Literary soup for the intellectual soul
I have an announcement to make: I am officially an intellectual now. Last week, I was given an air ticket (and hotel stay) to attend the Karachi Literature Festival; isn’t this the ultimate criterion? The festival had a host of literary people who have dedicated their entire lives to reading, writing, and excelling in their respective fields buried under piles of paper and books. When my friend Zeeshan Hussain came to know that I was invited, he wondered why people like Intizar Hussain and Dr Mubarak Ali didn’t think of producing a song and skidding their way into the world of intellect. It could have saved them a lot of tattered books and paper cuts.
I am tempted to ring up Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi to apologise each time my article is published in Pakistan Today on the same page as his. Even this requires a lot of courage, which I most definitely lack. I don’t criticise these new TV anchors anymore, who have suddenly acquired the status of godfathers of journalism. This is how it is in media and it seems to work fine for me.
At the festival, I also represented Beygairat Brigade in a session with Nadeem F Paracha (the moderator) and Saad Haroon. The session was on satire, on which Saad spoke very well; and since I didn’t have too much to say on the academic aspects of the art form, I moulded it into a discussion on political satire with the help of the moderator. By the time it ended, Paracha was able to conclude that KLF could very well stand for the Karachi Liberation Front.
The political satirists should really thank God that our politicians are such a corrupt and incompetent bunch; otherwise we wouldn’t have a job. What other options are there? The spoof of a High Court judge dancing on a catchy Bollywood number – perish the thought – is unthinkable, as it would be tantamount to ridiculing the entire judicial structure. The conscientious army generals don’t give us the chance either because they never do anything that we can make fun of. Mullahs work under direct orders of God; and therefore who are we to make fun of them! As for the civil bureaucracy, whenever I have come across them I have always found them earnestly discussing the issues of this country. How can one imagine making fun of a class who has solemnly dedicated its very existence to empathising with this country and its people? Journalists are of course the heroic class which has the hardest job of all: not only does the public look at them to make sure the country stays intact, it is also their job to set the moral standards of the nation. In view of the above, I sincerely hope that our politicians remain dishonest, corrupt and incompetent – and more importantly, tolerant of being made fun of – and that Veena Malik never loses her youth, brains, and beauty.
One of the guests at the festival expressed her concern about my getting hurt (or worse), or about my potentially succumbing to the lure of money (in other words, being bought). I told her that I myself feared the former, but the latter I deeply wished for. Is some rich guy reading this? I repeat: Is some rich guy reading? All those who don’t have my bank details can contact me via phone, Facebook or Twitter. If you want to buy me but can’t afford to pay in cash, I also accept mobile top ups, restaurant coupons and concert passes (if one is held, that is).
After spending two days inside the literary cocoon, my friend Bilal, literature teacher at LUMS, who was also one of the moderators at the KLF, showed me around Karachi the next day. This included one of those areas where up until recently, massacres had continued for months. I expressed my amazement at the ordinary folks managing to get through such long-drawn chaos. He told me that the mobs worked according to a strategically devised time plan: they usually started the fights after Maghrib prayers and busied themselves till Fajr. People could go to their offices, and children to their schools, because the mobs knew that people might come out and take the matter in their own hands if not allowed to function at all. As one would expect, there’s indeed a lot of method to the madness in Karachi. Another case in point: the peace prevailing there now, as if somebody has flicked the switch off.
The writer is a member of the band Beygairat Brigade.