omrade, how are you?” Jamshed Irfan, one of the organisers at the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA), greeted us at 6 in the evening in front of Pak Tea House.

“We’re going to call the rest [of the comrades], you take a seat. We shall be starting [the event] within five minutes.” he continued.

We went inside. “It’ll start in an hour,” I told Areeba.

“Then why are we here so early?” she asked me.

“I wanted you to experience what it’s like to be part of leftist circles,” Irfan responded.

On the first floor of Pak Tea House, all the chairs were placed against the walls making a rectangle, a table and a few chairs for the panel on one side. This week’s session of PWA started 7:30-ish. It immediately reminded me of how Intezar Hussain in an essay had talked about the Pak Tea House of his time, where writers, painters, and thinkers were present all the time. All I could observe was the efforts of one named Javaid to engage the audience enough that they wouldn’t leave before the last panellist’s reading because otherwise it would imply that PWA’s audience didn’t have a taste for literature.

On a side note, shouldn’t it be the responsibility of the writer to keep the audience engaged? Was it Thanda Gosht that made sure that every Manto story would get the house full, or was it Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq’s network? To me, it’s the former.

Even though there are at least two weekly circles at Pak Tea House — PWA’s and Halqa Arbab-i-Zauq’s — it’s true that Pak Tea House doesn’t have the same literary vibe to it as I am told it once did.

To take a step back, all my concerns about this space could be summarised in two questions. First, why did the change that Intezar Hussain, too, felt — that is, the death of Lahore’s literary gatherings — happen? Second, based on the assumption that at any given time there are great minds to be found, where do they unwind and relax?

Perhaps, I’m being too ambitious in trying to answer these queries. One element common to both the queries is that free spaces have shrunk over time. Intezar Hussain also noted that in the post-Zia era, the literary circle hadn’t remained the same. Well, technically speaking, we are still living in a post-Zia era. Consider the law that says that anyone could be arrested if they said anything that’s not in line with the mainstream representation of Islam. It is enough to instill fear in the hearts of freethinking people.

Zahid Dar’s incident, as quoted by Intezar Hussain in an essay, is a metaphor for the entire intellectual scene in Pakistan. According to the writer, once at Pak Tea House, a person sporting a green turban interrupted Zahid Dar with some religious questions. Dar told him that he hadn’t invited him so the other person should leave him alone. The man with the green turban responded by saying how Muhammad Bin-Qasim had come to India without invitation. On hearing this fallacious argument, Dar immediately left the building. It’s a metaphor because the intellectuals of the time don’t even want to come forward and engage in public for fear (of persecution?) Most of them have left the building; others are trying to.

The sense of vulnerability in public domain has forced people with resources to create their own private spaces. For instance, The Last Word, a bookstore in DHA, organises intellectual and literary events where the participants discuss texts ranging from Metamorphosis to Moth Smoke and poets from Parveen Shakir to Sylvia Plath, which you can only attend by invitation. The events are marketed on Instagram only. There’s a security guard at the venue gate who will stare at you if you don’t ‘look’ like you’ve been invited.

Likewise, the bi-weekly Sangat Punjabi poetry circle, where one of the greatest Punjabi poets of our time, Najm Hosain Syed, joins the audience for a discussion on his poetry, is limited to a WhatsApp group which you can join only if your name is forwarded to the admin by a credible person. Your poet joins the audience twice a week in a circle that is heavily selective based on class, social background, and of course critical thinking. But the takeaway is that if one would attempt to organise such gatherings at Pak Tea House, it won’t even happen. Besides, there’s a likelihood that regressive thoughts will hijack the space and the venue will become unsafe for the people.

Those with more progressive and radical ideas are pushed even further into private pigeon-holes — in the homes of the influential, in posh housing societies. In that sense, it feels like we have regressed to old times when the culture was guarded by the elite rather than led by the common people.

What has happened in Pakistan is way bigger than the death of the literary circle. It’s absolutely the death of a nation, the death of 200 million souls, the death of minds that could think. In such a scenario it’s kind of funny to write a history of Pak Tea House because the last chapter of a biography is set in a graveyard, and that chapter of this book was written decades ago.

The writer is an artist, researcher, and journalist