KARACHI: The four-day International Urdu Conference will host sessions on a number of subjects such as Karachi’s history, trends in literature and the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI).

The 17th edition of the annual conference will begin from Thursday (tomorrow), said Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi President Ahmed Shah at a press conference on Tuesday.

Mr Shah said the moot is the biggest get-together in the world of those who speak or understand Urdu. “It’s been taking place for the last 17 years. No language is just a language. It has a certain history, culture and civilisation behind it. It also bridges the gap among those who speak different mother tongues. This is the reason we have sessions on every language and its literature.”

He said this year the programme contains sessions on Karachi’s past, its architecture, painters, musicians, singers, nazm poets, ghazal poets, fiction writers, critics, tea shops, gardens, cinemas.

Four-day international event to begin tomorrow

“We also have a session on AI because creative people all over the world feel threatened by it. Similarly, we have a discussion on global warming. Then there are celebrity sessions involving the likes of Anwar Maqsood, Bushra Ansari, Mahira Khan, Fahad Mustafa, Adnan Sidddiqi, Humayun Saeed, and anchors such as Tabish Hashmi and Waseem Badami. These two men [Tabish and Waseem] of the city faced struggles and now have reached where they have reached; and all of them have become rich because of the Urdu language. So the sessions will focus on the quality of language,” he said.

Writer Noorul Huda Shah said that art and literature are the only remedy for gham-i-dil. People have been asking her about the involvement of showbiz celebs in the conference, about which Mr Shah has explained in detail. She added Karachi is the heart of Sindh and it will keep beating.

Renowned humorist Anwar Maqsood said the council has invited actors to the conference so that they can learn a few things about Urdu and use it in a proper way. “Mr Shah hasn’t sat idle for the last six months. He keeps doing one thing or another. The council holds events on a daily basis.”

Poet Iftikhar Arif, who has flown in from Islamabad to take part in the conference, said every year he’s invited to the conference.

“I have had the chance of living in quite a few countries of the world. I see that literature and the arts are being marginalised due to globalisation which has put in people’s hearts that earning money is the real thing. The arts are no more a priority. In such a scenario, attaching importance to literature and performing arts is commendable. If man is to find meaning in life and be civilised, then he has to come towards the arts — literature, music, theatre and painting give meaning to our lives.”

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2024