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As the city of Karachi, termed the ‘jugular vein’ of the country, simmers down from ethnic bloodbath which has killed a hundred people in just a week to ‘targeted/surgical operation’ to fish out the miscreants, many wonder if this would bring any respite and for how long.
Here Dawn.com spoke to the people in the art world, to find out whether they see the mayhem any differently and how it affects them personally and their work. Does the expressive side of their imagination get stifled or does the wretchedness of the time act as a catalyst and a precursor to their stream of thought.
Salima Hashmi, dean of the School of Visual Arts and Design, in Lahore, is agonised by what is going on in Karachi and remembers her father Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem Lahoo ka Suragh.
“Read his poem, specially the last two lines” she suggests.
Na mudda'ee, na shahaadat, hisaab paak hua
Ye khoon-e-khaak nasheenaan tha, rizq-e-khaak hua
The lines are so apt, as if written for the carnage Karachi witnessed recently, agrees eminent Urdu poet Iftikar Arif.
But says Hashmi, “these were written on early blood-letting during Ayub Khan’s elections in Karachi.”
On the one hand she feels “utter sadness… desolation” she adds, one cannot “spew out work at once”.
“The pain sits there like a searing burning flower.”
But she warns, “Make no mistake, this does not happen in a day, a month, a year....this is the harvest of the dragon’s teeth we have sown over six decades. No amount of name calling, finger pointing, breast- beating can detract from a flawed history of governance. A history of ignoring the needs, rights and wishes of the people,” she says.
Scholar and literateur Arif and former chairman of the National Language Authority is agonised by the carnage and reads out a couplet from his poem “Bikahr jaein ge hum kya” which best fits to the current situation
Bikher jaein ge hum kya jab tamasha khatam hoga
Meray ma’bud aakhir kab tamasha khatm hoga
“It’s impossible for a creative being not to be badly affected by the situation in Karachi,” says Arif, adding, “It becomes the responsibility of the writer to record this for posterity.”
The sheer frustration and helplessness of the situation literally causes rashes to break all over Arif’s face. “There is no good news coming from Karachi for months and when you are at a distance, it causes more agitation in one’s mind,” he rues.
Further, he adds, “I don’t know whether it is linguistic, sectarian or a game played by the agencies; all I know is, it’s only affecting the poor; those living in the affluent residents remain safe.”
Noted printmaker Mehr Afroze too is agonised by this day to day violence. “My hands are benumbed. I have an exhibition in November that I am preparing for but the way things are in the city, it is making me so distraught, I can’t bring myself to pick up the brush. In any case my work seems so insignificant in the wake of this mayhem,” she says sadly.
Afroze says she cannot help but feel guilty. “By keeping quiet and not reacting, I am as much in cahoots with the tyrants,” she says.
Agha Nasir, an Islamabad-based writer but whose name is inextricably associated with broadcasting, explains that geographic proximity often does not matter to an artist.
“While what is happening in Karachi is depressing and tragic and it prods the thought process, it does not always results in writer’s churning out pages after pages. It takes time to assimilate and right now the situation in Karachi is still fluid and also quite confounding,” he says.
For Nasir, Karachi has an important place in his life. “In 1948, after partition, I migrated from Meerut and came to Karachi. It was there that I completed my studies and entered Radio Pakistan while still a student,” he reminisces adding emotionally: “It was a beautiful city, not the one we see and hear about today.”
Not in his wildest of imagination did Nasir think Karachi would come to this pass. “Even as students when things would get a little out of hand, and they did, there would be fisticuffs alright, but never would you see anyone wielding guns,” he said.
Journalist and writer, Mohammad Hanif, of A Case of Exploding Mangoes fame does not regard artists as particularly sensitive to their surroundings any more than other people.
“What we feel mostly depends on where we are situated geographically and politically in Karachi. I feel everything that a middle class Karachiite feels -- I feel scared, angry, I worry about the future. I think about the dead, the wounded, I also think about those who are carrying out the carnage because surely they will be devoured by it. I worry about the millions who can’t feed their families because the city shuts down and they can’t find work,” he explains.
And, says Hanif, as a journalist one writes about these things but “I don't think anybody can feel good by using this mayhem as raw material for their art. I would prefer a calm, dull, boring Karachi!”
Singer and philanthropist Shahzad Roy feels the same. “They say suppression and tyranny brings out the best in an artist. I’d rather not have that for myself as in the process too many lives are sacrificed.”
If there is one lesson he has learnt while adopting a government school is that “if you don’t clear up the filth, it will only pile up”.
“Karachi was never cleaned up of its various evils because the political will was missing,” says Roy who has penned a number of “hard-hitting” songs “that reflect the situation of the city and the country” but friends have warned him these will only land him in trouble if released. “So I am mulling over them still.”
“I often think of Karachi as Pakistan,” says Mohsin Hamid author of Moth Smoke and Reluctant Fundamentalist, “the one place where all types of Pakistanis live together.” He thinks it is an indictment of our entire power system, including the political parties and the security establishment.
But not living in the eye of the storm, he says with candour it’s harder for him to “pinpoint the exact linkages and its affects” on his daily life, his writing, and his art. Yet, he worries about it, often getting depressed in the process. “These feelings of anger and frustration and sadness of course do shape me as a person and as a writer.”
Zofeen T. Ebrahim is a freelance journalist.
