KARACHI: The literary committee of the Arts Council of Pakistan resumed its regular sittings after a year’s lapse, on March 2, with its chairman Naqqash Kazmi as the moderator.

A ghazal was presented by Hejab Abbasi, a verse by Jamal Naqi and a story was read out by story-writer Rehman Nishat (with two story collections to his credit).

As it was an open house, the audience was quite sizable and every one was free to comment on the writings — not a prerequisite. Mr Kazmi, however, managed it quite well, not allowing any one to speak more than once (with a small dose of snubbing where needed).

Ms Abbasi’s ghazal, a modernist as she is, was praised for its diction, images and fluency. Mr Naqi’s poetry was accepted as tolerably good, though not a “big” poetry. He advised the people to peep into the past, analyze the factors which led to nations’ downfall, avoid to repeat them and pave the way for a bright future — a wise advice though not popular with non- conformists.

Nishat’s story was about a Babaji — an old schoolteacher and a know-all type of person with all the knowledge of history to literature and physics to maths at his fingertips. Babaji always kept a book with himself and it was generally assumed that this “magic’ book was the source of the old man’s knowledge, although he never opened it.

Years later, when the Babaji died, the narrator of the story, now a teacher himself, went to condole his death. After condolence, he requested Babaji’s son to show him the book. Taking the book, he very excitedly went home and opened the book. To his utter surprise, he found that it was just a pack of blank pages!

Asif Malik, also a story-writer, commented that the story reminded him of a similar Babaji in Ashaf-Qudsia family, and Mumtaz Mufti and Qudratullah denying the wisdom of written words and upholding spirituality as the source of all knowledge.

Rauf Niazi in defence of the writer recalled a similar story from Nasim Satrakhi and quoted instances from several literary writings.

Ahmad Saghir Siddiqui complained that the story was lacking in ‘craft’. The narrator after getting the book should have opened it then and there because of the intense curiosity, which he didn’t do. Besides, the mention of the ‘book’ all the time had lacked the end of the story. It was a character sketch and not a story, he contended.

Azad Lucknavi from New York and Khalid Yousuf from Oxford were two guest poets who recited their verses and also talked about Urdu as it is in the two countries.—Hasan Abidi