BOOK TALK
In a time warp
ZIYA US SALAM
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Author Ali Sethi on how Pakistan’s past has influenced his debut novel, The Wish Maker, as well as recent writing from his country.
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I started writing because I got more conscious of my Pakistani identity there post 9/11
PHOTO: V. SUDERSHAN
The Zia regime is dead and gone. The Benazir-Nawaz Sharif saga is over. And Pervez Musharraf has been consigned to the dustbin reserved by democracy for military dictators. The calendar says ‘2009’. But, in Pakistan, for the artist-writer
community it could as well be 1980s.
Not long ago Mohammed Hanif talked about it in Exploding Mangoes. Now comes young, unassuming Ali Sethi — a product of the age when to be an artist was a crime — to ask for transparency and accountability in government. He has just penned The Wish Maker, brought out by Penguin.
Activist writer
His formative years obviously had an effect on young Ali’s mind. But having been born in a family where words run in the genes, he took the best option: to wield the pen. This son of journalist Najam Sethi admits, “Writing is my family dhanda (business). I am not a rebel in that sense. Being a good boy, I decided to do what is done in my family.” Yet this “not a rebel” is actually an activist-writer. His characters, while retaining their innocence, mock the system that builds walls between individuals.
Talk about his work and he says, “People find the title intriguing. But I have simply written about childhood memories, childhood wishes and yearning. There is employment of imagination but most of the characters are either kids or those with a child alive in them. And personally, childhood was the only available experience for me when I started writing this book. I was not able to comprehend even young adulthood. Distance in time gives you a certain perspective and you realise it is possible to fulfil some wishes only in some parts of the world.”
Of course, he is talking of Pakistani society and polity where being young and ambitious, not to say unconventional, has seldom been easy. “There are different layers to society in Pakistan. There is a lot of class differentiation. We do not have a strong middle class; it is emerging only now. I am not a political scientist but I do feel in our country the State has been too powerful. And because for a good part military has ruled, it has made matters worse. Then you have the military’s search for acceptance, which makes it bring in the mullahs and you have a vicious circle. In jest many people call MMA as a Mullah-Military-America Alliance.”
Social contours
He has obviously studied the contours of his society well before coming up with the first draft of his novel that talks of three different generations, starting from the granny who hates India but loves Bollywood to the youngsters who are not ready to see things from the same prism.
“Our State was not founded on hate. Jinnah was an antithesis of mullahs. However, Bhutto made the mullahs stronger. Slowly during the Zia regime the State disenfranchised Sufism. Faraz was imprisoned, our greatest poets were regarded as dissidents and till date the State has not recognised Faiz simply because he was a Marxist! You are not taught Faiz in school. Even Mallika-a-tarannum was once told not to sing a Faiz ghazal at her recital. She stuck to her guns and sang Mujhse pehli si mohabbat na mang. There came about an artist-poet bonding, each helping the other. And they did what the State did not by perpetuating a multi-layered culture.”
Looking back
The young man, who started writing his novel in the U.S. — “I started writing because I got more conscious of my Pakistani identity there post 9/11” — feels that Pakistanis have not been allowed to look at their own history. “You can read Aurangzeb, not Akbar; you can read about Shah Waliullah, not Meera or Kabir. You can read Allama Iqbal but only some portions of Ghalib. Why, most Lahoris do not know that their city’s name comes from the name of Ram?”
That is fine, but why this sudden fascination with the nation-state; going back to the Zia regime again and again? Why so much Pakistani writing across the world?
“After 9/11 there is a lot of global attention on Pakistan. Not just the U.S-British attention but even Indian, West Asian, Saudi Arabian. It has made the average Pakistani conscious in a new way. Now people anticipate global response to Pakistani local issues. I realised what it meant to be a Pakistani when I stepped out of Pakistan. For instance, when I went to Saudi Arabia I was grateful that I was from Pakistan. There the State owns everything, papers, channels, nothing is free. No political parties… In Pakistan at least we have dissidence. Once we had only PTV where Maulana Israr could get across to the masses. Now there are other avenues.”
A way out
So, amid all the turmoil in his own life and the larger world in general, how come his characters almost always manage to find a way out? The State bans alcohol but his characters find it in the neighbourhood, the State bans free sex but his characters find it too and in all variations!
Says Ali, “Initially, I did not make a deliberate decision that they should be able to find pleasure. But, after some time, I did try to push the envelope a little. Sex-alcohol-movies… everything comes via distorted route. But it does come.”
But isn’t true that Pakistani writers are better read abroad than at home? “It is a book written in English, so obviously it will have limited readership back home. There will be more takers in India as there is a huge middle class with a big purchasing power unlike Pakistan. And of course, these days the world is interested in Pakistan.”
And from the looks of it, Ali Sethi’s work promises to keep us all interested. Furtive sex, liquor on the sly, music, dissidence, rebellion…Ali Sethi’s cocktail will fail to enthuse none but the saints. Let the calendar do a time warp.
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