IN Pakistan we plan with finesse, and then execute in distress.
Some still recall the obstacles placed by the then chief minister Punjab in the way of the Lahore LitFest in earlier years. Annoyed at the criticism of his Orange Line (a permanent unsightly scar across the face of once lovely Lahore), he withdrew permission at the penultimate minute for the LLF to be held at the Lahore Arts Council.
Hurriedly, the LLF had to relocate to a local hotel. To the chagrin of the audience, attractions like the Indian film star Sharmila Tagore could be barely heard over the noise of generators in makeshift auditoria.
This year, the opening of the Lahore Biennale 2024, which by its definition takes more than a year to plan, fell victim to politics. What should have been a momentous, joyous event for our country was crippled by a dharna by a disgruntled party.
Everyone with an opinion has a right to express their views. We might, however, learn a lesson from the Japanese. A visitor there once noticed a trio of Japanese factory workers standing outside the gate. They held placards listing their demands. When asked, they explained that they were on strike on behalf of all their colleagues. There was no need for the rest of the workers to strike. They would continue working so that production would not be interrupted.
This year, the opening of the Lahore Biennale fell victim to politics.
With us, protest is synonymous with disruption. We cannot complain without causing chaos.
A prequel to the Lahore Biennale compressed Lahore’s past into its present. It was an art exhibition held in the house off Temple Road where the author Ved Mehta grew up in the 1940s.
Ved’s family lived in a mohalla known then as Mehta gali. He made his father’s house famous (the gate still has the marble plaque bearing the name ‘Dr. Amolak Ram Mehta’) in his autobiography Face to Face (1957). The house remains as his family left it in 1947, sans contents and sans its soul.
Each room had been converted into a mini gallery, showcasing the talent of individual artists. The inner courtyard where Ved played became a theatre. For an hour, Lahore’s past was recalled by a film — Life in the Walled City of Lahore — made by Shireen Pasha in 1991.
Shireen studied at the National College of Arts, Lahore where her talent as a painter glistened like gold in a class of dark lignite. She leaped from the limitation of a canvas to the big screen, and from there to the welcoming arms of the West.
Her film on Lahore is Kiplingesque. It shows the daily routine of wrestlers, the round of milkmen, the gleeful, competitive abandon of kite-flying, the rhythm of workers hammering silver into wafer-thin slivers, the monotony of baking endless moons of naans, and the heavy breakfasts on cold Lahori mornings.
Shireen interspersed these images with recollections by elderly residents of the old city — geriatrics to whom the havelis were home and anything beyond a foreign, inhospitable land. The film concluded with shots of a younger Nusrat Fateh Ali before fame gripped his throat.
The Lahore Biennale 2024 crisscrossed Lahore’s geography, including events at Shalimar Gardens, the Lahore Fort, and Bradlaugh Hall which history has forgotten.
Because of the political dharna, the meticulously crafted schedule had to be rearranged at short notice. That it was held at all is a tribute to the tenacity of the organisers. They saw Lahore as an artistic tapestry, a historical continuum, not the stunted span of an elected or selected government.
Participants at another moot — the SCO gathering of biggies in Islamabad — have their own problems, their own variants of dissent. They will though be treated here with liberal hospitality.
Flush with the prospect of $7 billion from the IMF, our Foreign Office has asked the Punjab government for “15 VVIP vehicles, including bulletproof cars, for deployment with the 12 prime ministers attending the SCO conference”. In response, the Punjab government announced plans to purchase “79 new luxury vehicles for provincial ministers, parliamentary secretaries … and VVIP protocol duties”. The cost? A paltry Rs612 million.
Wasn’t it Thomas Jefferson who advised paupers like us: “Never spend your money before you have it.”
One recalls the 1974 Islamic Summit in Lahore when Mr Bhutto commandeered the residences of the rich and their luxury cars for visiting VIPs. These included Saudi King Faisal and Libya’s Col Qadhafi. They made no complaints.
In 2008, before the SCO meeting in Dushanbe, the Chinese gifted the host Tajikistan 105 vehicles, including 80 buses […] and 20 luxury cars for the visiting heads of state.
We still owe the Chinese $3bn deposited to window-dress our reserves. We did not need to rice-paper our poverty with conceit.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2024
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