By Rishi Majumder

HOW appropriate for a talk titled ‘Descent into Chaos: Pakistan on the Brink’ to be accompanied by unexpected rainfall. This Jaipur Literature Festival session, held late morning on January 22 (the second day of the festival), was named after Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s book. “A serious de-radicalisation is the need of the hour,” said Rashid, one of the panelists at the session. He argued the problem of extremism in Pakistan cannot be tackled by “military action alone.” Also on the panel were former Pakistani foreign minister and member of PTI Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, former Indian diplomat G. Parthasarathy and foreign policy academic Anatol Lieven. It was being moderated by journalist Suhasini Haidar. There was hardly any place to stand, let alone sit.

“We need a strong impetus for constant dialogue to resolve the problems between the two countries,” Kasuri said. “You can’t have a dialogue when bullets are flying. Nobody hears the sound of the dialogue,” Parthasarathy retorted. A boy who came in to listen when the talk was half over asked me what book Kasuri had written. His Neither a Hawk nor a Dove is slated for release next month. Apparently General Pervez Musharraf had called him to ask whether he was “a hawk or a dove on India” and that gave him the idea for its title. Kasuri also called for “optimism” with regard to Indo-Pak relations and referred to a sapling he and former Indian prime minister I.K. Gujral had planted at the India International Centre in Delhi — by way of metaphor.

Rashid called for a different kind of dialogue, between Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban. He spoke of a galvanisation of forces and “a long term plan” post the horrific attack on schoolchildren in Peshawar which not just deals with military aspects of terrorism but also with “education, jobs, madressahs and other such things.”

While such conversations, and indeed the kind of dialogue the panelists discussed, are necessary, they do often devolve into some form of simplistic polemic or cliche. Which is fine. Polemic and cliche are vital tools for diplomacy.

Not for literature, however. Which is why a literature festival, or for that matter any cultural event that brings together citizens from India and Pakistan, must mean more.

In this context, let’s return to the boy who had asked me what book Kasuri had written. He told me he was studying at a Jaipur college. Books and authors at a festival like JLF may just evolve the Indo-Pak discourse in a way it hasn’t so far: by taking the minds of many lay Indians, for whom Pakistan may mean just an enemy that seems to be imploding, off geo-politics and on to nuanced narratives.

Take author Kamila Shamsie (her latest A God In Every Stone is a historical novel) for instance, who was part of sessions on feminism, war, historical fiction and contemporary Pakistani art (with Pakistani artist Salima Hashmi) at this JLF. “She’s English, no? No, maybe Pakistani,” a middle-aged man says to a woman, who appears to be his wife, during one of Shamsie’s sessions. His brow is furrowed. Truth is, Shamsie’s a bit of both. She may have just provided a delightful counterpoint to whatever the gentleman’s notion of the ‘Pakistani woman’ was.

There may be great value in looking beyond a neighbouring country’s problems to examine other facets of its existence. There may also be some in looking deeper into them.

When an audience member asked novelist Bilal Tanweer what was being done to save the Urdu and Sanskrit languages after an excellent conversation between him and the legendary Urdu scholar Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, he said simply: “Writers suck at public policy, best not to ask them.”

Perhaps. But Tanweer’s debut novel, The Scatter Here Is Too Great, which weaves in disparate tales with the common thread of a Karachi bombing, offers that rare sociological insight into urban Pakistan that many policy papers may miss completely.

Both Tanweer and Shamsie’s novels were nominated for the DSC Prize which was announced on the second day of the festival, but neither won. It went instead to Jhumpa Lahiri for The Lowland. Since Lahiri wasn’t at Jaipur she was Skyped in for her acceptance speech. But, instead of on a screen, a moving image of Lahiri appeared on a smartphone, which was then handed over to actor Dalip Tahil who was master-of-ceremonies, who in turn held it to the mike. The audience, including Tanweer and Shamsie, would have lost out completely on this hilarious and bizarre sequence of events had either of the two Pakistanis nominated been the recipient.

Pakistani author H.M. Naqvi had won the DSC prize here in 2011. Pakistani writers have been an important part of the festival for a while. Authors such as Musharraf Ali Farooqui, Mohammed Hanif, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Mohsin Hamid and Ali Sethi have been invited, some more than once. “I am very particular about my facts and details,” Shamsie said. “A novel lives and dies in these details.”

So do people. It is with these details — at once human and bizarre — that one forges a connection. One of my most memorable exchanges this JLF was with a writer — who I’m sure would rather not be named — who told me about Pakistani pigeon trainers employed by the ISI. I, in turn, shared my story about an Indian god-man who was recently accused of having 400 of his followers castrated. We must pick up where we left off.

The writer is an Associate Partner with the new media company Oijo.