Karachi Literature Festival is always an interesting event to look forward to in the city’s annual social calendar and the recent turn of events have only spiced up our excitement. While it’s not rare for local festivals to get caught up in visa-related controversies, especially when it involves eminent speakers from across the border, this year’s brouhaha has given Twitteratis a field day.
Festivalcircuit
Instep Desk
Karachi Literature Festival is always an interesting event to look forward to in the city’s annual social calendar and the recent turn of events have only spiced up our excitement. While it’s not rare for local festivals to get caught up in visa-related controversies, especially when it involves eminent speakers from across the border, this year’s brouhaha has given Twitteratis a field day.
Actor Anupam Kher who was expected to attend a session on Saturday, took to Twitter to express his outrage on being denied the Pakistani visa giving media enough fodder to churn up a day’s worth of news. Until of course, the Pakistan High Commission stepped up their game and revealed that Mr. Kher never really applied for the visa. In short, the veteran actor failed to follow basic protocol and assumed crossing over to Pakistan was like a walk in his neighborhood park. Ironically though when the High Commission actually offered to grant Kher the visa, he refused to accept it. The ending to the entire situation is that Anupam Kher will no longer be part of the session you had zeroed in on.
However, that doesn’t take away from all the beauty of literature we can all immerse in, starting today. From celebrity speakers to some hard-hitting, interesting panel discussions on diverse topics including transgender rights and Indo-Pak relations, the Beach Luxury Hotel will be a hot spot of ideas, thoughts and interaction for the next three days.
Literary festivals are one of the few places where one experiences a melting pot of sorts – celebrities and literature enthusiasts come together on a single platform only for the love of literature and this year’s line-up boasts of a number of eminent speakers. Nandita Das visits once again to get into a one-on-one conversation with Sarmad Khoosat. The session will focus on diminishing borders between the two cinemas and is likely to veer towards a discussion on their personal interpretations of Manto. After Sarmad’s success with the biopic, Nandita is also set to direct her own version of the controversial poet’s life pre-partition. Also joining the roster are author Barkha Dutt and transgender rights activist Laxmi Tripathi.
This year’s festival includes a much-welcome focus on comedy and its evolution in the recent past. Saad Haroon and Nadeem Farooq Paracha sit down to explore the importance of comedy in everyday life and more so in Pakistan given the tragic state of affairs. Also joining them is Indian stand-up comedian Sanjay Rajoura, who will also be performing at one of the sessions, today. It’ll be interesting to see how similar comedy culture is between the two nations and how well he can relate the jokes to Pakistani audience.
Book launches and re-launches remain a highlight and art will be a strong feature throughout the three days with sessions focusing on the struggles of being an artist and the need to celebrate it more often. Cinema will be another topic under scrutiny and young and old artists including Ayesha Omar and Sania Saeed will sit down to discuss the much-hyped revival phase of Pakistani cinema.
To top this all are live performances. Zoe Viccaji, who has quickly become the go-to artist for live gigs, will be joining Indian classical singer Vidya Shah in what we are expecting will be a fun fusion of musical genres. On the final day, Saad Haroon once again takes the stage to give Karachiiites many a reason to laugh till their jaws hurt. The New-York based comedian is hot property these days taking over hosting duties at corporate events and performing back-to-back shows.
If these aren’t reasons enough for you to attend Karachi Literature Festival, we don’t know what to say. Of course some sessions will likely bore the soul out of you but if you choose wisely, there is a lot for you to talk about and debate over for days to come.
