Pak Tea House » Books, New Writers, Pakistan » "Pakistani Writing is Older Than Pakistan, Novel itself"

"Pakistani Writing is Older Than Pakistan, Novel itself"

July 29th, 2009 | 13 Comments

ali-sethi By Mayank A Soofi
I caught up with Mr Mr Ali Sethi, a young Pakistani novelist, in the lawn of Delhi’s Ambassador Hotel during the last week of July, 2009. He was visiting India for a book tour of his first novel The Wish Maker. Mr Sethi’s parents, Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin, run The Friday Times and Daily Times, two of Pakistan’s most popular newspapers. He lives in Lahore.

Hello, Mr Ali. You are 25 and already a novelist. At this age people just dream of one day writing a novel…

I think I was lucky. I began writing when I was at Harvard, surrounded by people who were writing for their living. All my professors had published books behind them. Amitava Ghosh and Zadie Smith taught me creative writing. I attended the classes of Amartya Sen. I had other professors also who might not be wildly famous but are read seriously in the academic circles. So, you know, I didn’t feel uncertain when I began to write the book. Perhaps it all came because of living in a writing environment. We would talk about writing, read about writing… I was also contributing articles to some of Pakistan’s newspapers which, of course, were my parents’ publications. But I was also in the editorial board of Harvard Advocate, our college magazine.

What were you doing in Harvard?

I majored in South Asian studies in 2006. That was the year when I started writing this novel…

…Coming to which… well, how to put it… I mean, you are the son of Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin. They are powerful people. They know powerful people. They run some of Pakistan’s most popular newspapers and magazines. That must’ve made it easier for you to become a published novelist.

This fact didn’t help me in any way as far as getting the book published was concerned. My parents don’t know literary agents. They are not familiar with the world of fiction publishers. But yes, being their son helped in a very different manner. When I was back in the country, they let me stay in their house in Gulberg, Lahore, without me paying rents for the room and food. In fact, my mother finished reading the novel a few days ago, while my father has just started it.

Thanks to its troubles, Pakistan has become hot. Everyone from The New York Times to South China Morning Post has got something to write on your country. The world is now hooked to Pak’s problems. Doesn’t this renewed interest makes it lucrative to be a Pakistani writer?

Yes, there’s more buzz on Pakistan due to the new global suspicion about it. Anything you touch on Pak is a potential subject. But there is a trap in that as well. You start to festish-ize your themes. You began processing them in certain ways for peoples’ consumption. It’s easy to start performing for a post 9-11 audience. But that’s not how it should be. Some things are better communicated through news reports, you know.

Isn’t it that suddenly we have Pakistani authors like Daniyal Mueenuddin, Mohsin Hamid and Nadeem Aslam making it big in the global circuit?

While I’ve read all these authors and they all are good, this is not the first time that Pakistani writing has come of age. Our writing is older than the creation of Pakistan itself. Why, it’s even older than the creation of the novel. Haven’t you read Bulle Shah? He was a Punjabi poet, still widely recited in Pakistan through the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen.

Mr Sethi, you’ve written your novel, published it; what now?

I’m looking on a project for research. I’d recently made a documentary on student politics in Lahore. It was good. I mean why just write when you can combine writing with music and camera. We’re living in a multi-media age and can explore the world in interesting ways.

What about just writing books?

They take such a long time and then writing is a completely solitary process. I feel there is a time to be in solitude, and there are also times when you ought to go out into the world. If you stay cooped up in your own fantasies, how will you find new subjects? You’ve to acknowledge that there is a world beyond yourself. That is where, hopefully, my next subject will come from.

You are presently visiting India for a book tour set up by Penguin India, your publishers. How has been the experience?

Well, I’ve been to Delhi twice before…

Is it like what they say, same as Lahore’s?

No, Lahore is different from Delhi. It’s getting different everyday. The fact is that the reality of the rest of Pakistan is gradually becoming the reality of Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. It was inevitable. You can’t isolate the country’s big cities from the anger of our towns and villages, like those in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province). It’s the same in India. What’s taking place in the peripheries, like Kashmir and Chhatisgarh, would sooner or later come around to Rajpath.

Perhaps. Which are the cities you visited here?

Besides Delhi, I went to Bombay, Chennai and Bangalore. I really liked Bangalore. Maybe it was the newness of South India. Or because I had my first Idli-dosa there!

Unbelievable. You don’t get that in Lahore?

No, not even in the food street at Anarkali.

That’s a shame. Thanks for talking, Mr Sethi.

Meet me when you’re in Lahore.

Written by admin

Filed under: Books, New Writers, Pakistan · Tags: Ali Sethi, Book Tour, Books, Idli Dosa, Jugnu Mohsin, Mayank Austen Soofi, Najam Sethi, Novelist, Pakistani writer

13 Responses to ""Pakistani Writing is Older Than Pakistan, Novel itself""

Zia Ahmad says:

July 29, 2009 at 11:12 pm

?!
bonobashi says:

July 29, 2009 at 11:20 pm

At last we know why people go to Bangalore. PMA was right all along.
PMA says:

July 30, 2009 at 6:42 pm

bonobashi: Once I knew a very fine Hindu professor from South India. Dr. Doodbhate. Unlike your young lions, he was able to talk about South India beyond Bangalore with considerable comfort. He was not ashamed of the South Indian realities of life circling all around the ‘shining city on the hill’.
bonobashi says:

July 30, 2009 at 8:48 pm

@PMA

I’d be happy to help with information.

I was born in Bellary, worked in Chennai, and have had to tour the South extensively. I happen to know it much better than the North. Truth to tell, I don’t much like the North. Any time you’re ready for it, I’ll draw up a South Indian itinerary which will leave you with the memories of a lifetime.

Incidentally, whatever gave you the impression that I am ignorant of conditions on the ground?
bonobashi says:

July 30, 2009 at 8:51 pm

@PMA

The more I think about this, the more I feel this might be a great idea. If you were to visit the east, for instance, since I am now in Calcutta, I’d be able to arrange for you to have the time of your life in the most beautiful parts of the East – leaving out ‘South Tibet’ if you wish!! Sikkim would probably be the core, but there are other beautiful bits as well.

How open are you to actually visiting India?
PMA says:

July 30, 2009 at 11:05 pm

bonobashi: Thanks for the invitation. I am sure South India is no different than other places–a mixture of good and bad. I never thought that you were ignorant of the conditions on the ground; neither was professor Doodbhate. In fact you come across as a balanced and a rational person. Unfortunately can not say that about the chest thumping Indian chimps on this site. I have a long list of things to do and places to see in my life. And what about ‘South Tibet’? I heard China has built a high altitude rail line to Tibet. They tell me the scenery along the line is just out of this world.
bonobashi says:

July 31, 2009 at 6:06 am

@PMA

Oh, you are right about the South being a mixture of good and bad, like every other place on earth, no doubt about that. That is a pleasant challenge.

As a skilful purveyor of the charms of our country, and in keeping with assumption of a role of a propagandist who wishes to address your sceptical mind and heart steeled against blandishments by presenting you with the irresistible, naturally I have in mind that you should see the good and the excellent, and that the other should be skirted delicately.

It is absurdly easy to do this, given the large swathe of territory we are discussing. It is even easier to do this in the east; until I saw Kashmir, I thought that the Dooars was the most beautiful land in the world. It still remains in my mind’s eye like a jewel shining across the mists of time.

If ever you do think of visiting, please do let me know. South Tibet included, provided that the feckless governments we have had in recent years haven’t lost it to the Chinese by then.

The railway line you have in mind must be the one between Qing Hai and Tibet; I have heard the reports, and seen pictures. It seems awesome, although the impact presumably should be due to the sustained impact of miles upon miles of similar spectacular landscape; the train is travelling across ‘the Roof of the World’ after all. The difference is that the North East of India, surrounded from this lunar landscape by only a few dozen miles, is lush and green: unbelievably lush, improbably green. The Brahmaputra bursts through these hills to debouch upon Assam; there are spots where you can stand and contemplate this mighty father of waters reaching out to grasp his domain. There are exactly similar vistas in the Khasi and Lushai Hills (as they were called in my youth) looking out over Bangladesh at a height of several thousand feet. The poor South Indian doesn’t have a clue about what such rivers are like; they delight in the falls at Sivasamudra, bless them, as if there were none greater in the world.

Do come. I ask with the most selfish of motives. It is from a conviction that after you have seen these beautiful places, and met the simple uncomplicated souls who form the majority of Indians, it will not be possible for you to maintain your heart in its present adamantine condition.

You must know that some of us longer standing visitors to these columns deprecate the antics of a few, fortunately a few, of our citizens who embarrass and shame us. On occasion, Gorki, Hayyer48 and I have taken the liberty of driving away some of the worst hard-cases, but it is like ullus: ek dhunde to sou nikl ate hain.

I hope you are not referring to any recent intrusions. There has been one only. It is to be hoped that he will vanish in time.
Majumdar says:

July 31, 2009 at 9:06 am

Bono da,

My only experience of North-East till date is the drive from Guwahati airport to the town and even that is a complete shock to someone who has spent most of his life in dry Delhi.

Regards
bonobashi says:

July 31, 2009 at 9:32 am

@Majumdar

Yes, I know, and the rest of it is even more heart-breakingly beautiful! How I wish I could have some of our friends with me for a month; I would have a strong, intellectually superior band of sympathetic souls by the end of that. More than anything else, their meeting ordinary Indians, not the bilious samples they encounter on the ‘Net, might mellow them and dispose them more kindly towards the mass of the country’s citizens who are innately peaceful and happy.

I must get a chance to take you, for instance, to Jorhat and places north and east of that.
PMA says:

July 31, 2009 at 7:17 pm

Dashtnaward: You are quite a poet. Let me share with you a recent poem of mine. Rumi said he liked it and that is good enough of affirmation for me. Here it is:

The Bride of Butrint

Caught between the lake and the sea
Like a heart struck by dueling passions
Above the cascades of the mountains
Known forever to men high and low
Stands the old bride of Butrint;

Where shepherd boy and his goats
The village men in their shaggy coats
Oblivious of her once glorious past
Wander through the ruins that last
Below the walls of old Butrint;

Gone are Greco-Roman mighty kings
Turkish guards and precious things
Stood where once fair sopranos now
Sound of mid-day silence sings
Farewell to the bride of Butrint;
bonobashi says:

July 31, 2009 at 9:26 pm

I am dumbfounded. I never suspected this streak of poetic elegance in your make-up. Are you not an engineer? A civil engineer? This is seriously good.

To tell you the truth, I have never written a line of poetry in my life. Nor has my wife. It is an everlasting mystery to both of us, therefore, that our daughter writes poems with effortless ease. Poets are people wrapped in mystery for the two of us, and we look at them with reverence and more than a little discomfort, as at all beings touched by a higher power.

Please write more. I will now find out more about Butrint.
bonobashi says:

July 31, 2009 at 9:33 pm

And how on earth did you land up in Albania? How did you discover Butrint? What an unlikely spot, heritage site or not! Is there a story here that you could share with us?
PMA says:

August 1, 2009 at 12:04 am

Ruins of Butrint are one of the many destinations of the cruse ships that sail through the Greek Islands. It is like visiting Taxila in Pakistan. Full of Greek, Roman and Turkish history.