THE city is a contested space, drawn and redrawn by its denizens; and the tension that emerges out of these contestations was the focus of several sessions at the LLF. While some discussions centred on reimagining a city’s past, others explored the diversity and conflict of urban spaces.

In ‘The Metropolis and Violence’ (Laurent Gayer, Yasmine El Rashidi, Bilal Tanweer, Mahesh Rao and Ali Raza) featured panellists discussed how various political groups use violence to control urban space. Gayer, for instance, talked about how violence in Karachi can be a political tool, pointing out that a certain party is using “violence as a negotiating tactic” and how “democratic elements can work through violence”. Rashidi, on the other hand, emphasised that in Egypt, the state has historically used violence to oppress its citizens; as she very poignantly put it, “over the years, we swallowed our voices, we swallowed our grievance”. It is this oppression, Rashidi pointed out, that led to the Arab Spring uprising, and in turn, more aggressive and obvious forms of violence, both by the state and its opponents.

While Rashidi and Gayer focused on the intersection between political tension and violence, Rao emphasised that economic and urban development can lead to violence that takes more subtle forms, extending from the public space to the private one. The Smoke is Rising writer pointed out that ‘development’ can lead to the “fracture, dislocation of the kinship structure”; disintegration of the fabric of the community, and domestic abuse.

What the panellists seem to agree on, however, was how multiple narratives must be given space, to not only challenge oppressive violence but to understand it better. Rashidi pointed out how the Western media went looking for “a certain kind of people who were on social media, and who were good looking” to tell the story about the Arab Spring. This, Rashidi said, has led to a skewed representation of the revolution in Egypt arguing that “multiple stories” need to be told and that “literature is the more powerful space” that allows one to do so.

Similarly, Tanweer and Rao pointed out that fiction allows for the exploration of multiple narratives and the various actors in society. As Tanweer put it: “non-fiction explains away human agency but as a fiction writer you’re exploring that individual agency”. Both fiction writers also talked about how fiction contests the mainstream narrative recycled by the media. “The story of the world we get is largely fitting in a narrative. All we have are stories, and we have to be really, really careful of the world we inhabit,” he said.

How Lahoris can continue to live in a world that is both part of the present and the past was the focus of the session ‘Fixing the Androon: Reimagining Old Lahore’ (Attiq Uddin Ahmed, Imrana Tiwana, Kamran Lashari, Nayyar Ali Dada and Qazi Shaukat Fareed). The panellists discussed how redesigning the walled city of Lahore (androon shehr) can maintain a balance between commercial demands and practical needs whilst still retaining the integrity of centuries-old architecture. Most of the debate focused on featured panellist Ahmed’s proposed redesigning of the old city — whether it can and should be implemented, and why.

Actively involved with Tiwana in the Lahore Bachao Tehrik, Ahmed clearly leaned towards a more practical approach, asking the audience at one point: “Is the city supposed to become a museum and that too in the 21st century? You can’t just have romantic jhorokas and cobbled streets.” Tiwana also spent a good 15 minutes of the discussion emphasising on how great the project was. Whether she succeeded in convincing the audience or not is up for debate.

Another session that led its audience down memory lane was ‘Cosmopolitan Quetta: The Past is Another Country’ (Aban Marker Kabraji and Shahid Zahid). Most of the discussion focused on Kabraji’s family roots in colonial Quetta. The moderator, Zahid, and Kabraji, also explored the resilience of Quetta’s citizens following the devastating 1935 earthquake, which flattened the city. Kabraji pointed out that this was “illustrative of a time when people handled things well … when there was predictability and serenity.” The talk seems to have left many audience members nostalgic for a decades-old Pakistan as did the session, ‘All that Jazz in Bombay and Karachi’.

The session on the jazz era in the subcontinent, ‘All that Jazz in Bombay and Karachi’, was brilliantly hosted by Leon Menezes and Naresh Fernandes. Both men had the audience hanging on to their every word, and in stitches with their jokes and witty remarks.

The talk which was based on the eight years of research Fernandes had done for his book, Taj Mahal Foxtrot, was packed with interesting facts: how Goan jazz bands are a legacy of Portugese colonisation; that Indian jazz musicians influenced the Bollywood music sound that we hear today; and that jazz players had a penchant for colourful stage names such as Chic Chocolate and Rudy Cotton. Fernandes peppered his discussion with samples from jazz songs which kept the audience engaged and upbeat and was one of the best sessions at the LFF.