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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

Why Change?

Change is a scary word. Habit hates change. It does. Habit feels insecure when change comes along. Both are a very strong part of our life; yours and mine. We become slave to our habits and detest any change in them. Our habits age with us and become our masters. They acquire the same kind of power over us that the ‘One Ring’ (The Dark Lord, Sauron’s ring- Lord of the Rings) had on any creature who wore it. When habits become so strong, change takes a back seat. Ironically, change also has a habit of creeping back into our lives; sometimes most unexpectedly.

Change, I believe, is an even bigger part of our lives than habit. With the passing of years we change both bodily and emotionally. Humans are strange creatures. We yearn for change and yet shun it too. From youth to middle age, change is an acceptable part of life. We switch jobs, go abroad to study or work, have children, change schools, change servants, change cars, change houses, and so on. But somewhere at the back of our minds is the thought that this cycle of constant change will end one day, that we will settle down and change will bother us occasionally.  

Life without change is unimaginable. Nature, too, changes and each change gives us a new joy. Habit and change are necessary to keep the balance; too much of one can lead to a very boring existence. 

And no one wants to be a bore. 

Esio Trot - a magical love story!

What lengths can one go to win the heart of the beloved? Many a poet and writer have addressed this question in their work and most, if not all, have penned endearing and often, heartbreaking narratives of the lover and the beloved.

Esio Trot has all the ingredients which make it a perfect love story. A lonely man harbours love for his neighbour, a widow. When she faces a problem with a wild creature he comes to her rescue. There is no knight in shining armour routine though for the wild creature isn’t a fire breathing dragon but a mere tortoise and our knight’s weapon is just a metal tube fitted with claws. No fancy armour or sword for Mr. Hoppy.     

Mr. Hoppy is a shy, retired man who lives in the same apartment building as the love of his life, Mrs. Silver. In fact, her flat is just below his. Everyday both of them exchange pleasantries but Mr. Hoppy lacks the courage to express his feelings. Mrs. Silver, a widow, owns a tortoise called Alfie who is the apple of her eye. She dotes on him incessantly. So much so that Mr. Hoppy wishes many a times to exchange places with Alfie.

The great worry in Mrs. Silver’s life is Alfie’s slow growth. She wants the little tortoise to gain weight and become big but no matter how many juicy cabbage leaves she feeds it, Alfie weighs the same as it did when she got him, eleven years ago. She is willing to try anything to make Alfie grow. Her distress over Alfie provides Mr. Hoppy with the perfect opportunity for winning her heart and he puts together a masterly plan that actually makes the tortoise grow!

Dahl, yet again, provides us with two very interesting characters in this book. But unlike his other books for children (James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, George's Marvellous Medicine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc.) there is no villain or child in this story. There are no evil aunts or grandmothers and no magical fruit, or factories. There is, of course, a little bit of creativity and innovation involved but then we can’t expect a Dahl protagonist to be just an ‘ordinary’ person.

Following is an excerpt from Donald Sturrock’s book, Storyteller –The Life of Roald Dahl, on Esio Trot.

‘Quentin Blake described it succinctly as a “love story set in two rooms”. Blake felt the narrative was built largely around Roald’s feelings for Liccy*, and that there was a great deal of his creator to be detected in Mr. Hoppy’s penchant for ingenious and imaginative problem solving”.

ESIO TROT, ESIO TROT, TEG REGGIB REGGIB! EMOC NO, ESIO TROT, WORG PU, FFUP PU, TOOHS PU! GNIRPS PU, WOLB PU, LLEWS PU! EGROG! ELZZUG! FFUTS! PLUG! TUP NO TAF, ESIO TROT, TUP NO TAF! TEG NO, TEG NO! ELBBOG DOOF!

And if you want to win over the woman of your dreams, above is a magic spell that can help, provided she owns a tortoise!

*Liccy was Roald Dahl’s second wife. 

Images: Google 

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. 

Ramazan Reflections

Ramazan is the month of peace, prayer and reflection. At least that is what all the television channels propagate all day long. If morning shows weren’t enough, they’ve made special sehri and iftar shows to hammer 'goodness' into us besides the original responsibility of making us telly addicts. But from what I’ve observed these past ten days, reflection is certainly not on our priority list (prayer is, usually, by default and peace is a novelty, at least in Karachi and...London!).

The act of going hungry from dawn to dusk gives us a license to do anything. It means we can lax at work, break traffic signals, shout at others on the road, get cranky for no reason and generally act high and mighty, especially in company of those not fasting.

These behavioural changes are not limited to the duration of the fast. Come iftar time and we morph into different beings. Food is the only thing worth fighting for and, if need be, dying for. Everything on the dinner table occupies a space on our plate and we gulp it all down with lots of sherbet and water. Ramazan, it seems, is the holy month in which we exercise two of the seven deadly sins to the maximum; greed and gluttony.

Greed steals the limelight from the other sins during Ramazan. For a vast majority fasting translates into one word: Eid. All our energies (the little that are there during the day) are spent planning for this festival. We are grateful for HIS blessings, especially monetary ones. Our principle concern, though, is mostly about clothes; there must be three separate dresses, at least, for the Eid festivities. If possible, maybe squeeze in some furniture and new crockery; what better time to put everything on display than Eid? So we spend our Eid bonus even before we get it, thanks to our little plastic companion. And we justify our excessive spending using the premise of fasting. Aren’t we crafty? I wonder who we think we’re fooling?

It’ll be a grand idea of Ramazan came twice a year. Lawn brands will have a ball; collections for summer, mid-summer, and three Eids! All the musicians who have become religious and can’t sing for a living will have work. And there’ll be no traffic on the roads during the usual evening rush hours, in case you want to experience how it feels to drive at 140mph on the roads in Karachi.  

And maybe, with Ramazan twice a year, people might just reflect once.

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The one lesson that you take away after reading this book is, “Don’t Panic”. Not even if you wake up to find bull dozers surrounding your house ready to break it down or when you are told by your alien friend, whom you took for a regular human all these years, that the planet Earth will get vaporized in two minutes.

Hilarious is the perfect word to describe this book.  Another perfect word is outrageous. Actually, the book is full of some of the craziest stuff. Arthur Dent, a regular guy, wakes up on a regular Thursday morning, only to come across the most irregular happenings. The local authorities want to demolish his house to build a bypass. To make matters worse, Dent’s friend Ford Prefect comes up the very moment when Dent is trying to stop the demolition to inform him that, well, appearances can be deceiving. Prefect is an alien, and a hitch hiker, who landed on Earth while on a research trip for his book (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, what else?!) and got stuck for a good fifteen years. On this Thursday morning, he finds out, through his alien gadgets, that the Vogans (a really ugly alien form) are coming to destroy the world and he has around two minutes to save his friend’s life.

What happens next is a crazy adventure in which Arthur and Ford find themselves imprisoned in an alien ship, thrown into space and then picked up within 30 seconds by another alien ship, The Heart of Gold. On board this ship is Marvin (a depressed robot who absolutely hates life!), Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, and Trillian, a slim, darkish humanoid. And to help Arthur make sense of this new life is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “an electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That’s its job”.

The one thing Douglas Adams does, besides writing a very humorous book, is to provide us with the answer to life, the universe, everything. It’s 42.

Read more on aliens on the blog here.