There is a sudden surge of food festivals in Karachi and Lahore. At a casual glance, one would assume that every day is a food festival in Karachi and Lahore — there must be 10 restaurants to every person living in these cities. Food is being sold from homes, from street side stands, from thelas, from rehris and from tin buckets on the shoulders of little boys. Garam aanday anyone?

But now corporate sponsors have joined forces with event management companies and started exclusive food-centred events, ticketed them, and made even more money off things they sell for less outside. Let me give you an example: I walked up to a ticketing booth recently in Lahore. Oh wait, no, no I didn’t. I dragged an unwilling woman friend of mine to walk up to a ticketing booth recently in Lahore. Because it said in bold letters that only women can buy tickets.

Fair enough, nobody wants a sausage-fest where eating is concerned. It’s not very palatable, doesn’t smell nice and involves more grease in the hair than in the food. Empowering women with ticket-buying is something I can get behind. While it can’t possibly stop public harassment, it can drastically reduce it, or at least make the stalkers and sleazes work that much harder.

So we buy the tickets, we walk inside and the first thing we see is a huge corporate name in the food and beverages industry selling their goods for 10 times the prices outside. Okay, maybe not exactly 10 times, but don’t be a literalist, get a feel for the travesty being committed here.

####What is up with food festivals that exclude people?

Five stalls down we see possibly the biggest international franchise in Pakistan selling what I don’t even consider real food, at a higher than normal price. You could literally sit at the festival ground, open your phone, and order that franchise’s food online for half the cost. Does this make sense to anyone out there?

There are, of course, the novel discoveries such festivals provide. I had a great time eating Awesamosas, with their chocolate and apple pie samosas melding taste and inventiveness in perfect harmony. Yes, I’m aware they came on to the scene last year, but I missed it, okay?

The homemade cupcakes, brownies and other confectionary goods were all delicious. The live music being played, however, was godawful and didn’t go with the mood of relaxed eating on a cool early spring day. The four-man percussion group would have been better suited in the middle of warring tribes. The national assembly, basically.

My real problem with the festival though, came when I spotted an old and much-favoured establishment of mine. A veritable rock in the castle that is Lahore’s oily cuisine: Waris Nihari. Not that Waris Nihari hasn’t become pricier itself with time, but this was a particularly backhanded slap to the patrons who put Waris Nihari on Lahore’s culinary map in the first place. Because they weren’t allowed inside the festival, through both pricing and outright barring.

####Nobody wants a sausage-fest where eating is concerned. It’s not very palatable, doesn’t smell nice and involves more grease in the hair than in the food. Empowering women with ticket- buying is something I can get behind, while it can’t possibly stop public harassment, it can drastically reduce it, or at least make the stalkers and sleazes work that much harder.

The festival took place at a country club, exclusive to begin with. In my opinion, anything celebrating food in a city that loves it, should be as inclusive as possible. You can’t fetishise the poor man’s place of dining while excluding the poor man himself.

That’s patently unfair, if not unethical.

Yes it was a great family occasion and everybody sat on the ground holding hands and singing ballads from a bygone era, but that era is bygone for good reason. In the present era, everything including literature, food and music seems to belong only to Pakistan’s burgeoning middle class and its stagnant elite.

What a great show by Sachal Studios but I’ll be damned if I can name a single one of them, aren’t they all the same person anyway, all these poor look alike. Oh they do qawwalis too, I love qawwalis, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was such a beloved and powerful voice not just in South Asia but the whole of Pakistan.

In summary. Festivals good. Exclusion not good. Women empowerment good, but should extend to all women; empowerment for already privileged women isn’t all that empowering. A food festival at the shadiest country club in the city, definitely not good. There are plenty of public spaces in Lahore to host such festivals. Make use of them before Shahbaz Sharif runs a train through them.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine February 12th, 2017