A little bit of India at KLF


A little bit of India at KLF
Ritu Menon, Reshma Krishnan, V.K. Karthika, Nayantara Sahgal: Indian writers and publishers at KLF

 The annual Karachil Literature Festival provides an opportunity for Pakistanis and Indians to interact

Sahgal-biographyThe literary festivals that have started being organised in different cities of India and Pakistan over the last few years provide a precious opportunity for people of either country to meet and interact.

Several prominent Indians participated in this year’s annual Karachi Literature Festival, which featured keynote speeches by the eminent Indian writer Nayantara Sahgal and the Pakistani poet Zehra Nigah at the inaugural session on Feb 6, 2015.

Books by Indian authors launched at KLF included Nayantara Sahgal’s latest offering, ‘The Political Imagination’ and Ritu Menon’s biography of Sahgal, ‘Out of Line – A Personal and Political Biography of Nayantara Sahgal’.

Reshma Barshikar, an Indian travel writer also launched her novel, ‘Fading into Red’ at KLF, but was late for her own session due to delays caused by having to report to the police, as Indian visitors to Pakistan are required to do (and vice versa).

Indians who participated in KLF included filmmaker Meenu Gaur, co-director of the critically acclaimed Pakistani film Zinda Bhaag, and actor Sanjay Iyer.

In her keynote speech, Nayantara Sahgal, whose mother Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister, termed her uncle Nehru as “a male feminist” who had encouraged and inspired her. Sahgal said that her family’s political background inspired her first book, ‘Prison and Chocolate Cake’ (1954). Interestingly, one of her characters called himself a “Hindu Muslim” and termed his language “Hindi Urdu”.

Sahgal recalled that Urdu was not included in the initial list of 13 languages being classified as India’s official languages soon after independence. When the list was presented before the then Prime Minister Nehru, he asked why Urdu was not in the list. On being told that it was nobody’s mother tongue, he replied that it was his mother tongue. Urdu was duly added to the list.

A discussion on ‘Working with the Printed Word’ featured Indian publishers Ritu Menon, V. K. Karthika along with Ameena Saiyid of OUP, Afzaal Ahmad of Sange Meel Publications and French publisher Marc Parent. Asked why she focused on publishing books by women, Menon responded that women form half the world’s population.

At a session on ‘The English Language Literatures of South Asia’ with H. M. Naqvi from Pakistan, Ritu Menon from India and Sadaf Saaz Siddiqui from Bangladesh, panellists agreed on the need for more interchange of the printed word among the three countries.

At another session, Fahmida Riaz spoke about her experience as a feminist poet who had to flee to Delhi during the Zia regime.

Prominent Sindhi writer Amar Jalil who received a standing ovation at his session read excerpts from his story ‘Oh, My God’, witty reflections on present politics through imaginary conversations with God.

He said he was born an Indian. “When young, I was told that the country is like a mother. I saw my Mother change from India to Pakistan”.

— aka




Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *