Khudi Festival of Ideas

No one would have thought that those three days spent in Octo­ber would cre­ate such beau­ti­ful mem­o­ries. Khu­di Pak­istan, in the con­ti­nu­ity of its tra­di­tion of orga­niz­ing won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties for youth, held a ‘Fes­ti­val of Ideas (FOI)’ this year. Gath­ered in the his­tor­i­cal city of Lahore were more than 200 youth from all over the coun­try with diverse back­grounds and inter­ests. The objec­tive was to debate, learn and share ideas of com­mon con­cern to us all. The pro­gram includ­ed debate shows, pan­el dis­cus­sions, work­shops, cul­tur­al per­for­mances and a film screen­ing – all in a space of 3 days –  cat­e­go­rized under the themes of ‘strug­gle’, ‘expres­sion’ and ‘vision’.

From the begin­ning of the Fes­ti­val, the cheer­ful faces of del­e­gates join­ing the FOI from Kash­mir to Karachi were enough to pre­dict some­thing amaz­ing for the upcom­ing few days. The event kicked off with an ‘ice­break­ing’ ses­sion led by Imran Khan. It pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for del­e­gates to inter­act with peers who had joined them from dif­fer­ent regions of Pak­istan. The refresh­ing open­ness and zeal expressed by every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed set the tone for the rest of the event, ensur­ing that spir­its would remain high for the upcom­ing three days.

With the ini­tial intro­duc­tions out of the way, del­e­gates grabbed their seats for a debate show that was to take place in the open air. Khu­di, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Express News chan­nel, has ini­ti­at­ed a series of inter­ac­tive and pro­duc­tive dis­cus­sions on var­i­ous top­ics in which pan­elists and stu­dents active­ly take part. This ses­sion was the very first in the series of shows to come. Renowned per­son­al­i­ties includ­ing Ayaz Amir, Dr. Meh­di Has­san, Ibtaisam Ilahi Zaheer and Hafiz Sala­man Butt joined as pan­elists to dis­cuss the top­ic “Does our edu­ca­tion sys­tem pro­mote hatred and vio­lence or peace and har­mo­ny?” Del­e­gates were also giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their opin­ion regard­ing this top­ic by vot­ing, com­ments and ques­tions.

Ajmal Jami, a young emerg­ing jour­nal­ist, host­ed the sec­ond day of the Fes­ti­val. After the norm set­ting a pan­el dis­cus­sion titled ‘How does democ­ra­cy work for me?’ engaged the audi­ence. Rab Nawaz from Khu­di mod­er­at­ed a live­ly con­ver­sa­tion by pan­elists Shamoon Hash­mi and Asad Jamal. Shamoon Hash­mi, who cur­rent­ly holds the des­ig­na­tion of joint sec­re­tary in the Nation­al Assem­bly, touched many top­ics from sec­tar­i­an killings to judi­cial activism while Asad Jamal, a legal prac­ti­tion­er, explored con­sti­tu­tion­al and ide­o­log­i­cal aspects of democ­ra­cy. Their views led to an engag­ing Q/A ses­sion with the del­e­gates.

The atmos­phere of the entire con­fer­ence became more cap­ti­vat­ing when Ayaz Amir, the famous colum­nist and politi­cian, gave a keynote speech. With sim­ple elo­quence, he focused on link­ing today’s prob­lems with his­tor­i­cal real­i­ties going back to the par­ti­tion of the Sub-Con­ti­nent. He end­ed on a moti­va­tion­al note on the role of youth and the impor­tance of knowl­edge as the cor­ner­stone of today’s soci­ety.

Tan­veer Jahan, a senior women’s rights activist and one of the founders of ‘Women Action Forum’ and cur­rent­ly the Direc­tor of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Com­mis­sion for Human Devel­op­ment, facil­i­tat­ed the ses­sion on women’s rights and gen­der relat­ed issues. She high­light­ed the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices com­mon in our soci­ety in the name of cul­ture, pep­per­ing her talk with wit­ty Pun­jabi anec­dotes along the way.

Now it was time for the ‘un-con­fer­ence’, where an open dis­cus­sion allowed the audi­ence to choose what­ev­er top­ics they wished to speak about. The atmos­phere cre­at­ed by the ‘un-con­fer­ence’ was one of live­ly dis­cus­sion, occa­sion­al bursts of laugh­ter and joy­ous claps.

One of the basic objec­tives of the Fes­ti­val was to train the par­tic­i­pants in some basic con­cepts and skills nec­es­sary for play­ing a pos­i­tive role in the soci­ety. To this end, a two hour ses­sion was ded­i­cat­ed to work­shops, to be facil­i­tat­ed by lead­ing indi­vid­u­als in their respec­tive fields. The del­e­gates were divid­ed into four groups accord­ing to their indi­vid­ual inter­est in the sub­jects of the work­shops. The top­ics and facil­i­ta­tors of the work­shops were:

1. ‘Cre­ativ­i­ty’ by Shahid Nadeem of Ajo­ka The­ater
2. ‘Entre­pre­neur­ship’ by Farhan Masood of Solo Tech Corp
3. ‘Activism’ by Taimur Rehman of Laal Band
4. ‘Edu­ca­tion’ by Tariq Rah­man, a renowned writer and aca­d­e­m­ic

Work­shops enabled the audi­ence to gain an under­stand­ing of these fields and how they can pitch in to uti­lize their tal­ents and make a dif­fer­ence. In the end, each group was giv­en a small project to work on and was tasked with giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion the fol­low­ing day.

The evening was reserved for cul­tur­al per­for­mances. Among loud applause, it kicked off with a mes­mer­iz­ing Kathak per­for­mance. The first beat of the music trans­formed the seri­ous envi­ron­ment into one of rev­el­ry and joy. Both the per­form­ers, Ham­mad and Iqbal, beau­ti­ful­ly syn­chro­nized their foot­work with the enchant­i­ng rhythm and lyrics of the famous Bol­ly­wood qawwali ‘Kun Fayakun’. They left the stage amid the enthralling slo­gans of “Once More, Once More”.

The surg­ing emo­tions of the audi­ence were put on a seri­ous track once more with a very pow­er­ful and thought pro­vok­ing the­ater per­for­mance titled ‘Dekh Tamasha Chal­ta Ban’. Orig­i­nal­ly an Ajo­ka The­ater pro­duc­tion, Khu­di col­lab­o­rat­ed in Dekh Tamasha in terms of caste and pro­duc­tion to make it a joint pro­duc­tion.

Dekh Tamasha brings to light the over­bear­ing influ­ence of the reli­gious estab­lish­ment in our soci­ety. Using mod­ern tech­niques in which actors emerge out of the audi­ence, the play dra­ma­tizes a wild chase for per­se­cut­ing minori­ties and oppo­nents in the name of blas­phe­my. With fierce act­ing by pow­er­ful actors garbed in tra­di­tion­al cos­tumes, and grip­ping, polem­i­cal dia­logues, the per­for­mance left a last­ing impact on the audi­ence.

The cul­tur­al per­for­mances after the play, how­ev­er, soon exten­u­at­ed the seri­ous­ness. Now the time came for the del­e­gates to appear indi­vid­u­al­ly and in groups to per­form their respec­tive cul­tur­al and tra­di­tion­al dances. Some of them mimed while oth­ers sang and danced with orig­i­nal themes and com­po­si­tions.

The theme of the third and final day was ‘vision’ host­ed by Ali Abbas Zai­di of Khu­di. Four groups select­ed ear­li­er dur­ing work­shop ses­sion dom­i­nat­ed the time in giv­ing pre­sen­ta­tions and answer­ing the ques­tions on their respec­tive theme.

Final­ly, the Khu­di Team took the stage to brief the audi­ence about the objec­tives and upcom­ing plans of Khu­di. The pas­sion of the del­e­gates in work­ing with Khu­di and/or col­lab­o­rat­ing on their own ideas with Khu­di was a tes­ta­ment to the incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence they had had at the Fes­ti­val.

Del­e­gates were also shown a doc­u­men­tary on the life and strug­gle of Malala and her fam­i­ly pri­or to being attacked by the Tal­iban this Octo­ber. The immense suf­fer­ing of Malala’s fam­i­ly and the peo­ple of Swat dur­ing the tur­bu­lent time of the Tal­iban occu­pa­tion sad­dened every soul and brought many to tears. Taimur Rehman of Laal Band then engaged the audi­ence with an upbeat musi­cal per­for­mance that focused on the rev­o­lu­tion­ary words of Faiz and Jal­ib.

Final­ly, after clos­ing remarks by Khu­di, del­e­gates were invit­ed to stage an imme­di­ate protest in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Malala. Under the ban­ner ‘Ideas are Bul­let­proof’, the del­e­gates head­ed to Lib­er­ty round­about. The youth­ful ebul­lience was worth watch­ing as they chant­ed slo­gans for Malala and against Tal­iban­iza­tion.

But apart from all this, the logis­ti­cal man­age­ment, deli­cious food, live social media updates on the pro­jec­tor by Umair Vahidy, vol­un­teers in Khu­di t‑shirts, chats at lunch­es and din­ners, and the dozens of pic­tures tak­en made the FOI a tru­ly unfor­get­table event.  Those who missed it must regret not being there. For me, it was cer­tain­ly the event of the year!

—Writ­ten By Qurat-ul-Ain Zai­di

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 6)