LAHORE: The Benazir Literary Festival at Alhamra Art Centre hosted on Tuesday a thought-provoking discussion on literature and life besides a lively poetry recital.

The discussion titled ‘Literature and life’ was moderated by writer and poet Altaf Qureshi and presided over by Dr Jaffar Ahmed.

Panelists said literature and life were not two separate entities.

MNA Dr Nafeesa Shah, one of panelists, was greeted with ‘Zinda hi, Bhutto zinda hi’, and ‘Jeevay Bhutto’.

Ms Shah, however, chose death for discussion, saying Mashal Khan’s murder was fresh in her mind. She said now universities had become madaras in Pakistan. She said the mass communication student of the Wali Khan University was lynched on blasphemy allegations not at the hands of Taliban but his university colleagues. She said jihadi agenda was trying to kill critical minds.

Ms Shah said that she had obtained a doctorate in anthropology and when she was a journalist she wrote stories on marginalized people, not on famous personalities and politicians. Her subjects were donkey cart drivers, filth extractors and such other people as they were the heroes of her stories. She said literature was often written not with ink but with blood and words were far mightier than the lethal bomb the Us administration dropped at Afghans recently.

Dr Alam Khan said literature and life were indispensable to each other. Each individual was related to literature and that’s why one would enjoy music and relish culture. He said he regretted that the literature written in Pakistan after Partition was mostly woven into disappointment, and nostalgic pain. The optimistic poetry was also written afterwards such as by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and other poets.

Dr Abrar Ahmed spoke on different periods of literature writing while reading his paper.

Mr Qureshi, remembering the days of the Bhutto government, said that whenever the late prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, used to visit Lahore, he would sit with writers at Pak Tea House.

Prof Yousaf Hassan also talked about different movements in literature and their connection with socio-political developments.

A friend of Benazir Bhutto, Victoria Schofield said that she first met Benazir in 1974 at Oxford University adding that Benazir was an interesting and lively person.

“She was always eager to tell her friends about her background and heritage,” she said.

Dr Jaffar Ahmed said that Schofield should publish her memoirs on Ms Bhutto. He said the article he had written for the session was more for those people who wanted to conduct a research on different best literary and political writings on Bhutto.

The poets who recited verses at the poetry recital were Nazir Qaiser, Baba Najmi, Aslam Tariq, Anjum Saleemi, Qaim Naqvi and others.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2017