Saturday, October 06, 2007

Amorous Liaison on a Table Top

Why is it that I always manage to miss the most exciting moments at a literary festival?

This - I kid you not - is a photo from the final panel discussion of the Ubud Writers' and Readers' festival at the Left Bank Lounge, and captures the (increasingly) controversial Nury Vittachi in a compromising position atop the coffee table with Indonesian journalist (and ... ahem ... "feminist") Julia Suryakusuma.

Shameless behaviour or a very funny statement on the snoredom levels of mic-huggers who won't stop talking?

Deepika Shetty was the moderator for the session and appeared pretty shell-shocked afterwards. (I'm sure she'll be blogging her version.) Another friend who was there, declared the impromptu show as "utterly tasteless".

You can read the article from the South China Morning Post in full on Nury's blog. (Thanks too to Andy, who penned the story, for e-mailing me a copy).

Postscript:

Here's Deepika's take on it.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh dear... LOL!

bibliobibuli said...

you missed that too, right? and now you're kicking yourself!

Anonymous said...

phwoargh

Anonymous said...

Sharon: I wasn't even in the country anymore! But I do remember thinking that Nury Vittachi looks tasty the first time I saw him at the session about Asian Literature.

Mo said...

"Choice feminism" :)

sharkgila said...

Hahahaha. That was actually brave. To stop a boring sermon, I mean.

Anonymous said...

Could've bagged someone better looking. But then again, he didn't have much of a choice :)

Isman H. Suryaman said...

Yes, Nury could've picked Shashi, but the message wouldn't have been that clear, haha.

Isman H. Suryaman said...

Oh, I forgot to add, Julia did say that she's no longer the fiery, angry feminist she used to be. Now she's more to the fun and funky feminist (to which she added later in our discussion that yeah, some people may consider that an oxymoron.)

bibliobibuli said...

"funky feminist" i like that! may appropriate the phrase meself