MUCH can be said about the Punjab government’s unique responsiveness (or, rather, overcompensation) to the minor free for all encompassing an awkward model of Allama Iqbal in Gulshan-I-Iqbal Park, Lahore, pictures of which became a web sensation the moment they were transferred on the web. Much has been said about the alleged pitilessness of online media — given that some made sensible, if offensive, presumptions about likely abuse of public assets — when it happened that the recreation center’s landscapers had made it (on whose activity is as yet contested) as a modest accolade for our Mufakkir-I-Pakistan.
I don’t wish to harp on the last other than to say that if a couple of hours of public disparagement are everything necessary to evacuate a nonentity… (I leave it to perusers to fill in the clear.) As for the previous, I challenge any comedian to content a political difficult exercise as arresting as this. Nor do I wish to exhaust anybody with a resonating reflection on thinking about authorial aim or setting when deciphering craftsmanship. Indeed, the entire brouhaha has bothered me profoundly, in light of the fact that it diverts from the solitary thing I wished to do when I pitched this article: express the unalloyed bliss I encountered when I initially looked at this innocent, stylised figure.
To a philistine like me who has, truly, consistently been threatened by Iqbal, so thin and enviously monitored by patriot and strict universality, this portrayal felt enormously cordial and open. A concise web search later, I was watching recordings of park-goers energetically calling attention to it and get-together to take pictures. (In the event that, as a previous park official guaranteed, they tried to make a ‘selfie point’, at that point job well done.) Advocacy organizer and metropolitan planner Rida Khan and I talked about the opportunities for this one of a kind piece of public craftsmanship, trading draws imagining its utilization as a sculptural seat, if just they would free the Allama from his wired pen. That evening, I hit the hay overjoyed with the idea of public mushairas in the recreation center.
