No one will deny literary festivals are needed and many more of them in a city as big and diverse as Karachi.

For what it was worth, Karachi Literary Festival offered a liberal perspective on culture, books, and society; an opportunity for young people to become acquainted with the work of an iconic class of writers, lawyers, artists and activists such as I.A. Rehman, Arif Hasan, Asma Jehangir, Sheema Kirmani and others, before we lose them to oblivion.

There are clearly two generations of people who need to know about the history of political theatre, the leftist poetry of Jalib, documentations of the middle-man economy that rules Karachi, the HRCP research on human rights challenges, including missing persons, etc.

KLF, in that respect, provided a minimum level of exposure and literary political education.

But for the vampires, KLF offered little that was novel or intriguing, and what one couldn't find from a link on social media or the English newspaper.

I found, often, the discussion veering into banality. Recurrently, I wished, speakers had prepared their speeches. Being on stage, speaking to 500 listeners, comes with a responsibility, and one should not merely bank on timely revelation of brilliance and wit.