LAHORE: The concluding day of the two-day of Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest 2025 attracted a large audience at the Alhamra Art Centre, The Mall, on Sunday.

The event offered book launches, panel discussions, art exhibitions and insightful conversations on various topics, including the geopolitics of technology, climate change and the Global South, and the role of storytelling in global discourse.

There was a great vibrancy at the festival owing to Sunday being a holiday as people of all age groups visited the event.

There were a number of book stalls at the festival, offering up to 50 percent discount, while food stalls offered both fast food and desi delicacies, including Gol Gappey, Dahi Bhulley, coffee, burgers, Sarson Ka Saag etc.

The venue was festooned with big flexes, showing prominent panelists and sessions. The lawns of Alhamra had a seating arrangement where people could chat and interact.

The second day of the festival featured many interesting sessions, including Kiya Drama Hai, based on a popular TV show, where guests evaluate different dramas being shown on private channels.

The panelists at the session included veteran actor and director Marina Khan, TV show host Nadia Khan, actor Nadia Jamil, director Haissam Hussain and writer Mustafa Afridi. It was moderated by Mukarram Kaleem.

Many relevant questions pertaining to the drama industry were raised during the session, such as why the characters played by young girls and boys in most of the TV plays are obsessed with getting married, why cousin marriages are promoted so much and certain scenes are added or cut down for ratings and the reason for interference by production houses in the scripts.

Mukarram Kaleem shared with the audience that he and Nadia Jamil conceived the idea of Kiya Drama Hai which was launched some two years ago. He claimed that Pakistani drama industry was among the top three in the world.

“We launched this show not to criticise dramas produced in Pakistan, but to bring betterment to our drama industry through positive criticism,” he said.

To Nadia Khan said, “Our content is better than Netflix, but unfortunately, we are not working on our full potential. We are delivering just 30 to 40 percent [of our potential]. Had ou drama industry exercising its full potential, the story would have been quite different”.

Admitting the dominance of commercial element in the plays, she said, however, in certain cases some good productive plays were also being produced.

She regretted that channels were making a lot of a money and that too in dollars from YouTube, but were not paying well to the technicians and other staff.

Director Haissam Hussain stressed that there should be variety in our shows, regretting that local plays are not on the international platforms due to the volatile political situation in the country. “We have immense talent even in writing, but it is regrettable that production houses interfere a lot and tell the writers how many episodes a play should have,” he said.

Writer Mustafa Afridi was of the view that good plays could be counted on fingers, as most of these are formula plays. He said that in almost every play one would find a girl or boy eager to get married. “We need to explore love in our plays from other angles too; for example love for humanity. We don’t have stories to tell,” he added. He said that in the past our plays used to be creative, but now in most of the cases the selling point was negativity.

Marina Khan was of the view that there is a monopoly of channels and production houses, which dictate the script writers to have alterations in the scripts or cast. She said stressed the need for working on technical strength and sound education in the relevant field.Nadia Jamil said it takes courage to show factual things in plays. She regretted the lack of authenticity, saying that the directors seemed to have become contractors. “Staying true to the story is difficult in fact in most of the cases as we are selling fantasies,” she added.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2025