By Anil Datta
Karachi: The two-day Karachi literature festival got off to an auspicious start Friday evening with a dinner on the meticulously manicured lawns of the UK Deputy-High Commission. The occasion featured the intellectual and social glitterati of the city.
The dinner was preceded by a 45-minute documentary highlighting the Karachi Literature Festival-2010, the first of its kind to be held in Pakistan The movie comprised footage showing the writers, authors, journalists and commentators expressing their views on various issues confronting society and literature at large. The views centred around ways and means to usher in pluralism and tolerance into society and somehow erase this image of Pakistan being a hotbed of extremism and intolerance that unfortunately seems to have taken root in the western collective psyche.
Mahshood Rizvi, Director, British Council, Sindh-Balochistan, welcomed the guests and explained the salient feature of the festival.
Ameena Saiyid, OBE, Managing Director, Oxford University Press (Pakistan), expressed her admiration for all the authors and writers amid the Pakistani diaspora who had made a mark in their adopted countries in the sphere of authorship and literature. She thanked the US Consulate-General, Karachi, for being one of the sponsors. She also thanked French ambassador Daniel Jeauneau for French participation in the festival. She announced a prize of Rs100,000, to be called the Karachi Literature Prize for the book published in 2010 that was adjudged the best.
“We look forward to sharing lots of productive ideas and concepts during the festival.”, Ameena said.
Martin Fryer, Director, Programmes, Pakistan, British Council (one of the two organisers of the festival), who had flown in specially for the occasion from Islamabad, lauded the holding of the Karachi Literature festival. He praised the country for its fascinating diversity. The British Council, on its part, he said, was keenly working to help young people realize their creative and intellectual potential. He highlighted the special cultural and intellectual connection existing between the UK and Pakistan.
Dr Marilyn Wyatt from the US embassy in Islamabad, said, “It is in times like these, times of uncertainty and friction, that literature comes as a bond among humans”. Writers, she said, were the real ambassadors of goodwill in times like these.
French Ambassador, Daniel Jeaneau, who had also flown in from Islamabad, Praised Mrs Ameena Syed for having produced so many books, not just the books but the English translations of so many books on subjects of pivotal importance. He said this was very essential and timely to send a message to the non-Muslim world about the actual highly tolerant nature of Islam. He said this would erase all misconceptions of religious extremism. The festival, he said, celebrated the literary, cultural, and artistic potential of Pakistan.
Noted literary critic and author, and one of the main organizers of the festival, Dr Asif Aslam Farrukhi, said that Karachi had come to be associated with mayhem, bloodshed and mafias and in the process, the brighter side of the city’s picture, a picture that comprised the oozing literary and intellectual potential was obscured. In lighter vein, he quoted a saying of Sheikh Saadi which when translated means that once there was such a severe famine in Damascus that people even forgot how to indulge in romance. While the people in Karachi certainly had not lost touch with the art of romance, it was still not very pleasing to see all the bloodshed and killings, he said. This provoked a lot of laughter from the guests.
In the end, Sindh Minister for youth affairs, Faisal Sabzwari in a very brief speech, said that Karachi was the epicentre of literature and literary activity. It was the Karachi Administration, he said, that had declared 2011 as the year of celebrations of Faiz’s birth centenary. He wished the best for the coming two days of the festival.
Source: The News
Date:2/5/2011
