Ninth Karachi Literature Festival (KLF): Flavours of poetry and prose

As usual bringing together and celebrating various authors' writings in diverse languages, genres, and traditions the ninth edition of the three-day Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) featured debates, discussions, lectures, mushaira, a book fair, book launches, readings, signings, comedy, satire, theatre, cinema, music, dance, storytelling, art, and singing.
An inaugural ceremony was followed by an event title "Aik Hi Shakhs Tha Jehan May Kia: Jaun Elia". It was a special tribute to one of the most outstanding poet of the present era Jaun Elia. Prominent authors and speakers paid tributes to distinguished poet who discussed the poet's personality and his work. The panelists included Shakeel Adilzada, Aqeel Abbas Jafri, Muhammad Ahmed Shah and Saif Mahmood.
The session was opened by Shakeel Adilzada, as he is a fiction writer he introduced Jaun Elia in a very effective way that it gave one a feeling of being with the great poet. Thus Shakeel Adilzada created a literary atmosphere. The audience became involved in his presentation and enjoyed his conversation at that point the moderator Peerzada Salaman interrupted him and broke the connection of a speaker with the audience. He turned a literary event into an evening talk show by continuously interrupting the speakers breaking their flow again and again and after that the flavour of the programme disappeared.
Afterwards in a Q&A session the audience asked questions about Jaun Elia and I was surprised to see that the audience was much more informed about the poet Jaun Elia than the speakers other than Shakeel Adilzada. The other speakers and the moderator were unprepared and ill-informed about the personality, work and life of Poet Jaun Elia.
Kishwar Naheed has written an excellent piece on Zainab and after hearing it people stared crying and forget to clap for the poetess. This was the impact of her poetry on the audience. In a talk about why Shakespeare is Shakespeare Zia Mohyeddin's few readings added colour to the event. Using his theatrical talent he created atmosphere of the reading from Mark Antony's speech on the assassination of Julius Caesar and 'The Merchant of Venice' and 'As You Like It'.
Kamila Shamsie's latest novel "Home Fire" was long listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize and has garnered international acclaim. A conversation about this novel by Kamila Shamsie was a highlight of the event. The novel features themes that are very relevant to our society at present. The novel is about a British-Pakistani family that torn apart by a conflicted past.
A session "Harf-e-Baryab: Readings and Conversation with Iftikhar Arif" was an interesting session in which Poet Iftikhar Arif read his poetry and talked about his literary journey. The session was moderated by a senior journalist and a poetess Nasra Zuberi and Asif Farrukhi.
This year KLF has given focus to Sindhi literature by organizing a Sindhi Mushairo with Imdad Hussaini, Aasi Zamini, Ayaz Gul, Haleem Baghi and Sahar Imdad among others. And in addition to Mushaira a talk was held titled "The literary traditions of Sindh" featuring Jami Chandio and Syed Sardar Shah.
The literary prizes were awarded as they are every year during the festival. The best KLF non-fiction prize went to "Imagining Pakistan" by Rasul Bakhsh Rais. The KLF best fiction book was given to Omar Shahid Hamid's "The Party Worker". The award for the best KLF Urdu book was given to Deed Wa Deed by Altaf Fatima.
The closing ceremony was addressed by noted television personality Anwar Maqsood, Amit Chaudhuri and Mani Shankar Aiyar. The sound system was very poor from the day one at the festival. In many programmes people felt annoyed as they could not hear properly the discussions because the sound suddenly fades out. The same problem was faced in Mushaira as well when Iftikhar Arif started his poetry the sound system collapsed and the audience started to leave the Mushaira. Facing the same problem in concluding session Anwar Maqsood shortened his speech in annoyance.
Around 205 Pakistani authors and 30 from overseas participated in the three-day event. There were also speakers from other countries such as the UK, the US, Germany, France and the Maldives making the festival an international event through these years. Around twenty-six book launches and over 70 sessions were held during the festival.
Visitors purchased different books authored by distinguished new and well-known local and foreign writers and enjoyed thought provoking discussions while book lovers and literature enthusiasts attended different sessions of their interests on various subjects at the Karachi Literature Festival.
But another aspect of the event was that as everybody knows from day one this event is commercial but as the years have passed it has now started to give more importance to food court other than books and to invite learned literary people who were once the main attraction of this event. It now seemed that people come here to eat food and enjoy its atmosphere rather than they are interested in books. No new people are introduced or discovered for Urdu Mushaira for the last nine years every year same people are invited for the Mushaira. It is time to bring a change may be slowly and gradually but a change is necessary.