Art & Culture: Team back from Lahore

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Amritsar, March 11

Four eminent names from the city in field of literature and art were part of the Indian delegation that was invited to attend the sixth Faiz Festival held from March 4 to March 6 in Lahore.

The team from Majha House comprising poet Arvinder Chamak, Sarbjot Singh Behl, Majha House founder Preeti Gill and Kulminder Gill were invited from India. The other Indian participants were filmmakers Muzzafar and Meera Ali and writer and actor Atul Tewari.

This was the first cultural engagement between the two countries after a long time and the team from the city also participated in a literary session at the festival.

Faiz Festival was organised by Faiz’s daughter Salima Hashmi. Sharing their experiences from the event, Preeti said the festival had many noted literary names from Pakistan and opened with an exhibition of photographs of Faiz, giving glimpses of his life, with friends and family followed by a play on Manto’s stories performed by Shaheed Nadeem’s Ajoka Theatre Group. Renowned singer Tahira Syed also recited Faiz’s poetry.

Introducing ‘Sanjha Punjab’, Majha House’s cross-border series at the festival, Preeti Gill said the aim was to encourage thinkers, young generation to continue the exchange of ideas between the two countries.

“The Sanjha Punjab series was started in May 2020, to facilitate cross-border conversations. It sprang from a desire to use shared heritage to build linkages in a variety of ways. I feel we need to move beyond the tragedies of Partition to find new ways to connect,” she said. She said they received a good response for their literary initiatives.

Majha House presented a session on Sanjha Punjab with participants from both Chardha (east) and Lehnda (West) Punjab, a term that is popularly used to describe the two Punjabs that got divided during Partition. Two poets from the city — Sarbjot Singh Behl and Arvinder Chamak — also performed at the festival.