The atmosphere inside Alhamra Art Centre Hall 1 on Friday evening was mystical when over 600 people thronged the venue for a Sufi Night featuring both seasoned and young singers. The evening was organised by the Lahore Arts Council in collaboration with a welfare organisation.

The stage was decorated with marigolds, mirror panels, earthen lamps and multi-coloured lights.

The well-attended Sufi Night conducted by filmmaker Ehsan Aslam featured Raga Boys, Abdur Rauf, Shabana Abbas, Ayesha Rehman, Iman Fatima, Asees Arshad and Hasan Afridi.

The singers presented Sufi poetry by various poets and spellbound the audience. A lucky draw was also held where Umrah tickets were given away to two individuals from the audience.

The Punjab Institute of Language, Art and Culture (Pilac) is working on building a 100-seat cinema at the institute.

Pilac Director Dr Sughra Sadaf told Dawn that the cinema would offer a subsidy to Punjabi films, adding that this proposal was still in its initial stages. She said the cinema would be established at the spot where the library previously existed, which had been shifted to the ground floor.

She said the idea of setting up a cinema hall was to revisit Punjabi films and to screen classic movies weekly.

To a question if the cinema would screen Indian or commercial movies as well, the director said the institute would follow the instructions and policy of the Punjab government.

Celebrated Indian actor Om Puri died a couple of days ago, shocking his friends in Pakistan’s entertainment industry and the media among those in his own country. During his interaction with the media here in Lahore during his last visit, he appeared lively and cracked jokes.

He was a strong advocate for love and peace between India and Pakistan and believed that art -- performing or visual -- had no boundaries.

He also acted in the recent Pakistani film Actor in Law. His costars in the film Fahad Mustafa and Mehwish Hayat have expressed deep grief on Mr Puri’s death.

In 2015, when he had come to Pakistan to attend the Faiz Festival, he shared with the audience how poor his family was when he started his career and how he rose to fame. He had expressed plans to act in more films here.

The 34th THAAP talk by Dr Ghafer Shahzad, titled From Greater Lahore to Greater Iqbal Park, will be held on Jan 14. The talk would revolve around the fact that Lahore is a dynamic city and continuously changing its shape.

The city has catered to the requirements of its inhabitants for 2,000 years. There is an ongoing interesting story about the city and its occupants and most of us are witness to it.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2017