacks do. It’s worth it.

Postscript: The first time I attended the Jaipur Literary Festival was in 2013 when I’d just joined DNA’s Delhi bureau to report on the very generic “features” beat. This was the year when the festival made more news for Ashis Nandy’s remarks than anything else. I was present at the session, titled ‘Republic of Ideas’, when Nandy made that “almost vulgar statement” (his words not mine) that almost landed him in jail.

Seemingly to make a point on the resilience of the downtrodden in India, Nandy asserted that “most of the corrupt come from the OBCs, and Scheduled Caste and now increasingly Scheduled Tribes…as long as this is the case Indian Republic will survive.”

Ashutosh, then a journalist with IBN was also on the panel, and responded to Nandy’s assertions saying it was the most bizarre thing he’d heard in a while and that it betrays the elite Indian’s mindset. A lady in the audience called out Nandy for making a completely random and unverified observation. Patrick French, also on the panel, later asked Nandy if he honestly thought that no other politician has made more money than Mayawati. And that was that, I thought, Nandy made a ridiculous assertion and the panelists and the audience didn’t buy it.

Long live Republic and sanity.

Except it snowballed into a controversy and got completely out of hand, Nandy was soon booked under SC/ST Act for “caste slur”. In between all of this, Former Tehelka Editor Tarun Tejpal addressed a hurried press conference in an attempt to contain the controversy and gave a lecture to the journalists gathered, asking them to be responsible and respectful towards Ashis Da.

It all seemed very silly to me – sure, he made an absurd assertion and sure someone should write an op-ed trashing his claims or looking at the context of his statements, but what’s with the on-loop reporting? I didn’t think it was worth it and didn’t write on the controversy at all. Of course, when I got back to Delhi, I got a sound trashing from my editors.

“Not a single story on Ashis Nandy? What were you doing there?” he asked me.

“But…but there was no story really, he made a sweeping statement and people gave it back to him and that was that. Outrage was just being manufactured. It was really not the most important thing that happened there,” I said meekly.

“That was your story then, you could have written about how journalists were generating controversies.”

Story idea for the next time I cover JLF. You watch, we’re watching.