A mini-break of sorts

Karachi, with its attributes of the Wild West, those strange shootings known locally as target-killings, had a welcome break last weekend — though sadly only for a miniscule lot of its teeming 18 millions. It had its Literature Festival to which flocked the local literati and glitterati, with a smattering of out-of-town visitors of the literary breed.

(Whilst mentioning the Wild West, Lahore last month had a genuine taste of it which left the government in a heap, frightened out of its wits as to how to get out of a diplomatic imbroglio without arousing the ire of a public that so easily succumbs to the religious xenophobic right.)

Anyhow, the Karachi Literature Festival was a happy change from the flow of fashion shows that keep ‘tout Karachi’ entertained and provide some sort of frivolity in a rather fraught city. An Indian journalist recently coined a neat phrase for the bunch of Pakistani fiction writers who have come into their own over the past decade or so. Whilst chatting to Kamila Shamsie, once of Karachi but now an international globetrotter with a stack of novels to her name, he branded them the ‘Pak Pack’.

Most of them are children of the Ziaul Haq years, a gloomy, wicked period which is reflected in their writings, though they have, by and large, lived outside Pakistan for long periods, either studying or working. But it is this fractured and divided country which inspires them to write. Their discussions and their discourse at the Festival were divided between the literary and the depths to which this country has gradually sunk during their relatively short lives, and to the plunge into blackness which took place just after New Year, when the blasphemy laws spurred on a member of the law enforcement agencies to murder the governor of a province and be hailed as a hero.

This disgusting episode in the life of this country, choc-a-bloc with disgusting episodes, has exposed the true cowardice of this government, struck with paralysis since it occupied Islamabad. It has stripped itself of any vestige of governance by its total surrender to the marching mullahs and their false invocation of religion. It has also rendered fearful the silent minority of ‘haves’, who are now even more unsure of the reactions of the ‘have nots’ by whom they are surrounded.

Well represented were the non-fiction writers who, not surprisingly in these unsettled times, dwelt upon the free-fall in which Pakistan now finds itself through the irresponsible and corrupt policies of its various governments. Their warnings were dire, certainly not misplaced. And the social imbalance, as with all other imbalances, will for sure one day exact retribution.

This ‘have’ and ‘have not’ divide has been aptly delineated in Mohsin Hamid’s oft quoted passage from his Moth Smoke, tinged with a desperate humour: “There are two social classes in Pakistan. The first group, large and sweaty, contains those referred to as the masses. The second group is much smaller, but its members exercise vastly greater control over their immediate environment and are collectively termed the elite. The distinction between the members of these two groups is made on the basis of control of an important resource: Air-conditioning … They’re a mixed lot … united by their residence in an artificially cooled world. They wake up in air-conditioned houses, drive air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned offices, grab lunch in air-conditioned restaurants (rights of admission reserved) and at the end of the day go home to their air-conditioned lounges…. And if they should think about the rest of the people, the great uncooled, … there is always prayer … which they hope will gain them admittance to an air-conditioned heaven…”.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2011.