Thousands line up for Lahore Literature Festival

Sharmila Tagore opens festival, talks about her life, career

LAHORE

All apparent obstacles and schedule cuts couldn’t keep the colours of literature and its passionate enthusiasts from sprouting to full bloom at the Lahore Literature Festival 2016, as thousands thronged to soak up every word of the elaborate buffet of knowledge on offer.

Despite the change of venue, the proceedings being cut from three days to two, and the early weekend morning start, literature savvy Lahorites were found queued up at the entrance to the venue as early as 8:00 am and the marquee hosting the opening session with iconic artist Sharmila Tagore.

Although the Meteorological Department had predicted rain on Saturday, yet it seemed as if the heavens too contributed their part to literature as the perfect spring bright sunny day shone down bringing out the best of every colour the earth had on offer.

Sharmila thanked the Punjab Chief Minister and the organisers for being honored as the inaugural guest at the festival and expressed her growing fondness of the city of Lahore. She shared how she couldn’t help notice the obvious shared culture from music to attire and the Chughtai painting hung in her hotel room right down to the way of life of people from both sides of the border.

After the staging of a short documentary that nut-shelled her entire career in eleven minutes, she started talking about the life and times when she started her career as an actress at the tender age of 13. Her debut movie “Apur Sansar” a master piece by the internationally critically acclaimed director Satyajit Ray, addressed real-life problems of gender roles in families.

Sharmila talked about how the joint family system of that time naturally created an environment of acknowledging and respecting diversity of thought and behaviour as opposed to the nuclear-family system mostly prevalent in modern society.  She believed that the “Reel Life & Real Life” shouldn’t be too far apart.

However, as the session progressed, it somehow seemed as a session in absentia of the late Satyajit Ray and his contribution to art cinema rather than being about Sharmila. Also the host, Hameed Haroon who had started the session promising the audience a peep into the life of Sharmila beyond just an actress, failed to delve sumptuously into the subject and the discussion mostly hovered around her acting career. The session was very engaging, yet from a critical perspective, it seemed more relevant to a ‘Performing Arts Festival’ rather than a Literature Festival. Later, however, Hameed Haroon did bring up Sharmila’s acts as a robust feminist when she chose to break stereotypes and appeared in a bikini on the cover of Filmfare Magazine and also her swimsuit clad song in “Evening in Paris”.

“Women are the first target of religious orthodoxy in every culture, I wanted to be taken seriously and unhindered by such barriers”, she said. Hailing from a family with diverse political thought including communist leaders and members of the Congress party, Sharmila talked about the confidence and support of her family for her career. "I had not witnessed a single movie, before I starred in one at the age of 13 and yet every single step forward, my father and husband Tiger Patodi, bolstered my confidence which made me what I am today," she said.

While the sessions started in full swing after the inaugural, elaborate bookstalls were swarmed by people as they bought the indulgence of their choice and had them signed by the authors. Security arrangements for the event were manifold and meticulously planned. Although the massive crowd attracted by the event caused periodic jams on The Mall as the hotel, the Alhamra Hall and the Zoo ran out of parking space, yet it was more than worth the frenzy of wordsmiths visiting the city.