By K. C. Bhatt One of the commonest refrains one hears from the award-winning writers of recent years is that they are seldom read.  It is another matter that they are often seen giving a talk programme on issues ranging from environmental degradation to the war on terrorism in a meeting.  Such well attended-ostensibly literary-soirees, by the honchos of academia and industry, who have doled out a fat cheque as a fee for attending it, out of which the writer speaking gets a significant cut, are widely covered by the media, as a major literary event happening.  Seldom there is a person in this crowd though, who has actually read the work of the writer. So rarely anyone asks a question about the work of the writer, though almost all of the current global politics is discussed in the meeting. The more vocal and provocative a writer is, about such an issue, the more sought-after and better-paid speaker he becomes. It compensates for the scant royalties his books earn.   A self-deprecating writer, who is full of doubts about the things he has to say, cannot be a part of such a strident show which could be more adrenaline-driven or adrenaline-driving than a game at a casino.  Such atmosphere also persists in the literary festivals, which have become a common event in all the major cities of the world, during the rather salubrious days of a fall, or even winter, if the city is located in the tropics. In fact a real writer rarely gets attention in a literary festival, which has a crowd of local politicians or activists or sportsmen or movie stars as the main speakers, many of whom have read no books in recent years, let alone be writing one. They are invited because they alone are capable of attracting the public interest by their presence nowadays.  Besides they charge no fee for being a part of a literary show, which after all has more gravitas to it for being literary (though only in the name) than the other rather philistine ventures, where too they have to be present; for they get free publicity of an elevated kind, which is so necessary for their trade, in a literary festival.   The paid award-winning writers attending a literary festival keep complaining about the non-existent public interest in their work, as always.  Here too literary matters are rarely discussed, therefore.  But there are no worries, as the industry is always there to finance such projects if they fail to generate the revenues on their own -- which is other than publishing.  The publishing industry has not been doing much credit to it nowadays or to the larger world, as things are increasingly becoming farcical in the literary world of our times, as described above, where no one cares about the award-winning writers or their work.   So despite its not producing a single best-seller book in a decade, a large number of the people continue to work in the publishing industry, which is owned by only five moguls the world over now, who also have an interest in the industries like arms or petroleum, besides in the off-shore financial ones.   In the years recently gone, one saw a great number of small publishers either folding up or being eaten by the bigger ones. So the cartel is as small as it is possible to be, to rule out any work which is not incestuous in nature.  The mafia-like operation of the corporate world had effectively pre-empted any literary resistance in a world where things are steadily going worse from bad for those outside this predatory cabal of a handful of the people.  The rare best-sellers in recent years were the books that either belonged to the genres like occult-fiction or mommy porn if they were not the autobiographies of the politicians or other seamsters of the recent years. The books on cookery or other self-help books too are the best-sellers now.  Things are so bad that a few years ago an American folk singer won the Nobel prize in literature for the few-lines long lyrics he created, of his songs. The days when writers vied to create narrations lasting a few hundred pages, which was capable of holding the attention of the people, nowadays also away from the times dominated by social media, sounds like a thing of the past, in a world where haikus are the recent fad.  The Russian or Irish writers, writing novels reaching a thousand pages or more, looks like a prehistoric age. So having lived a life of a writer, which made almost no dent in the things around, is the biggest humiliation for someone who considers himself a writer with any self-respect.    For it is not a reader or a publisher, who defines an age; or gives the language to the people to explain themselves.  An age not defined well is a forgettable one.  GPO BOX 20460. Kathmandu, Nepal