Voices of opinion: Former Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi speaks on being productive at JLF

The Jaipur Literature Festival 2022 is on in a hybrid avatar and with a newfound gusto as the literature festival marks an on-ground comeback post the pandemic. As speakers sit down to discuss various issues and share their journeys, we write about some noteworthy personalities and issues that were featured over the week.

A CEO remembers

Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi was in talks with Aparna Piramal Raje for the session My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future on March 7. She reflected upon her growing up years when her grandfather drilled into her that one must never stop learning and waste time. “So, when I sit quietly, I feel like I wasted five minutes of my time. I constantly keep thinking what I can do to help someone change the world. I am constantly reading, studying or doing something. That is why meditation has never been a part of my life,” she said, drawing a sharp contrast to today’s young ideology that is moving away from the hustle culture, especially after the pandemic.

When Raje asked Nooyi to share the story of the time when she felt she was not getting her due, to inspire the young, the former CEO shared that dealing with humans involves many levels of complexity. “Sometimes, you reach dead ends or feel that you have done a great job, but people don’t accept it. Nothing in life is easy. Just because you have done your homework doesn’t mean people will accept it. Whenever those kind of obstacles come your way, reconceptualise your situation,” she said. Nooyi suggested to the young that they must understand timing and when the time is not right, they must stop and come back after a little while with different content.

The silent pandemic

On the sixth day of the festival, during the session titled The Gendered Contagion that had speakers like Sohaila Abdulali, Pragya Tiwari and Chinmay Tumbe in conversation with Amita Nigam Sahaya, the silent pandemic was addressed.  Social entrepreneur working in the gender space Amita Nigam Sahaya addressed the silent pandemic as she talked about women being locked in with their perpetrators. She mentioned how extended lockdowns meant long-drawn periods of suffering and silence for victims of sexual and domestic abuse. “Extended lockdowns allowed victims within closed confines with perpetrators,” she said. Talking about it, according to her, is reaching halfway to address it.

The frustration due to unemployment during the pandemic was another contributing factor to domestic abuse, according to journalist and policy and culture consultant Pragya Tiwari.

Chinmay Tumbe, faculty member in economics at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, talked about what the pandemic had done to the women in terms of migration and raised the issue of how hospitable cities are and how displacement became a problem during the pandemic.

Publishing without borders

During the sixth day of the festival, Pragya Tiwari spoke with Naveen Kishore about one of the most prominent Indian publishing houses, Seagull Books, completing four decades in publishing, at a session Publishing Without Borders: Seagull at 40. The publishing house has more than 500 titles, including those of Nobel Prize winners and Man Booker International prize winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Kishore talked about his humble beginnings as he discussed what made him name his publishing house Seagull. “I started as a theatre lighting designer. I was working on stage for a local band called Great Bear and Seagull Empire was one of their hit tracks. Seagull is also the American slang for cocaine. When I ventured into publishing, I opted for the name Seagull,” he recalled.Tiwari shared how Kishore had got rid of clauses that chain authors and said his value system reflected in his work ethics. She further asked the publisher what had made them survive the test of times when leading publishing houses are closing down. To this, Kishore said that when in 2005, they decided to open Seagull Books London, they made sure that their backlist was their strength. “You also have to keep reinventing your authors. Like for Mahasweta Devi’s works, there are reprints, audio format launches and so on, so you can keep bringing canonical names back,” he added.