First Pakistan pavilion ever at an Indian book fair

The ground reality, strong and firm beneath the dulcet notes of diplomatic diatribes and foreign office blessed trains, buses and cricket matches is that Allama Mohammad Iqbal may still be the most sought after Urdu poet on this side of the border. If the marketplace is the best yardstick of popular predilection, he definitely is, because Iqbal seems to be omniscient at the Pakistan pavilion of the Delhi Book Fair this year.

“Other poets are in demand too,” protests a marketing executive at Ferozsons, which have been publishing out of Lahore since 1894, even as a senior citizen in a flowing white beard walks up to him to enquire of the last of Mohammad Iqbal’s books. Looking for Ferozesons at the wrong end of the fair…