Of Literary and Literature Festivals

The pursuit of knowledge and information is universal.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that literary and literature festivals the world over have the potential to become agents of change. 

When you think about books, book launches, panel discussions on current affairs, child-centric festivities, and so on, then Karachi might not be the first venue that comes to mind. And then those proceedings being catalysts for change might be even less likely.  

Needless to say, the popular media loves to hate Pakistan – and it does so by portraying a predominantly negative image of the country. But the recently held literature festivals in Karachi were stark reminders that there is a side to the city and country that often gets overlooked in the media outlets of the world.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the 5^th Karachi Literature Festival (KLF). KLF is a phenomenon that took the city by storm five years ago. Since then the organizers, participants and the aficionados of ‘creative exploration and expression’ congregate at the venue religiously. It brings together many well-known, and not so well-known, authors, poets, illustrators and photographers on to one platform. And then the fun starts. You rub shoulders with the literary, and not so literary, giants in the field of South Asian Literature. The numbers attending the festival has gone up since it came into existence as has its popularity. People in and out of Pakistan now know about the KLF and that has placed the event on the literary map of the world. At the KLF the most obvious to expect are the books, as well as the book launches, readings and signing. The most fun, however, are the panel discussions on current affairs – and since Pakistan is at the center of our universe, the heated arguments about the country and its relationship with the United States trigger the most fireworks. At the KLF, the thrust tends to be not only on literature per the title of the festival, but also on food, clothes, culture, and so on. The non-specificity of KLF makes me happy, yet it also creates attendee confusion and fatigue in me at times. And that’s fine with me because there is just so much to enjoy, experience, and celebrate at the KLF, in addition to books. 

Soon after the KLF I was swayed by the 11^th Children’s Literature Festival (CLF) that was also recently held in the city. What was more exciting this time around was that I was invited to facilitate two sessions there. In the first one Biloongra bilingual books were read by student volunteers to children gathered there. The Biloongra books for children have been developed in Houston and Karachi, so it was gratifying that the CLF provided a platform for showcasing the global effort that it took to complete those books. My second session was a pre-launch of my book ‘An Itinerant Observer’, and a reading of Ines Roberts’ ‘The Year of the Quail’ – both books have been written about in the Houston Inner Looper Newspaper. For this session too, school students volunteered to read, so I simply observed the excitement and vitality of the children who read and those who listened. I couldn’t attend the parallel sessions as I was busy supervising my own, but the success of the CLF was quite evident by the screaming and hollering that accompanies any event when children are truly engaged. The CLF brought together around 25,000 children to enjoy books, and by doing so it stood by its motto of ‘unlocking the power of reading’.

I was living in Houston for the past 15 years, and it seems to me that my recent relocation to Karachi was timed rather well as I was able to experience the literature festivals here soon after getting back. What KLF and CLF demonstrate to the rest of the world is that such a platform can be a tour de force to reckon with – something that needs to be replicated elsewhere, perhaps in the United States. There’s a lot that can be done even prior to literary and literature festivals. People and places can start small – a writer's guild can be formed that can hold writing fairs for adults and children. This will keep the people engaged - till the time the whole group and activity can be scaled up. Ultimately I think it is all about spreading the power inherent in story-telling and story-listening; that doesn’t require a lot of funding. Nor does it require books for that matter.

[from Mixed Bag]

Acknowledgment: This article was first published by the Houston Inner looper Newspaper (March 2014).