Karachi at the Festivals

My relocation to Karachi around half a year back took an interesting turn when all kinds of festivals came into awareness. 

In a short span of a few weeks over the past month alone I was regaled by invitations to events to ‘experience’ food (for a food festival), books (for a literature festival), clothes (for a clothes festival), and culture (for a provincial language suffused ethnic cultural festival). Now Karachi, as you are well aware, is a very interesting city.  Among the volatility and religio-political grandstanding, all sorts of festivities and festivals are being rolled out as alluded to above. I am interested in food, books, clothes, culture, and so on, but not necessarily in that order. At the festival the thrust tends to be not only the said item per the title of the festival, but also other things listed there. Therefore, the non-specificity of said event makes me happy. And yet the events do create attendee confusion in me, along with attendee fatigue. At times you don’t know whether you, the organizers, or the festivity revelers are there because of the ethos of the festival or because it’s fashionable to be seen at said place – akin to making a statement of sorts, political or otherwise. Perhaps it’s both and that’s quite okay with me too.

The literature festivals are particularly intriguing to observe. You will get a flavor of books, clothes, food as well as culture, and you get to take your pick. When I think about the past fifteen years in Texas I am saddened that I never experienced literature festivals there in the same vein, and therefore I missed out on seeing people attending them with such gusto and in such great numbers. After attending the literature festivals in Karachi, one would think that this is a city (and therefore a nation) of readers. That aside, I think we in Karachi have something to teach our friends, families and colleagues in Texas, regarding the real worth of literature festivals. I remember attending a book launch session at the Austin Literature Festival - perhaps serendipitously the book happened to be a political and historical commentary on Karachi. The Caucasian author was a well-known talk show host of a radio channel that prided itself in being quite unbiased in its coverage. As happens frequently at literature festivals although I’m unsure why, there was a panel discussing not only the above book but also the situation in the “Afpak” region. What was surprising and a bit of a letdown that in the panel discussion there was not a single person from Karachi or even Pakistan for that matter. The discussion could have been much more vibrant and objective had there been someone from the place that was written about and discussed at that forum. That was not the case with the Karachi Literature festival (KLF) that I attended not too long ago. The session on the “Afpak” region had a panel that included people from Pakistan as well as from elsewhere, but all seemed equally well informed.

After the literature festivals and festivities are over and done with, there tends to be a spate of articles in the popular media extolling the organizers, key note speakers, authors, attendees, and pledges are made for continuing such activities as a counter force to the volatile, insecure and unstable environment. Then you also get to read those articles that question the ‘real’ objectives and impact of such festivals. They make the case that events such as KLF by being accessible to only a certain ‘class’ of people tend to polarize an already polarized society.    

As always happens, there will be opposing camps to everything. I am unsure what camp I belong to. I can speculate though based on my attendance of both the KLF and the Children’s Literature Festival (CLF), within the past few weeks, and I summarize below.

My take on three letter acronym 'lit fests' that I have seen in Karachi:

(1)          KLF = elitist - publicized and projected as such; hence, no surprise that it is not an equalizer.

(2)          CLF = non-elitist; publicized and projected as such; hence, also no surprise that CLF too is not an equalizer.

Furthermore, the most insight was gained while I was chatting to one of the book stall owners at the CLF. He said that the CLF was completely ignored by 'burger type Karachi wallay' (loosely translated: ‘the uppity Karachiites’), hence, both book and food sales were nowhere as good at the CLF as compared to the KLF.

Nowadays the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) has piqued the Karachi wallas curiosity. I’ve never been there so can't comment objectively - but perhaps it’s somewhere in between KLF and CLF? Or maybe not, if LLF has been able to distinguish between ‘literary’ and ‘literature’ festivals. 

In all seriousness though, I ask the nay sayers why must these mismatched festivals be considered 'social movements' that even the organizers at times project them as?

Maybe they should stop calling them literature festivals - and call them social movements instead... although KSM, CSM and LSM don't roll off the tongue as well.

[from Mixed Bag]

Acknowledgment: This article was first published by the Dawn Newspaper Blogs.