LAHORE: Novelist and screenwriter Amna Mufti says Lahore’s character is like that of humans and it’s the beloved city of all of us.

She says there are very few native Lahorites now in the city, which is flooded by migrants.

“Now there is also a Lahore outside Lahore and beyond. It appears our housing schemes would cross the border into India. Though we have not won a war against India, we would definitely win the DHA war.”

Ms Mufti expressed concerns that the haphazard expansion was causing loss of animals and birds.

“Lahore calls me along with all its good and bad things. It used to have a lot of birds and now they have disappeared,” she lamented.

GCU English Dept celebrating 150 years of foundation by holding litfest

Ms Mufti was a part of a panel discussion on the topic of “Writings on Lahore and Climate Change” on Thursday on the second day of the GCU Literary Festival being held to celebrate 150 years of the Department of English of the university.

Novelist Kanza Javed termed her relationship with Lahore like an arranged marriage in which one was tied to the person despite all the boredom.

“In my writings, Lahore has always been a central figure. It’s more like a personality.”

She said the characters faced the question whether they should stay in the city in the face of fog, smog and patriarchy or go overseas to move to that greener pasture where nobody likes your brown skin and would always treat you as the other.

“My writing often has displacement when it comes to writing,” said the author of Ashes, Wine and Dust and added that her upcoming second novel, What Remains after a Fire, was more about the characters trying to figure out who they were besides being Lahori.

“Somehow my characters go places and always end up back in Lahore because nothing else accepts them. I always had this love-hate relationship with Lahore. My characters’ soul and my soul are always embedded in Lahore.”

To Kanza, having a love-hate relationship is better than just callous indifference which her characters never had for Lahore. “They either hate Lahore or love Lahore too much,” she added.

Dr Faiza Sharif said “our city speaks to us but we fail to listen to it and fail to notice the disappearing species of animals, birds, insects, sparrows and woodpeckers”. Due to felling of more trees, the city had lost so many of species, which were an important part of it.

“We have been taught how not to waste resources around us, not to cause pollution, yet we continued to do that. Nature is as much a part of the city as we are,” she said and pointed out rapid urbanisation of Lahore due to various reasons.

Novelist Awais Khan said that for anybody living in Lahore, one could never have absolute love for Lahore. “There is always hatred as well because life is not perfect in our part of the world that causes some anger towards Lahore too.”

Khan said there was always a pressure on the Pakistani writers to portray the country in a very positive light that’s why social issues are not tackled. “I would say Lahore is an effluent city compared to the rest of Pakistan but there is still so much poverty, so much misery and sadness in this city but writers don’t write about it because of the pressure (mentioned above).”

Sadia Ghaznavi also spoke while Sumaira Khalil was the moderator.

POETRY: In a panel discussion on poetry, Dr Mehboob Ahmed said poetry slam utilised the liberty social media had provided and it challenged certain conventions and forms. He said poetry slam had changed the concept of poetry and made it more accessible while blurring the boundaries between different kinds of the genre.

Poet Mina Malik found poetry slam quite exciting because “most poetry or ninety percent of poems are meant to be performed.”

She said poetry was older than prose and it had always persisted through songs while humans have been reading and writing poems since time immemorial.

“When you are writing (poetry) you are reading it out to yourself to see the rhythm,” she said.

To poet Afshan Shafi, poetry slam has popularised poetry, thanks to poets like Rupi Kaur and others.

About training and mentorship, she said “If you are given a prompt or an assignment, I think you write better”.

On the influences of local languages and cultural on new poetry, Mehboob said it was Waqas Khwaja who pointed out that ghazal was at the root of Pakistani Anglophone poetry but he said he was not sure if you could put Maki Kureishi or Daud Kamal into that generation of poets.

Ilona Yusuf sent her video messages. Dr Salma Khatoon moderated the discussion.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2023