The Anatomy of a performance

Crazy plans, usually, are made in the most calm moments. 

It was on a nice, pre-summer evening, somewhere in early April. It is that time of the year when the weather in Karachi is not monstrous and one can enjoy a smoke and chit chat in the great outdoors (read: terrace) with friends. While conversation flowed between hubby dear, Z and myself, one of us (I forget who) asked rather innocently if we could put up a new narrative performance this year?

The other two nodded nonchalantly at first but with each passing minute the desire to create something overcame all rational thoughts and a performance started materializing. Books were taken off the shelf, dim lights were replaced by reading lamps and the music was turned low. Discussions followed over the merits and demerits of various pieces. Plans were made and the night ended on a high note. 

Days turned into weeks and months and finally the seed that was planted in April took on a serious form in July and by early August the narrative performance was all set to happen. Dates were locked, essays selected and all was well with the world.

Or so it seemed. 

The first task is to choose the right actor for a piece. Matching the actors with the essays sounds like a pretty dangerous task and it is. In our case, thankfully, it isn't. Both our actors usually want the 'other' one to have the better piece. Unbelievable, right? It is such a relief that we usually perform with two actors only otherwise this 'Lucknavi style' of you, no you would just go on forever. 

Rehearsals are not fun when you have the job of deciding the venue, time, arrangements, menu (actors require nourishment), and then also take into account unforeseen events like strike by oil tankers = petrol pumps closed = no petrol = actors can't reach rehearsal. And then also keep your cool! Who said life was fair?

While the rehearsals are going on the rest of the team has to ensure everything else is in place and it doesn't help if it's only a one man team. So while rehearsals happened, it was my job to promote the event and ensure people turn up. There is no surety that people will come and it certainly doesn't help when every night hubby dear wonders out loud if anyone will even come to see the performance. If there is one surety it is the onslaught of nightmares which will continue till the performance. 

The day of the performance is madness, to say the least. Getting everything in order is no easy task. Costumes, props, lights, music etc. Of course one person in the group usually ends up taking most of the stress and that, in our case, is yours truly. 

Post performance is a time for both celebration and a bit of performance appraisal. The former usually happens on the final day and mostly it is more of a collective sigh of relief than anything else. At least until the next time one can bask in the glory of a successful performance (and not check Facebook to see how many likes have come on the pictures/videos every two hours!).

[That one question which started the entire exercise culminated into two nights of great performances by our theatre group, Qissah Farosh. For details, pics and video, click here]. 

A Far Cry from Kensington - Book #1

[I finished the first book and the reason there is no post to show for it is because I'm taking too much time on writing it. I always find writing the review of a Spark novel rather daunting so while I am working on that, I thought I'd share some gems from the novel.]

It being Ramzan I thought it'll be a good idea to share some dieting tips followed by the protagonist, Mrs. Hawkins, to lose weight and trust me when I say she had a LOT of it to lose. Here is how she describes herself in the opening chapter:

"I was massive in size, strong-muscles, huge bosomed, with wide hips, hefty long legs, a bulging belly and fat backside; I carried an ample weight with my five-foot-six of height, and was healthy with it."

She continues, "As an aside, I can tell you that if there's nothing wrong with you except fat it is easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half. If you are handed a plate of food, leave half; if you have to help yourself, take half". 

How about we all follow this golden rule and so not fill ourselves senseless with fried food and carbonated drinks this Ramzan?

15/15/30 Revisited - The Booklist this Year

Here it is. The reading material for the 15/15/30 Revisited project. It's not actually 15 books yet...still looking for two other reads. Any of your favourites here?

15/15/30 Revisited

Last year, round about the same time, I decided to undertake a reading challenge. I called it 15/15/30 which stood for 15 books, 15 blogs, 30 days. Ambitious? Hell, yes! Not because of lack of time but probably lack of motivation. Once I stacked the books and posted the picture the reality of the challenge hit me. After two books my reading karma fizzled out and the books went back to their respective shelves (to mostly gather dust). 

This year I've decided to have a go at this challenge...again! Unlike last time, I put some thought into this. Actually it was one thought only, select a book which is under or at 200 pages. Anything that is 250 or above is not a good idea. And yea, include re-reads.

So far, I've made a list of 13 books which I shall unveil tomorrow. Another thing I will unveil is my big summer book giveaway. 

First of Ramazan promises to be very exciting! 

Of Travels and Destinations - Dubai (Wrap-up Post)

Conversations with taxi drivers in the Dubai trip provided the much needed insight about the place beyond its glitter. There was one taxi driver who told me how this job had helped his family back home and enabled him to build his house, marry off his sister and send his children to school. Then there was the one who explained, with great detail, how various nationalities behaved towards drivers - with foreigners (read: goras) being the most polite and leaving substantial tips and Arabs being the worst. Pakistanis and Indians were mostly rude, especially the affluent ones who considered taxi drivers as some alien species and not humans.

I like Dubai. Mostly because of my family and friends who live there and who made this trip such a memorable one. And yes, I admit, I like the shopping too. But there are various sides to Dubai and not all of them are glamorous. As tourists we don't get to see the apartment buildings where people share tiny flats and don't have central air-conditioning. Take a ride on the metro and you'll see tired, expressionless faces and glazed eyes as the metro takes them by shiny malls and hotels. They are, however, assured of one thing. No one will stop them on their way home and snatch their belongings at gun point.

Sometimes for peace of mind, you have to pay a price. 

Down and Out in Karachi

You know that feeling in your throat when it seems all dry and itchy and a little voice in your head whispers that you might be coming down with something and your cook is off on his weekly holiday and you want soup but there isn't anyone to make it and your mom doesn't pick up the phone and the restaurant you go to serves all kinds of fancy soups but not chicken corn soup and you end up having too many throat lozenges and then you remember the homeopathic medicine your grandfather told you about and luckily, you have it in your medicine box and you chug it down hoping that all will be well the next day.

Unless.......

Of Travels and Destinations - Dubai Part III

Within three hours of landing in Dubai, I was at the mall and in the make up store. It's easy to explain why: I needed to buy makeup. Why the urgency? Simple, because I had none. And the reason I had hardly any makeup was because on a similar getaway trip to Dubai I had made in the first weekend of April, the airline had lost my luggage. 

The airline has still not officially declared the luggage as lost. They are hoping to find it so they are spared making the compensation payment (which is peanuts....I mean, how can they put a price on the emotional attachment I had with my stuff? sniff! sniff!). I've kind of gone through all the stages involved in losing a piece of luggage; denial, more denial, hope, anger, frustration (usually involves the question, why me?), resignation, sliver of hope and finally, acceptance. 

Living in Downtown Dubai (I almost wrote Downton...and I'm not even a fan!) is very convenient. Dubai Mall is just minutes away! And it has the answer to all your shopping needs, more or less. It certainly had the answer to my needs and once we were done with the much needed bathroom trip, we stepped out of the house, hailed a taxi and off we went to Dubai mall. Our driver was from Peshawar and as soon as we told him we were from Karachi he asked, MQM? It is at times like these that one feels like, well....anyone living in this city would know what one feels like when asked this question.

So this taxi driver, Faiyaaz, was living and working in Dubai for the past 17 years. He told us how the entire Downtown area was all a desert wasteland and now they had made it into this concrete wonderland. We chit chatted about Pakistan, Karachi, Peshawar, etc and in under ten minutes, he deposited us at the mall entrance and refused to take money from us. You are our guests here, he said, politely shaking his head. We shook our heads too, politely thanked him for his gesture, made a small speech on how we couldn't rob him of his livelihood, handed him the money and stepped out of the taxi.

In all my trips to Dubai over the past five years I've never met a taxi driver who refused to take money from me. The gesture was very sweet and it gave me a bit of hope. There are still people out there who think from their heart, and are sentimental of sorts. There is good in this world and if you're good too, there is no reason why you won't run into some goodness now and then!

Dubai is a perfect example of how so many different people from different parts of the world can live in one place. I'm going to hold onto this thought for a bit and talk about it in detail in later posts. Meanwhile, in Travel and Destinations part IV: my detailed conversation with another taxi driver to find out the truth about why Pakistani taxi drivers harass Pakistani clients. 

1999 - the year I stopped watching cricket

I was in Karachi in 1999, preparing for my IBA entrance test which meant that I had ample time on my hands to watch ALL the matches of the Cricket World Cup. I was at my grandmother's house and with all cousins over for holidays there was a big, festive gathering which sat down to watch each match. Over tea, snacks and Cadbury fruit and nut chocolate, we discussed the merits of our team versus the rest of the world. 

And what a team it was! A solid fast pace 'killer' bowling attack in the form of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar, Azhar Mahmood, and Abdur Razzaq. And an equally solid spin attack with the veteran Mushtaq Ahmed and the spin maestro & pioneer of 'doosra', Saqlain Mushtaq. Moin Khan was the perfect keeper. The batting line up had veterans like Salim Malik, Ijaz Ahmed and of course Inzi. Lending support to the veterans were Saeed Anwar, Yousuf Youhana and the young Shahid Afridi. What a team! 

It was one of the first (and last) Cricket World Cup in which I followed all the matches, kept a tab on scores of teams, and even made notes of high scoring batsmen and top wicket takers. [Saeed Anwar was one of the leading run scorers in the tournament while Saqlain Mushtaq was among the highest wicket takers.]

Steve Waugh & Wasim Akram before the final.

Our team did surprisingly and amazingly well. The loss to Bangladesh was avoidable but just three losses to the final wasn't so bad. And what a super victory we had over New Zealand in the semi-final! There was no doubt in my mind and probably in the minds of almost all Pakistanis that we were bringing the World Cup home.

The final was a total anti-climax and with a few exceptions, probably one of the most disappointing match I've ever witnessed in my life. It was like our team was drugged or under a spell. When the batting failed, there was hope that the bowling attack will rip the Aussies apart. But it was not to be and we lost, miserably. It wasn't the loss that hurt as much as the manner in which we lost. Every effort seemed half-hearted. It was as if the team had come prepared to throw away the match. 

I don't know why we lost. Maybe the team was suffering from a bad hangover. Maybe they all got off from the wrong side of the bed or a black cat passed in front of the team bus just when they were stepping out to play. Or maybe someone, the captain perhaps, decided to throw away the final to earn an extra buck. 

Whatever it was, 1999 was the last year when I took cricket seriously. 

And in the present circumstances, it seems like a great decision!

Image: Google

Nostalgia post-Karachi jalsa

The first time I went to a big gathering that featured Imran Khan was in Quetta - 1992. He was the captain of the cricket team and they were on a tour all over Pakistan with the World Cup. The details escape me but we all went to cheer the team. While my brothers and father stood on the road looking out for the truck (containers weren't the mode of travel then) carrying the team and the cup, my mother and I went into a girls college where the team was due to make the first stopover before going to the main gathering area or ground. There was a lot of excitement of course but the logistics were such a nightmare that we all came back home without catching a glimpse of the team. Going there and being in the thick of the action was enough to inspire me to write a poem on IK. I don't have it with me now but I think the first few lines went something like 'Imran Khan is a great Pathan....' and so on. At 12 years of age, rhyming is very important. 

22 years later.....

Yesterday was the third time I went to a big gathering which featured Imran Khan. The urgency and excitement was similar to that of 1992. Then, the 12 year old me had wanted to catch a glimpse of the team and the cup. However, the present me went to show solidarity with a cause. A cause that, we hope, will bring a change. A cause that, I believe, has brought a change. When people of all ages and all social backgrounds can come together in front of the Quaid's mausoleum without any fear, on a humid Karachi day, that IS representative of the change that is seeping into our lives.

I voted for PTI in the last elections because I want a new Pakistan. But I also know that IK doesn't have a magic wand that will change everything. He is the harbinger of change. He can only do this much. It is up to us, through our actions, to bring the real change. For the simple truth is that Naya Pakistan, or something similar, is a dream which we've all had at some point. 

The question is can we play a role, no matter how small, to make the hope and dreams of a better future into a reality? 

How real is The Real Life of Sebastian Knight?

When I was selecting books for the 15/15/30 project, I wanted to select female authors only, 2014 being the 'Year of Reading Women'. But I was short by three books (which was a reminder that I must read more female authors) and looking around the shelf in the last days before the challenge I came across this Nabakov novel which I'd just bought from States and I decided to add it to the reading pile along with Wodehouse and Thurber. 

It wasn't a good idea. 

Before I go on I want to make it clear that I have nothing against Nabakov. Some of his books are amazing reads (Laughter in the Dark, King, Queen, Knave) while others are a punishment (Pale Fire). I had great expectations from this book especially after reading the blurb, which started off saying:

'The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magical literary detective story - subtle, intricate, leading to a tantalising climax - about the mysterious life of a famous writer'.

So I fell in the trap. Wouldn't you? 'Magical literary detective story', 'tantalising climax', 'mysterious life' and finally, 'famous writer'. All the ingredients that make a perfect read. But in reality it turned out to be a very odd sort of detective story with a climax which was far from tantalising about a writer who was not in the Rowling or Gaiman category. The blurb, however, failed to mention that this novel was partially autobiographical and full of nerdy chess references. 

The first mystery in this detective story is the detective/narrator who is the half brother of the dead writer Sebastian Knight. He has made it his mission to write a book on Knights' life although he has no experience in writing whatsoever. Besides love and admiration for his half-brother, what is driving our narrator to write this book? Guilt? Or a desire to set the record straight about his half-brother's life? We never really find out. While filling in the gaps, our narrator stumbles upon information about a 'femme fatale' who destroyed Knight - personally and professionally. The hunt for this wanton woman and the subsequent meeting with her provides some interesting moments in the book. The end was indeed 'baffling' and  far from being 'uniquely rewarding' as the blurb promised. 

Even though I couldn't understand a lot of references Nabakov was trying to make, the beauty of his prose did leave me in awe at some places. Also, his dark humour was very entertaining especially the summary of Knight's first novel, The Prismatic Bazel.

What I loved and laughed over the most was this perfect description of 'the whimsical wanton that ruins a foolish man's life'. 

'Books mean nothing to a woman of her kind; her own life seems to her to contain the thrills of a hundred novels. Had she been condemned to spend a whole day shut up in a library she would have been found dead about noon'.

This was Book #2 of the 15/15/30 project. For a review of Nabakov's 'King, Queen, Knave' read here. 

Jeeves is Always Right!

How Right You Are, Jeeves and how I wish you were my butler!

When people ask me which book changed your life I'm at a loss to answer. But if there is ever a mood changer, it's the wonderful world of Wodehouse novels. Especially that inhabited by the foolish simpleton Wooster and the great man himself, Jeeves. The man who reads Spinoza, quotes Hamlet, prefers Dostoevsky's work and has a solution to every problem known to mankind.

This book is a perfect example of the 'idyllic world created by Wodehouse' although Bertie might have a thing or two to say on this. The action takes place in Brinkley Court, the country house of Bertie's Aunt Dahlia. Bertie is summoned by the 'old ancestor' to keep an eye on the various 'inmates' in the 'old snake pit'.  An American playboy (Willie Cream) and his mother, a famous detective writer Adela Cream, are among the guests at the large house. Also present is Bertie's headmaster from his Malvern House days, Mr. Aubrey Upjohn, and his stepdaughter, Phyllis. But the most dangerous presence of all is that of young Bobbie Wickham, the one of whom Jeeves rightly said, 'I would always hesitate to recommend as a life partner a young lady with quite such a vivid shade of hair'.

The silver cow creamer jug (Wodehouse readers will be familiar with this grotesque prized possession of Bertie's Uncle Tom) makes its appearance also and creates bucketsful of trouble for Wooster. Hearts are asunder, engagements made and broken but no Jeeves around to fix it all until better sense prevails and Bertie decides to fetch Jeeves from his holiday at Herne Bay where the butler was, among other things, judging a seaside bathing-belles contest. Which comes as a relief because how can a man only survive on Spinoza?

No matter how high or low the tide, once Jeeves is around the solution is not far behind. Something of the sort happens here too and the day is saved at the cost of declaring Bertie 'off the rocker', a 'kleptomaniac' and a 'man who has lost his marbles'. But Bertie bears it all in good stead if it helps the business deal of his dear Uncle Tom with Homer Cream (BIG American Tycoon). It was his Uncle Tom who used to send Bertie postal orders, sometimes for as much as ten bob, in the miserable Malvern House days. And Wooster is always there for his family. Even Aunt Agatha, 'who is known to devour her young and conduct human sacrifices at the time of the full moon'. 

Some might accuse the Bertie and Jeeves novels of being repetitive but that is an incorrect and unacceptable view. They have a timeless quality about them. And even if they don't change your life, they will always change your mood for the better. 

Always. 

Image: Google

This was Book #1 of the 15/15/30 project. For more Jeeves and Wooster reviews on the blog read here and here. 

15/15/30

15 books, 15 blogs, 30 days. 

You can join this crazy challenge too. All you need are fifteen books, a blog and some super reading powers. If you have a blog, please post a link in the comments below so that I (and maybe others) can  check out your reads. In case you don't have a blog, join the Facebook page (15/15/30) or follow the #15/15/30 on twitter. 

Let the reading..BEGIN! 

Photograph by Farheen Zehra

Think, write, read, create...

....and live in the moment, all through this new year.

The Hijra with a Cleft lip

Tonight, while out doing some quick shopping at Zamzama, a hijra (transsexual) walked up to me asking for money. I quickly walked into a shop to avoid him. When I walked out a few minutes later, the hijra was still there and on spotting me came forward again. I walked towards another shop and kept saying no to all his requests. Before stepping into the shop, I turned around and said to him: 'You are able bodied. Why don't you find some work instead of begging like this'.

The horror of my statement hit me within minutes. I went through my purse, took out a fifty rupee note and decided to give it to him. But when I stepped out of the shop, the hijra had left.

I still haven't been able to forget the expression on his face. I don't remember many details of his appearance except that he was quite decent, unlike the ones who are begging at the Teen Talwar signal. He had a cleft lip which he had tried to cover up as much as possible with white powder. 

Have I become so indifferent to my surroundings that I told him off with instructions to find a job? I mean, in all seriousness, who will give this person a job? Me? You? I understand that handing out money to them is not a solution. Maybe even the hijra I met today might have just blown the money on booze or drugs. But maybe, just maybe, he might have bought some food for himself and some friends. 

It is easy for us to walk away from them in shopping areas or turn a deaf ear when they tap on our car windows at traffic signals. But the truth is that they are as much a part of this society and this city as we are and as humans, they have an equal right to live. Just because we were born normal and in a good household doesn't make us better or superior. And even though doling out money is not, like I said, a solution; I will be on the lookout for this hijra tomorrow evening.   

The Circle of Death

I've written a post on the DWL blog in the 'Write for Justice' section on the very tragic incident of Abbas Town. Karachi, the city of lights, is dark and gloomy now. Read the article here. 

End the Silence

I am a Muslim.

But are you Shia or Sunni?

Does it matter?

Whenever I was asked this question in school, I tried to give a neutral answer. But some curious classmates won’t take a neutral answer. And then they asked the most bizarre questions. Do you sacrifice children during the month of Muharram? Or the red sherbet you sell outside Imambargahs, is it the blood of little boys and girls? I would laugh at these questions and tell them that the sherbet was certainly good old Rooh Afza and the only creatures we sacrificed in the name of religion were goats/cows/lambs etc., just like Sunni people on Bari Eid.

It doesn’t seem so any longer. Our sacrifice, in the name of religion, is not just limited to Eid-ul-Azha.

While thousands are protesting on Alamdar Road in Quetta beside their dead, the rest of us are going on with our lives. Imagine, for one horrific second, yourself standing in the cold beside the body of a loved one. It is something you will refuse to imagine. The old men in Quetta, fathers standing against the bodies of their young sons, never imagined it too.

They are Muslims.

They are Shia.

They are also Pakistanis.

And it seems that they are paying a price for all the above.

If we don’t raise our voice for them today, it shall be us tomorrow, regardless of our religion or beliefs.

Raise your voice against this injustice today, now. That is what matters most!

Sights & Sounds of Karachi - Morning scene

The city of Karachi was, once upon a time, known as the city of lights. At present, it is the city of no-lights, and almost no-delights.

As the sun rises and its rays penetrate through the grey smoke which permanently hangs over the city, all Karachi’s faults are exposed. Ours is a plain city; blemished and tarnished by years of abuse and neglect. And at no time is this more prominent than in the mornings when the entire city, with its sins, is bathed in golden rays of sunshine.

The look of the streets in the morning varies according to your location in the city. In some residential areas the streets bear the same look every day. Sweepers, their dark complexions in complete contrast with their bright orange jackets, sweep (or pretend to) the dust from one corner of the street to another. The milkman (an almost extinct species in the more affluent parts of the city) and the newspaper boy make their daily rounds.  Birds chirp merrily in the trees, crows circle around some burnt garbage and there is the occasional barking of a stray dog. Nothing seems out of the ordinary on this rather typical bourgeois street.

Change your location to the opposite end of the city and the morning scene is a complete antithesis of the above. Sunlight might reveal a few bullet marks in your courtyard wall and maybe some bullets, too, thanks to the wedding in your neighbourhood the night before. There is no electricity because the transformer caught fire during the celebratory firing in the wee hours of the morning. The street outside your door is filled with remnants of the wedding; chicken bones, paper plates, tissue papers, golden tinsel and condoms. Stray dogs and cats are all over the place, gnawing at the bones and fighting with each other. Nothing seems out of the ordinary as long as you and your family are alive.  

In case your house is located on the same street as a school, regardless of your geographical location, you will be under house arrest till the school starts. Every nook of the road is covered with school vans playing loud Indian music, honking at pedestrians and other drivers to find a spot right in front of the gate. Unless the school is slightly upscale, you might find the road blocked a little longer as the van drivers take their breakfast in the nearby local tea- shop and compare notes about fares.

There are some streets in this city which are blocked to public thanks to embassies and politicians. There are other streets where the rich drive by homeless people; the former in their shiny cars while the latter are curled up in tattered blankets. Here, also, you will, occasionally, find body bags behind garbage dumps in the corner of the street.

Most streets in the city are broken or encroached. The latter are occupied by all sorts of people; vegetable vendors, card readers, quacks offering a cure for all diseases known to man, book sellers, stalls of social workers, masons, carpenters, beggars and even lawyers. The street is their office, their source of livelihood and in some cases, their entire world.

There are blood stained streets during Eid-ul-Adha, and betel stained streets throughout the year. Some streets have pavements while others are barely paved. Some house the rich and famous while others wound through shanty towns. Each street is different but the sun rises for all and its rays illuminate the world for all living creatures in the city, regardless of which side of the bridge their street is.

I wrote this piece for a competition by British Council to celebrate the birth centennial of Charles Dickens. Inspired from his work, Sketches by Boz, the piece was titled Streets by Morning. I am, and this is pretty ambitious thinking on my part considering my recent period of inactivity, planning to do some sketches of Karachi - of the people, the places & generally, mundane events. 

Meeting Mohammad Hanif

‘What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it’. (Holden Caulfield – The Catcher in the Rye)

I decided to go one step ahead of Holden and met the author in person. Liberty Books had arranged a book reading of Mohammad Hanif’s ‘Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’ on Sunday evening (25^th Sept, 2011). Here are some bits and pieces of his conversation with Muneeza Shamsie about his book, religion and the writing process in general.

M.S: In your first book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Ali Shigri (the protagonist) is thrown in a dungeon where he meets a blind Zainab and the General Secretary of the Sweeper’s Association. In ‘Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’, Zainab is the mother of one of the characters, Noor, and Alice’s father is a sweeper. Was this a coincidence?

M.H: No, it wasn’t a coincidence. I was trying to create a new fictional world which is messed up in a different way. I must have missed Zainab. Maybe there was a kind of yearning for her, the kind people have once they leave their lovers and then want a glimpse of them years later.

M.S: What came first? Zainab, Alice Bhatti or the General Secretary of the Sweeper’s Association?

M.H: These characters (Zainab, General Secretary) were gone and dead in the previous book. Shigri, I saved, maybe for a sequel to write when one is desperate and old and needs money. Alice came first as a glimmer or memory of someone I’d seen once. Her voice came first. She was called something else and then I changed her name and she started working for me. For one and a half year there was just Alice and nobody else, just a nurse in a hospital room.

M.S: Alice refers constantly to her faith in the book...

M.H: I wasn’t interested in a faith vs. faith scenario. People have a very personal relationship with their faith. It varies with age and gender. I was obsessing about the kind of personal relationship people have with their God. I was interested in those shades, when one believes and doesn’t and at what stage of life this happens. The idea was not to make fun of religion because already it is quite cartoonish.

M.S: Alice is a nurse. Is there any analogy with Florence Nightingale?

M.H: I’m not a big fan of Florence Nightingale or Mother Teresa although they might be very nice people. I’ve spent time in hospitals like many of us do. I’ve seen these nurses; women working at 4am without any boss or CCTV to monitor them but still doing the best they can. I was impressed by an average professional nurse working in a government hospital.

M.S: And what about Teddy Butt?

M.H: He’s a bit of every man. He has all these urges that get mixed up. He never kind of says what he really feels. He’s kind of hopeless in a way. If you live in Karachi long enough it is possible to meet someone like him, a friend of a friend who pretends to be a sort of gangster. You know the type who’d try to sell you a stolen vehicle or something.

M.S: You had to shut off the journalist in you when writing A Case of Exploding Mangoes. The nature of journalism actually gives you access to people and places. How do these observations creep into your fiction?

M.H: I’m not a crime journalist or a murder scene type reporter. I’ve never reported from a hospital. If you live in Karachi long enough you meet people like rogue doctors who drink and smoke before going in the operation theatre. When you sit down to write, old conversations come into your mind and help in developing the story. As a journalist, you also know when to shut up. But with television now, nobody really shuts up. They go on and on and....

M.S: What impels you to write fiction?

M.H: At the age of twenty, everyone wants to write a book. There’s a certain kind of boy or girl who reads and reads and reads and someday, they get it into their heads that they’ll also write a book like this. It sort of comes from being bookish and boring and self-obsessed. I get bored easily and one way to get over boredom is to sit in a corner and invent stories. It is also a sort of escape therapy from reality. Even if it is for a few years, I am the master of the universe I create.

[The interview and book reading was followed by a book signing session]. 

Photograph: Dawn.com

J. & Me

Jaundice and I were companions for two weeks. Jaundice played host while I lay on my bed, trying to ignore its antics but not succeeding much. After a few days, though, it lost steam and lay around, sulking. Recently it’s tired of my company and pays a visit occasionally. Not that I miss it much and I hope never to see it again. Not only did it drain me and leave me weak and sick, but also because I became confined to my bed and became a prisoner of the telly. I watched it all; re-runs of movies on HBO, cooking shows prior to iftar, all kinds of stupid Indian films, and lots of reality shows (including Wipe Out) on AXN.

My Ramazan came to an abrupt halt because of jaundice. Karachi, too, it seems was suffering and its pain was greater than mine. This Ramazan has to be one of the most deadliest and dramatic in terms of terrorism and politics for Pakistan. Is our country plagued with a disease which is incurable? Or have we turned a blind eye to the suffering of our motherland? One day the whole city comes to a standstill and the very next day life resumes at its normal pace. Are we resilient or have we become numb to the happenings around us? Question marks everywhere but no answers seem to be forthcoming from any quarter.

I need to rest now otherwise J. might just pay me another visit. 

Frere Hall comes back to life!

Eight years of American siege ends. 

Karachiites are free to visit Frere Hall after the re-location of the US Embassy.