It was an unusually crowded afternoon in the yellow hall of the Diggi Palace where the mela of metaphors, the Jaipur Literature Festival, was on. Strangely, they packed the aisles and thronged the doorways on Thursday not for any literary savant but a diminutive young woman, draped in a thin woolen coat: Fatima Bhutto, daughter of Murtaza, niece of Benazir. She was not here for the slim volume of poems that she published a decade ago or the book on the Kashmir earthquake that came out a couple of years back, or even the political articles that she writes regularly in The News. She brought life as tragedy.

The 25-year-old could have stood for the February 18 elections, but Fatima said she preferred to be “the literary Bhutto”. “I will be political in my writing. I think my father wanted me to be a writer,” she said in a conversation with writer-historian William Dalrymple. “I don’t believe in dynastic politics. Nothing good anyway comes of political inbreeding,” she gave a throaty laugh, before adding somberly, “When ordinary people become part of the political process, I will be there.” She splendidly mixed pathos with humour, played down dynasty and played up her family. Bilawal Bhutto or any other subcontinental scion waiting to be anointed could have taken down notes all through the hour.

Fatima refused to comment on the forthcoming polls or President Pervez Musharraf, but she denied that she regretted having been critical of Wadi Bua Benazir. “I don’t regret anything. Whatever I wrote was political. Had Benazir lived, I would have had plenty more material,” she said.

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