Not a Litfest
If there is one thing that gladdens my heart it is a bunch of kids reading
The writer is editorial consultant at The Express Tribune, news junkie, bibliophile, cat lover and occasional cyclist
It was a week full of books from end to end — quite literally — that left me quietly optimistic about the state of the nation, not something that us scribblers get to experience too often. The Islamabad Literary Festival was followed on Monday by an event organised by the Asian Study Group around a book of images by a German photographer who came as a stranger to Pakistan and pictured whatever was in front of him on any given day.
It is a remarkably intimate portrait. No glamour or shiny new buildings just ordinary people going about their ordinary — and not so ordinary — lives. What struck me was the similarity between his images and those that I took, also coming as a stranger, a quarter-century ago. How little the lives of people, and by the people I mean the vast majority of those that do not live in the bubbles of literacy and relative affluence that I inhabit — have changed. For all the trappings of ‘newness’ and the mobile phones that are umbilically attached to seemingly everybody, time has moved with glutinous slowness for the vast majority of people, ‘different’ in its movement rather than bringing real change to the underlying fabric of society.
Where it was possible to sample the health of a large number of those whose very ordinariness makes them both outstanding and upstanding was the other big bookish event — the three day National Book Fair at the Pak-China Centre in Islamabad and what a treat it was.
For one thing it was huge and spread over two floors and for another it was packed at 11.30 on a Sunday morning. This was most definitely not a literary festival, and it wore no such pretensions. A majority of the works on display were in Urdu, with English largely limited to the second-hand sections where I could, had I wanted, have purchased a 1558 edition of Tacitus classic ‘In Germany.’ In Latin. For $5,000. It was being somewhat optimistically offered by an antiquarian dealer from Lahore who had no idea what he had got and asked me if I read Latin. I dredged my schoolboy memory and quickly identified the author of what for me is a familiar text — in English. I passed on the offer not having 5k dollars on my person and settled for a rather nice edition of Nansen’s Arctic and Antarctic journeys. A snip at Rs2,500.
The crowd was not the Millennials of a week earlier. No designer handbags, nobody wearing sunglasses on top of their heads. No daaaahlings and definitely an absence of air-kissing. This was Mr and Mrs Average Person and hordes of their remarkably well-behaved children who were clearly up for a bit of old-fashioned reading. Of old fashioned books. The sorts that are not battery powered and have a unique smell every time you open them. That have big pictures that can be talked about endlessly and smudged with grubby fingers and can get dropped an infinite number of times on rock-hard surfaces and still come up good as new. Well nearly. The sorts of books that last a lifetime (antiquarian booksellers have to get their wares from somewhere) and can be passed generation to generation. Those sort of books.
And they were being bought by the truckload — giving the lie to the oft-circulated story that reading is dying out here in the Land of the Pure. It isn’t, and on the evidence before my very eyes young and old with a little spare disposable income are happy to buy books that are reasonably priced and in a language they understand. I noticed Urdu translations of Jane Austen and they were selling like hotcakes. Likewise Dickens. Dickens in Urdu! But why not? Dickens is Dickens in any damn language.
Each has their place — the litfest and the book fair — and in their different ways are emblematic of a fair slice of things that are going rather well in Pakistan thank you very much, but tend to get smothered by the bad news that is on-stream most days of the week. If there is one thing that gladdens my heart it is a bunch of kids reading. In any language. Tootle-pip!
Published in The Express Tribune, April 27th, 2017.
It is a remarkably intimate portrait. No glamour or shiny new buildings just ordinary people going about their ordinary — and not so ordinary — lives. What struck me was the similarity between his images and those that I took, also coming as a stranger, a quarter-century ago. How little the lives of people, and by the people I mean the vast majority of those that do not live in the bubbles of literacy and relative affluence that I inhabit — have changed. For all the trappings of ‘newness’ and the mobile phones that are umbilically attached to seemingly everybody, time has moved with glutinous slowness for the vast majority of people, ‘different’ in its movement rather than bringing real change to the underlying fabric of society.
Where it was possible to sample the health of a large number of those whose very ordinariness makes them both outstanding and upstanding was the other big bookish event — the three day National Book Fair at the Pak-China Centre in Islamabad and what a treat it was.
For one thing it was huge and spread over two floors and for another it was packed at 11.30 on a Sunday morning. This was most definitely not a literary festival, and it wore no such pretensions. A majority of the works on display were in Urdu, with English largely limited to the second-hand sections where I could, had I wanted, have purchased a 1558 edition of Tacitus classic ‘In Germany.’ In Latin. For $5,000. It was being somewhat optimistically offered by an antiquarian dealer from Lahore who had no idea what he had got and asked me if I read Latin. I dredged my schoolboy memory and quickly identified the author of what for me is a familiar text — in English. I passed on the offer not having 5k dollars on my person and settled for a rather nice edition of Nansen’s Arctic and Antarctic journeys. A snip at Rs2,500.
The crowd was not the Millennials of a week earlier. No designer handbags, nobody wearing sunglasses on top of their heads. No daaaahlings and definitely an absence of air-kissing. This was Mr and Mrs Average Person and hordes of their remarkably well-behaved children who were clearly up for a bit of old-fashioned reading. Of old fashioned books. The sorts that are not battery powered and have a unique smell every time you open them. That have big pictures that can be talked about endlessly and smudged with grubby fingers and can get dropped an infinite number of times on rock-hard surfaces and still come up good as new. Well nearly. The sorts of books that last a lifetime (antiquarian booksellers have to get their wares from somewhere) and can be passed generation to generation. Those sort of books.
And they were being bought by the truckload — giving the lie to the oft-circulated story that reading is dying out here in the Land of the Pure. It isn’t, and on the evidence before my very eyes young and old with a little spare disposable income are happy to buy books that are reasonably priced and in a language they understand. I noticed Urdu translations of Jane Austen and they were selling like hotcakes. Likewise Dickens. Dickens in Urdu! But why not? Dickens is Dickens in any damn language.
Each has their place — the litfest and the book fair — and in their different ways are emblematic of a fair slice of things that are going rather well in Pakistan thank you very much, but tend to get smothered by the bad news that is on-stream most days of the week. If there is one thing that gladdens my heart it is a bunch of kids reading. In any language. Tootle-pip!
Published in The Express Tribune, April 27th, 2017.