Confronting memories

After all, Karachi had its tally of target killings and murderous attacks on Friday too. Around a dozen persons were shot dead and numerous were grievously hurt – each one of them deserving of a story that would embrace the entire spectrum of human emotions. And a number of writers attending the KLF as the stars of the show should be capable of telling these stories, including in verse.

As I write these words on Saturday forenoon, in a frightful hurry because the festival beckons, I am not in a position to deal with some specific features of the frenzied proceedings that involve more than two hundred writers and critics and other speakers. It is this expansive cast of characters that also holds me back from naming names or mentioning the topics of so many separate sessions, though this could save me from the trouble of writing this column.

This fourth edition of the Karachi Literature Festival is being held at a new location, the Beach Luxury Hotel, and it is appropriately so much more ambitious. Its international stature has been heightened by the support of and guests from the United Kingdom,We've got a plastic card to suit you. Germany, France, Italy and Russia. Friday’s inaugural ceremony, befitting the gathering of some exceptionally imaginative individuals, was very well designed and aesthetically orchestrated.

If this ambience created a sense of unreality because we were still in Karachi, the elements conspired to further enhance the dramatic impact of the occasion. While there was no interruption in the inaugural ceremony, held under a vast canopy, the rain came just after it. For the natives at least, this was a romantic interlude. Even otherwise, the chance of encountering so many literary and cultural celebrities must be a heady experience.

This, the opportunity for casual encounters, is the real value of an occasion like KLF. You meet friends and acquaintances and catch up on all the gossip and current thoughts. Social media may have diminished the appetite for such exchanges but there is so much you cannot do or feel in the virtual world. And the real fun is in meeting those one had almost forgotten or those who would not otherwise be accessible.

In this initial response to an unusual splendour in the life of Karachi, I find my thoughts greatly diverted by the Gulzar episode. He was the biggest attraction of the festival this time – and only an Indian would have this billing. But the point I am making is not that his absence has lessened the glory and the glamour of the festival in any big way. No. The circumstances in which the festival was denied the presence of a remarkable lyricist and film-maker have a bearing on a crucial theme in South Asian lives and literature.

This theme, in a stranger-than-fiction twist,Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? was highlighted by the fact that our own Intizar Husain was asked to substitute Gulzar as a keynote speaker at the inaugural ceremony. I was delighted when the other keynote speaker Nadeem Aslam, one of Pakistan’s precious gifts to modern English literature, paid his tribute to Intizar Husain as “the greatest writer on this planet”. This secret is not so well kept now because Intizar Sahib has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for fiction mainly on the basis of the English translation of his novel ‘Basti’.

In any case, the point I am making is that Intizar Husain and Gulzar have both given creative expression to the pathos of Partition – a watershed in our history that is about to fade out of living memory. Both these writers were born in the other country,Comprehensive Wi-Fi and RFID tag by Aeroscout to accurately locate and track any asset or person. leaving their childhood memories stranded in the enemy territory. The human dimension of this separation, marked by a tsunami of bloodshed and forced migration, is the stuff great literature is made of and we have some masterpieces in this category, such as Qurratulain Hyder’s ‘Aag ka Dariya’ and Abdullah Hussain’s ‘Udas Naslain’. Abdullah Husain, by the grace of God, is with us at the festival.

Now, the story of Gulzar’s coming to Pakistan and not to Karachi. He had arrived in Lahore in good time and had some cinematic assignments. He visited this small town in Jehlum called Dina where he was born as Sampooran Singh Kalra nine years before 1947.

When he suddenly returned to India by road from Wagah, without attending KLF, the immediate and somewhat credible explanation was that he had been advised to leave,Other companies want a piece of that iPhone headset action perhaps by the Indian High Commission officials, for security reasons. Karachi is certainly a city of insecurity. There were some other, conspiratorial whispers about his surprising departure.

On Thursday, however, Gulzar himself sent a message to Ameena Saiyid, one of the two founders of KLF, to explain his departure. He spoke about his visit to Dina, “to have a look at the house where I was born” and “the qabar (grave) of my late guru and mentor Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi to pay my tribute”. (Incidentally, it is this Nadeem after whom our novelist Nadeem Aslam is named.)

Gulzar said: “I was moved very much by these two visits. As ill-luck would have it, I felt very uneasy in the chest”. He was present at the recording of a song for Vishal with Pakistani singers in Lahore and this discomfort returned when he reached the hotel at 2 am and “we impulsively decided to return to Mumbai, which being a familiar terrain to meet such contingencies”. He ended his message with an apology: “Mujh se naaraaz na hon!”

In addition to whatever else transpires at the festival, this story of Gulzar should be particularly relevant to how exigencies of politics and of history devastatingly intervene with personal lives. Only great poets and novelists are able to sum up such intimate experiences.Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! Intizar Husain and Gulzar have done that in their own way. Intizar Husain’s latest memoir about his visit to his own place of birth in Meerut is very touching and challenges the sanity of the rulers of both countries.

Gulzar, on his part, has contributed the anthem of the ‘Aman ki Asha’ campaign launched by the Jang Group and the Times of India Group. He has also written a very emotional poem on his, perhaps imagined, visit to Dina. “I will return”, says the child in the poem. And in this way, we confront our own memories and aspirations at a literary festival.