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`I write to maintain my sanity'

I don't know who I am... words are just

a balm, Feryal Ali Gauhar tells

Mandira Nayar

Feryal Ali Gauhar is a sub-continental writer without the baggage of being on an `all-important' mission to tell a story. With many stories to share, the kind that can be heard sitting around an `ángeeti' on a `charpoy' on a cold winter night in Lahore to the ones with a political message that she writes on the op-ed page of the `Dawn', Feryal does everything with passion and panache.

She is unafraid, strong, funny, sometimes vulnerable, but always honest. Not like some writers `burdened' with their gift of being able to tell stories that they often lose their sense of `normality' and get more caught up with the job description of being a writer. She is refreshingly unaware of her `purpose'.

"I work largely with the visual medium. I am a filmmaker, a political economist and write about developmental issues. I act, anchor talk shows, raise animals, make pottery and somewhere in between I write," she says.

Blending different aspects into one, her book "The Scent of Wet Earth in August" was based on the film she made on the red-light district of Lahore "Tibbi Gulli". Published by Penguin in India, the book brings out the real flavour of the Badshahi Gulli, behind the chaos of the tange-wallahs, as the red-light area is known in the polite world of sprawling Lahore. Her vivid description never made it to Pakistan.

`Validated' by India as an author, she doesn't know whether to be happy or angry with that, she says with a smile, but the images of her words linger on and are difficult to forget.

"I write from the perspective of loss," she admitted quite candidly in a room full of people at a panel discussion of an anthology of contemporary Pakistani writing by women "And the World Changed" brought out by Women Unlimited in the Capital this past week.

While most writers jealously guard their troubled side for inspiration waiting to pour it out into their characters and would hate to lay out their `real' self bare in front of people to preserve some bit of mystery, Feryal seems to know no such fear. Whether it was talking about her role as the UN Ambassador of Goodwill to talking about the loss of loved ones, she is quite comfortable with being just herself. "I have never tried to analyse this. But I think loss is one enduring feeling in everybody's life. I think it informs my life. In my case, loss is identified with the death of my parents and my first love," she says.

She might need to push her boundaries with too many interests, but they are bound by a common thread, she claims. "My sister knows how she wants to define herself. I have never felt the need. I don't know who I am. I write to may be know what I am. I am yet not who I could be. Writing may complete me. But words are just a balm. I write to maintain my sanity. It surprises me that people want to read what I have written and pay for it," she says laughing.

A sort of reluctant celebrity she has managed to gain a tag of eccentricity that she quite relishes. Having created quite a stir with her stint as UN Goodwill Ambassador, where she found that her side of the picture of the problems got lost in `diplomacy', she has also received death-threats in Pakistan for her rather non-conventional views.

"I think that the UN only treats the symptoms, but not the disease. They talk about poverty, but won't deal with problems of land-ownership. They won't deal with patriarchy, but want to talk about morality among mothers," she claims. Living in these in-betweens, she is a political economist by training, but prefers to bring to life through films and writing, people that are statistic in this world.

"I think writing is the only space available to women. Men can express themselves. They can saunter about, scream in cricket matches or behave badly, which they excel at. Where do we relieve our angst? We have been confined to the `chader' and the `char diwari'. Most of our people don't have the luxury of a voice. I do," she says.

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