Kate Tempest at JLF

Very few sessions at the Jaipur Literature Festival consists of actual performances. Kate Tempest’s poetic Let Them Eat Chaos is one of them. I make sure not to miss it, getting the assistant team leader to cover for my shift in the book signing tent. The crowd is eager. The man next to me leans over and points at my festival crew badge, saying: ’You chose the right session to watch’. The old man on my other side is ready to take notes. Tempest paces on stage, waiting for Tishana Doshi’s introduction to end. ‘Kate’s words are physical,’ she says. And then Tempest is on. For 50 minutes she spits, spills and sings her spoken-word over the full capacity front lawn at Diggi Palace. Between the invocations of Mother Nature and a critique of today’s superficial pop culture, Tempest’s performance tells a story of seven strangers in south London, all awake at the frozen moment of 4.18 am. Estha swigs a beer after a double shift. Bradley the businessman can’t shake the feeling that life hasn’t started. ‘I know this is happening, but who is it happening to?’ It’s a dark time with ravaging capitalism and global warming, but not once does anyone look up at the sky to see the storm rolling in. ‘I can’t see the ending – only the end,’ Tempest chants. Despite the world depicted as teetering on the edge of apocalyptic chaos, the traffic keeps moving in the same direction and the uncontrollable thoughts keep bouncing inside the head. Nothing stops - ironically, since Tempest’s nightmarish story isn’t capable of going past 4.18 am. In this state between dream and reality, there is still a glimmer of hope. And not just anywhere, but through the love that is within us all. If we could just wake up and see it.

It’s the last day of the festival. Just before I escort Tempest from the stage I hear the venue manager Atul say to her: ‘Kate, you just got the only standing ovation of the festival.’