In other rooms, same wonders: Aged to perfection

Zehra Nigha’s reading and Bilal Tanweer’s book launch mark the class difference of literary expression.

KARACHI: Karachi is violent. People die everyday. Numbed to the daily loss of lives, you try and walk a dangerously fine line between survivor instinct and stupefaction.

Zehra Nigah’s reading from her own favorites did away with the anesthesia. She connects with the violence in the city both as a bystander and someone who is part of a collective sense of loss. Her narration hence was framed within the said context.

‘Aisa lagta hai inhoh ney yeh Sohrab goth mai baith kar key yeh likha tha’ she remarked on a soul crushing verse from one of her favorites with her signature gentleness thatsoftens the blow of a sharp wit. There she set the mood of the next hour as you heard her read out pieces that were jarring yet effortless in their expression. No one asked her why, how, where etc. You live around death so why not.

Her session coincided with Bilal Tanweer’s book launch ‘The scatter here is too great. His book is a collection of short stories that are linked together with Karachi’sviolence.  Both sessions were a single floor and a few worlds apart.

There is much to be said about the subject. Going up and down the flight of stairs one realized the dignity that comes with silence and the tacky blaring of voices repeating themselves until both the listener and the speaker is blue on the face. The form of narration is refreshingly original. The analytics of his choice of characters, structure, influences,confluences etc made robbed Tanweer of letting his work speak for itself. The math class was still agonizing over formulas when I decided to go back to the (dis)comfort of literature.