George Orwell needs no introduction, but Eric Arthur Blair does, said moderator Navid Shahzad while kicking off the session titled ‘Life with my father, George Orwell’ at the fourth edition of the Lahore Literary Festival at a local hotel.

The session was a talk with Richard Blair, an adopted son of Orwell (1903-50), and novelist and journalist Mohammad Hanif.

Blair reminisced about the days he spent with the celebrated novelist. He was around four years old when Orwell died in 1950. Blair, who is also patron of The Orwell Society, shared his childhood memories with the audience when he along with his father went for fishing in Burma. “We had a penchant for lobsters and crabs.”

He spoke of how Orwell had to face difficulties in getting his works published, particularly Animal Farm (1945), a satirical tale against Stalin.

Blair also talked about Orwell’s opposition to totalitarianism, his disdain for authoritarian social practices and fascism. He read an excerpt from Orwell’s work as well. The discussion provided an insight to the audience about historiography and Orwell’s abhorrence of distortion of history. Speaking of distortion in historical narrative, Hanif said his son was studying a novel by a Bangladeshi writer and was surprised to know that Bangladesh was once a part of Pakistan.

Hanif enlivened the discussion when he drew a parallel between the setting shown in Orwell’s works and the way the local administration got the venue for the literary festival changed.

“A government which can’t provide security on Friday across the road is providing security on Saturday and Sunday here.” In response, Navid Shahzad quipped, “So this is Orwellian day and he is as relevant today as he was 70 years ago.”

Navid presented some famous quotes from Orwell’s works. No discussion on Orwell is complete without a popular quote ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ recited by Hanif.

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2016