In the midst of the Shia killings, amid bullet-riddled bodies being found in Karachi and Balochistan, among the innumerable suicide bombings and under the US drones, LLF was a silent yet potent protest against the dark that threatens to overcome our nation.
Although the festival aimed at promoting writers, artists, books and reading of those books, it somehow seemed to defy this rampant chaos. Never-ending queues, jam-packed halls, standing ovations and Mohsin Hamid’s wit made the citizens of Lahore forget how difficult life had been for the last decade.
Lahore, with its deep, mystical culture has always fired the imagination of writers from across the world. From heroines like Anarkali and Umrao Jan, from authors like Bapsi Sidhawa to Bano Qudsia, from places like the Badshahi Mosque and the Heera Mandi, from heroes like Baghat Singh, from poets like Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Hafeez Jalandari, Lahore has been the epicenter of cultural activity since its inception.
Razi Ahmed, the co-founder and CEO of the LLF, then, has rightly said that the Lahore Literary festival pays homage to this great city.
Amidst the turmoil that engulfs our nation, the people of Pakistan need to create times for themselves that stand out in the history of the country as the renaissance of our homeland. The advances made in times such as these take the country forward in giant strides. The two-day Lahore Literary festival may just have been an event that lasted only 48 hours; but it was an event that will go down in the city’s history as a milestone, at par with the half-a-century old Pak Tea House era.
To invite foreign authors like Victoria Schofield and William Dalrymple in a country at war with itself, to attract almost 30,000 people in two-days and to gather the tolerant, in a time when tolerance is deemed un-Islamic, is a magnanimously difficult undertaking; but Razi Ahmed and Nusrat Jamil have succeeded brilliantly.
Mingling with authors, artists, thinkers and books, people seemed to be at a rather strange mental peace. Booklovers met, had pictures taken and got books signed from writers whose creativity could make gods envious. It gave them a chance to ask these demigods what had triggered their imagination and what their inspirations were.
Sipping the wonderfully tepid coffee, in rather chilly weather, for a while it seemed to these booklovers that the whole world, with all its troubles, was far away. Nothing seemed to be worrying them apart from the fact that they were always on the watch, hoping to see their favorite authors and artists.
Bookstalls of the finest booksellers in the country made Alhamra’s Hall II a booklovers’ paradise. Hundreds of books, one on top of the other, with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch and the smell of the untouched books seemed soothing to the mind.
It would be an understatement to say that LLF was a success. It is likely to become the largest annual event of the city and will encourage our local writers and literary artists, along with promoting Pakistani and regional literature around the globe. Perhaps next year missing faces like Kamila Shamsi and Ayesha Siddiqua will show up to discuss their work.
One can even hope that by the time LLF 2014 is scheduled, fresh Pakistani writers would have been encouraged to showcase their own work. As Socrates said, “employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.” LLF is the one such opportunity for young readers and writers to learn from each other and grow together.