Amn Mela: With music, songs and dance, tributes paid to Faiz

Performances by Nighat Choudhry, Wahab Shah and Amna Mawaz received well

LAHORE: Chants of Zinda hai Faiz Zinda hai resounded through Bagh-i-Jinnah’s Open Air Theatre on the Faiz Festival that was celebrated on Saturday.

The Faiz Amn Mela, organised by the Awami Workers Party and Faiz Amn Committee, is an annual event celebrating the poet’s birthday that falls on February 13. A number of singers, dancers and poets performed during this year’s celebrations. Representatives of the National Trade Unions’ Federation and Mazdoor Kissan Ittehad were also present on the occasion.



The event started with a recitation of poems (mushaira). Baba Najmi was present on the stage to encourage the mostly young poets.

Nighat Choudhry, Wahab Shah and Amna Mawaz from the Institute of Performing Arts performed to the musical renditions of some of Faiz’s poems. This was followed by a performance by Laal Band led by Taimur Rehman. The band started with some poems by Faiz and concluded with a dhamal. Tarannum Naz sang some folk Punjabi songs.

“This year the festival is taking place on February 14 which is marked as a day of love,” AWP general secretary Farooq Tariq said. He expressed concern over a statement issued by President Mamnoon Hussain asking people to not celebrate Valentine’s Day.

“Today’s celebration of Faiz is also a celebration of this day of love because Faiz too had preached the message of love,” he said.

“People often ask where the Left in the country is. This is where the Left is. This is where socialism is,” said Tariq pointing to the gathering.

Tariq said the festival was a celebration of a revolutionary ideology celebrated in Faiz’s poems. “He wrote about the working class. He spoke of the common man,” he said.

Tariq said everyone had the right to earn a living in a respectable manner. “We don’t favour schemes like the Benazir Income Support Programme through which they [the government] want to turn people into beggars,” he said.

Salima Hashmi, Faiz’s daughter, said she resented the way the city had been affected by some development projects. “My father would have been sad to see this and the way people were being asked to vacate their houses [for the Orange Line Metro Train project].”

Hashmi said she had reservations about the demolition of houses.

She said that romance was part of Faiz’s work too. He would have been happy to find that his birthday was being celebrated on Valentine’s Day, Hashmi said. “We were getting bored at home so we decided to come here,” said Mrs Nazir who had also brought her daughter to the festival.



“I have come here because I am a fan of Faiz’s,” said Amjad Ali who said he had come with his friends. “The festival promotes an ideology that I think should be part of the dominant narrative in this country,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th,  2016.