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festival Urdu’s
case
festival Fears of a Lahori
elite schmoozefest coupled with the counterintuitive idea of a festival about
reading, essentially a solitary activity for solitary people, had me
sceptical about the first ever Lahore Literary Festival. However, the two
days of the event ended up charming me for several reasons, chief among them
the festivity they returned to the Lahori spring. Watching my bevy of
students, who had recently been assigned Mohammed Hanif’s ‘A Case of
Exploding Mangoes’ as extra reading, brave the pouring rain to get their
pirated copies of his book signed at all costs must also have gone some way
towards the softening of my stance. A sea of black LLF-logo umbrellas bobbed
from Alhamra’s Hall I to II, from the grounds to the food stalls, helping
stave off the downpour while keeping the determined spirits of
culture-seekers and people-watchers alive. Nothing less than this level of
organisation was required to smoothly pull off a festival of this magnitude,
attended by 30,000 people over two days. The evening before, the
festival was declared open by the Chief Minister of Punjab who, in an attempt
to distance himself from the legacy of General Zia, rued the disappearance of
strolling couples on The Mall Road, the Parsis who once formed part of the
Lahori landscape and the lost cultural vibrancy of the city and gave his
support to this attempt at the revival of Lahore’s cultural landscape. Tariq Ali’s well-attended
keynote speech threw the festival open to the public on the morning of March
23 and in a subsequent session the famous left-leaning intellectual declared
his intent to vote for the PTI, an announcement that was apparently met by a
hallful of cheering Lahoris. Far from the madding political crowd, however, I
attended a session with barely thirty people in attendance, that of Sri
Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka on his DSC Prize winning first book,
‘Chinaman — The Legend of Pradeep Mathew’. Moderated by
Owen-Bennett-Jones this was an excellent session to attend. Shehan turned out
to be just as disarmingly charming as his book and Jones asked him all the
right questions, a circumstance that made the pedantic audience’s
‘questions’ even more painful to bear. The first man who got up
did not allow any qualms about clearly never having heard of the book to
hinder him from announcing his credentials as Assistant Professor of English
at a local college and a member of its Literary Society, no less, in a loud,
authoritative tone before asking Shehan something unintelligible. Nonplussed
by this attack, the sprightly student volunteers quickly handed over the mike
to a middle-aged woman who turned out to be a member of the same cult and
pressed on even more urgently about the aforementioned literary society whose
mere membership seemed to confer a sense of accomplishment upon its members. Meanwhile Shehan looked on
bemusedly. If there was any residual doubt left in my mind for the need for
such a festival, it was cleared up by this practical demonstration of the
service such platforms render in updating foggy old professors beyond Hardy
and Frost. Speaking of old, the Lahore
in Literature session was marred by an excess of very old and frail
panellists (Bapsi Sidhwa, Intizar Hussain and Pran Neville) who should have
been balanced out by a few younger faces. Sidhwa, whose work I have a healthy
regard for, suffered from a lack of preparation for the session, launching
into a never-ending excerpt that did not seem to have any direct bearing upon
either Lahore or its Literature. Rafay Alam the moderator,
being young and polite, failed to take the proceedings into his hands as the
droning panelists refused to acknowledge the need to connect with the
audience. This is where the conflict between the written and spoken word
reared its head, writers aren’t meant to be performers and they cannot be
judged on the basis of their ability to read their works in a manner as
engaging as their writing. Sometimes though, this is
reversed. Moni Mohsin’s accented inflections while reading from her
‘Diary of a Social Butterfly’ enhanced the flavour of her writing
brilliantly. The satire session in which she read her work, in fact, turned
out to be the best session of the day. The crowd roared at the banter between
Mohammed Hanif, Shehan Karunatilaka and Shazaf Fatima Haider facilitated by
the irrepressible William Dalrymple. Each of the writers read out a humorous
piece from their writings, some bawdy, some satirical which made for a light
but thought-provoking session. ‘The Literature of
Resistance’ session saw a video message from Arundhati Roy being played on
the screen. For me its star attraction was Palestinian writer Selma Dabbagh
who spoke with great clarity and grace about the problems of being a writer
attempting to explain a conflicting situation to the outside world. BBC’s
Lyce Doucet was also a star attraction on this panel who spoke about her
experiences reporting the Arab spring and her views on Lahore and Pakistan. If there is one thing the
festival did for me, it was to dispel the myth of the writer as unattractive
nerd, slaving away in a corner on his laptop, unwilling and unable to
communicate with a world beyond his words. Most of the authors I listened to,
with the exception of the very old ones, were savvy crowd-workers with ready
wits and charming personalities, often quite different from what one might
have imagined from just reading their works. Daniyal Mueenuddin, for
instance, with his gora looks and accent made for an odd contrast with his
subject matter, i.e. the lives of ordinary villagers in rural Punjab. William
Dalrymple whose works I haven’t read I had always slotted in my mind as a
historian (the word conjures up very dry associations), so his affable charm
came as quite a surprise. Writers like Mohammed Hanif and Musharraf Ali
Farooqui even dispelled my notion of authors as self-obsessed narcissists
unwilling to engage with the less accomplished. On the second day of the
festival three back to back sessions left me with little energy to do much
else post-lunch so I decided to sit out the rest of the afternoon on the
Alhamra steps reading, people-watching and soaking the sun’s rays after a
long week of rain and dreariness. That my city allowed me to
do that, for once, without any prying eyes or groping hands was cause enough
for celebration, add to that people listening to authors, buying books and
engaging with ideas without a bomb blast in sight and I was a happy trooper.
Urdu’s
case There’s hardly
any established language that debates its future. Urdu, however, is not one
of them. Its literature especially poetry has a glorious past, and a fabulous
present. Yet, a pointless question about the future of Urdu literature has
been going around for decades now. Once again it was discussed at the Lahore
Literary Festival’s session titled ‘Future of Urdu Literature in the
Punjab.’ The concern at the session,
that had a shamefully low attendance, remained that the traditional grip of
Urdu literature has loosened because more and more Pakistani authors were
writing in English. “It’s because of commercialism,” Urdu’s renowned
writer Intizar Hussain said, “and this commercialism is not going to
last.” Intizar was part of the panel along with famous playwright Asghar
Nadeem Syed. Both of them highlighted
Punjab’s role in the development of Urdu prose and poetry. They named Manto,
Bedi, Ashk, Iqbal, Miraji, Rashid, Faiz, Faraz and Munir Niazi as
torch-bearers of the advancement in Urdu literature. Intizar Hussain
emphasised that the creative thought in a language is exhibited only through
poetry. “Fiction entertains certain subjects and is therefore easily
available to readers,” he said. One can write fiction in a foreign
language, but poetry has its roots in the local culture. Intizar added that
no literature progresses in the same pace all the time. His co-panellist Asghar
Nadeem Syed agreed with the argument and said that Urdu might currently be
facing a low or no advancement yet dastaan and Qissagoi are regaining
popularity. He tried to provide unconvincing reasons for it. He put the blame
on the repressive Martial Law regimes the country suffered under. He observed
that the changed curriculum had lowered the standards of Urdu literature in
Pakistan. “Literature in our Urdu course books has been replaced with
religious teachings and concocted history,” Asghar Nadeem said. He, however, ignored
media’s role, and the publication of various Urdu books in different fields
of literature. The periods of repression after the partition and during the
Zia period produced literature that encouraged and promoted resistance. Centuries before these
repressive times, Urdu survived the assaults of Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah
Abdali and the suppression of the Raj. Urdu happily settled in the Punjab
after 1857 and resides here securely to this day. Its literature transformed
itself and successfully absorbed new vocabulary as well as ideas. The poetic compilations of
Vali Deccani reached Delhi in early 1720s. The genre shook off the
then-existent Persian influence and immediately set the future of Urdu
literature. Within a decade poets like Shah Mubarak Aabroo, Shakir Naji, Shah
Hatim and others propped up, as if out of nowhere. This shift from Deccan to
Delhi was the migration of new ideas. As mentioned earlier, the literature
then was heavily dominated by poetry; therefore the most sophisticated vessel
turned out to be the Ghazal. The poetic and linguistic experiments produced
the second generation of Urdu poets that included Mir Taqi Mir, Sauda, Mir
Dard and Mir Hasan. Delhi poets moved to
Lucknow later which helped Urdu stretch further and mark this city as its new
territory. Poetic diction entertained new trends. However, both houses —
Delhi and Lucknow — were devastated when these cities were sacked by the
triumphant British Raj. This was
Urdu’s last exodus and it rooted itself in Lahore. It was a blessing in
disguise as Urdu developed by leaps and bounds here. It shed its old
historical and cultural baggage. An emphasis on florid language, traditional
themes, and even the customary genres were shunned in favour of a bold new
style. There was also an increasing emphasis on self-expression in the manner
of the Victorian writers which had started being actively translated into
Urdu. Its future was less of a concern then. Today, the
growing influence of English worries most Urdu admirers. The session
mentioned above was attended by a handful of people, which did not go
unnoticed by the moderator, Ali Usman Qasmi. After gazing around the room he
sarcastically commented, “the future can be gauged by this poor
attendance.” Interestingly, half the panellists, including the
moderator’s own father, the famed writer Atta ul Haq Qasmi, were also
absent. Asghar Nadeem
Syed lamented that “readers have lost interest in literature because the
likes of Malik Riaz have become a success story in our society.” In a crude
way, he linked his argument with Intizar Hussain’s point about
commercialisation. “English authors enjoy worldwide audience, but the fear
that it could replace Urdu literature is baseless,” Asghar remarked after
the session. A large number of visitors at the event expressed shock that there een ignored,” said Urdu poet Kanwal Feroze, who was awarded Sitara-e-Imtiaz for his literary contribution in 2009 was not a
single session organised on Punjabi literature. Absence of Punjabi and Urdu
laureates was also widely noticed. “Writers like Najm Hosain Syed, Abdullah Hussain and other laureates have b . He said
that “it’s a clique of certain individuals who have been invited.” The
whole festival discussed English literature which is read by a few hundred
and not the masses. “English as a foreign language is going through a phase
of popularity among the elite. Persian was once there, but it was gradually
eliminated,” he said. Kanwal added that English could be replaced by any
other foreign language like German, French or Chinese. However, Urdu
literature has the spirit and energy to face the challenges of the new
century. Isabel Allende once said
“storytelling and literature will exist always.” Isabel is considered the
world’s most widely read Spanish-language author. Wondering what shape the
literature could take she admitted, “the story will exist, but how, I
don’t know.” But what experts know is
that a civilisation helps its language gain momentum through new and changing
narratives. Interestingly another Urdu related session was titled
‘Narrative Forms in Urdu Fiction and Poetry.’ The fate of this event was
no different than the earlier one. The discussion was moderated well by Ali
Madeeh Hashmi but it remained within the realms of fiction. Poet Afzal Ahmed
Syed was part of the panel but he did not attend. The remaining panel
consisted of Khalid Toor, Ali Akbar Natiq and Musharraf Ali Farooqi. They had
to face almost the same set of questions. The question of why Urdu or Punjabi
has not been covered properly in the event was raised once again. Khalid Toor defined
different forms of narratives. He later read a page from his new book,
“Baloun ka Gucha”. Ali Akbar Natiq presented Urdu poetry’s case in a
convincing manner. Natiq highlighted that narratives have developed with the
passage of time, but poetry has touched new heights. He cited Heer Waris Shah
and Marsiya, Qissakhwani as the most popular forms that still exist and
appreciated. “It all depends on what you feel, or experience and how you
depict,” he said adding, “narratives are improving to keep the literature
relevant and lasting.” |
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