LAHORE dozes in the summer. In spring, it comes alive with lit fests. The Faiz Festival occupied last weekend; the Lahore LitFest the next. In between, there has been the Horse & Cattle Show in the Fortress Stadium. Once the showcase for Punjab`s agricultural livestock and agroproduce, it has been revived as a showpiece by the tinsel Punjab government, supported by the establishment. Hardly had the dust settled in the Fortress Stadium when it was raised again by Buzkashi horsemen from Chitral and Gilgit. Lahore`s cerebrum throbs with activity.

The Faiz Festival is an annual reminder of FaizAhmadFaiz`sfecundity-asaninspirational poet, a smoking revolutionary, a noble humanist trapped between a demanding Muse and an unpoetic officialdom. His festival is 10 years old. It needs another 90 more to do justice to his literary legacy.

Faiz sahib (1911-1984) belonged to the 20th century. His appeal remains timeless and ageless, to judge from the span of generations that crowded into the Alhamra Art Centre over Feb 14-16. Youth provided vitality. Age and experience received veneration.

The Faiz Fest began with a roof-raising performance by the singing idol Shafgat Amanat Khan. The seventh of his Patiala gharana line, Shafgat showed how tradition can be adapted to the demands of the 21st century. His audience sang along with him in a mass karaoke, and then, after he handed the microphone to them, individual voices crooned what they trill in the bath.

Each day`s programme began with a dance performance by students of the Lahore Grammar School. Synchronised to perfection, they performed with openarmed confidence. Dance is definitely for the supple and young at heart.

Perhaps no one alive can match the effortless erudition of two poets Zehra Nigah and Iftikhar Arif. They are to modern Urdu what Shakespeare was to the English language, Victor Hugo to French poetry, and Pushkin to Russian verse. To hear them dilate on Faiz`s poetry and the plaintive marsias of Mir Anees was to be raised to a lofty empyrean, above the dust and clamour of gray modernity.

A session each brought two legends to life Saadat Hasan Manto and Bapsi Sidhwa. Biopics on Manto`s work were discussed by the gamine Indian actress/ director Nandita Das and her bubbly Pakistani counterpart Sarmad Khoosat. Their films viewed Manto`s genius through different but complementary lenses. Another session paid tribute to the novelist Bapsi Sidhwa who died recently.

Time was devoted to translations of Faiz sahib and other writers, to the launch ofsingle-parent books by authors, films, and drama, and on gender issues.

Guests from India (a rarity nowadays) added spice to Lahore`s jaded palate. Two mellifluous performances by Aranyani Bhargav and by Dr Swarnamalya Ganesh restored the Bharatnatyam to a Lahore stage. This evocative form of dance was commonplace before 1947. Now, it is as rare as a prancing unicorn.

A perennial friend of Lahore the Indian writer / actor Atul Tiwari paid homage to the late film director Shyam Benegal. He presented Benegal as the `gentleman` behind the camera. Tiwari spoke again in another session, on the challenges of writing for the screen. Indian cinema is a misnomer, he explained. There are many centres other than Mumbai. It is known as the Cinemas of India, rather as King Charles III prefers to be Defender of Faiths, not of the Faith.

If the singer Shafgat Amanat raised the roof on the first day, three equally modern stars of social media brought the house down on the last. The trio of bloggers -Syed Muzammil, Uzma Rumi, and Faisal Warraich formed a panel on Politics & Social Media. No one could doubt their popularity. Their hall was packed, filling even the steep aisles. Giventhe chance, the audience would have defied gravity and squatted on the ceiling.

Eachonthepanelspokeinthelanguage of the 21st century, using a vocabulary Faiz sahib would not have understood. He would though have lauded the passion that erupted through their forceful opinions.

Each LitFest offers its own fare. The ThinkFest provides a platform to social scientists. The Faiz Festival offers a pulpit to poets and writers. The forthcoming Lahore Lit Fest from Feb 21-23 will yield the stage to a wider spectrum of scholars and academics from around the world.

`Why can`t we write like them?` an attendee asked. They should have paid attention to Zehra Nigah when she quoted Allama Iqbal`s riposte to someone who asked whether the Holy Quran was in fact a revelation. ``Of course. Isn`t unbidden poetry proof enough?` Lit fests are manmade, but the inspiration that drives authors, poets, and creative minds however is undeniably, invisibly a whisper from the divine.

The wúter, an author, was a speaker at the Faiz Festival www.fsaijazuddin.pk