|
|
|
|
 |
 |
   |
interview Zia
Mohyeddin column
interview By Jazib Zahir and Sarah Sikandar A precocious talent who has received appreciation for her writing since she was an eleven year old just doodling her thoughts, Kamila Shamsie has emerged as one of our most recognised English writers today. Her four novels to date have sold heavily around the globe and garnered a wealth of literary awards. She was recently in Lahore for an interactive discussion of her works and graciously spared some time for The News on Sunday to discuss her next book, her inspirations and what it takes to be an author. The News on Sunday: Your avid readers would love to know when they can expect your next book. Kamila Shamsie: I'm just
about done with it. It will be going to the publisher soon and should be TNS: Are we allowed to have a preview of the content? KS: Well, it's called 'Burnt Shadow.' The story originates in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and completes the journey to New York by 2002. Along the way stops are made all over the place including several locations in Pakistan so be prepared for quite a bit of travelling. TNS: Has being from a line of distinguished writers been an asset or a burden through increased expectations? KS: It has certainly never been a burden. I was never made to feel I had to emulate others. I think it was quite helpful to grow up in a family which encouraged reading and writing. I think many people who aspire to be writers are just ridiculed by their family members but I was fortunate to have no such handicaps. TNS: Which authors do you regard as your main inspiration? KS: There is a long and eclectic list. Virginia Woolf was certainly an early inspiration. I also think very highly of the Sri Lankan novelist Michael Ondaatje and his book 'The English Patient.' I am also inspired by the emergence of several contemporary Pakistani writers. It's nice to know that I am not working in isolation and others are willing to engage Pakistan in their writing. TNS: How did you realise
that the book you had started as a college student was ready to be KS: I would mostly consider it good fortune. I was fortunate to be introduced to a London-based literary agent who encouraged me to expand the story into a complete novel. I personally would never have known if my work was ready to be published but the agent decided when it was ready following several iterations. TNS: You have said that you want to write about real Pakistanis, not stereotypes. How have acquaintances abroad responded to your depiction of real Pakistanis? KS: Many people have been quite surprised. They have told me that the depiction in my books is very different from how they have perceived Pakistan and Pakistanis. TNS: And what about the response from Pakistanis themselves? KS: Well my feedback is skewed towards people who like my works enough to compliment me on them. But I definitely have my share of critics. It's certainly hard to get a consensus on anything in Pakistan (laughs). In fact, I would be worried if everyone equally liked what I wrote. TNS: Have you considered writing any stories from the perspective of those born on "the wrong side of Clifton?" KS: Well my new book will be partly based in Nazimabad in Karachi and this will be an exploration of such a life. TNS: We have read your impressions of Karachi. How would you describe Lahore if you ever used it as a backdrop for a novel? KS: I'm not quite sure. I know Lahore as a place where I visit friends every now and then. But if I wanted to base a story on it, I would need to develop a deeper understanding of it. TNS: You probably end up toying with a multitude of plots, characters and conclusions while writing. When do you know a story is complete? KS: The truth is that most of the time I can't be completely sure. The editor will return my copies with comments and that gives me some feedback on how things might need to be changed. But there usually comes a point when I feel I have put in as much effort as I can into my product and would like to consider it complete even if it is flawed. TNS: The language of your novels is, at times, criticised for being verbose. What do you think is the importance of words in the setting of the stories and do you believe in changing the tone and vocabulary from one character to the other? KS: Asking a writer the importance of words is like asking an artist the importance of paint. The novels are, quite literally, nothing without the words. But whether I'm verbose or not, whether my style changes or doesn't -- that's something individual readers have to make up their minds about. Obviously no writer sets out to be verbose and write in an unchanging way. TNS: Do you write for personal fulfillment or to change the way other people think? KS: There are so many more direct ways to change the way people think. I write primarily because I love it. Of course, I also see it as my profession and accept the responsibilities and publicity commitments that come with such an occupation. TNS: Do you have a personal favourite among your books? KS: It's pretty much always the one I'm working on at the moment since I get so engrossed in it. 'In the City by the Sea' remains special as my first endeavour. But whenever I'm done with one novel I'm ready to focus my energies on the next one. TNS: Are your characters inspired by your own life, that of friends or purely figments of your imagination? KS: Well my own life is quite boring. All I do is sit and write books (smiles). And I'm just fine with meeting my friends in the real world without them inhabiting my fictional one. I end up drawing some of the traits of my characters from reality but for the most part they are figments of my imagination and being able to create them is one of the joys of writing. A lot of my friends complain why I don't base my characters on them. I tell them that after I meet you people in real life and when I go home I want to meet different people in my mind. TNS: 'Broken Verses' has taken on additional significance now that cases of missing persons are regularly grabbing headlines. Did you anticipate back in 2005 that the problem would escalate in this manner? KS: Well the story was written earlier in 2003 and I had no way to anticipate the political climate ahead. But of course I wish the issue hadn't escalated the way it has. TNS: Would you attribute your academic training as a writer as the main contributor to your writing style? KS: Not really. Writers emerge because they have a genuine love for writing. Writing classes allow you to hone your talent and most importantly teach you to take criticism in your stride and learn from it. Of course, the practice you get from such classes also allows you to refine your raw ability. If classes were the main way to develop writing style, they would churn out armies of writers with identical styles. I would actually say that a class that attempts to teach you some standard tools of writing is probably not a very good class. TNS: In the same vein, have you, as a teacher of creative writing found that you are able to teach this art to your students or are the skills primarily a result of their personal qualities? KS: Like any other art form, I think the development of writing abilities can be largely attributed to personal qualities. It helps to have a place which forces you to put down your ideas in writing, get feedback and develop confidence. I would go out of the way to correct a student who is clearly heading down the wrong path, but otherwise I avoid ever imposing my style on anyone. TNS: How do you see your novel 'Salt and Saffron' as different from other partition novels? KS: Well, to me it's different because it's the only one I've written! Seriously, I don't really think about my novels in terms of how they compare to what else is out there dealing with similar subject matter. But I suppose at an obvious level, it's different from a lot of the books about Partition insofar as the events of the story take place 50 years later -- and the Partition story is a background story rather than the central story. TNS: Your novels talk about different world existing together. 'Kartography' is about childhood, for example. Do you feel we are living in smaller and bigger circles together? KS: I've never thought of 'Kartography' being specifically about childhood. To me, 'In the City by the Sea' is the novel of childhood. But yes, we're always living in various contexts -- from small context of the nuclear family, or spousal relations, or sibling relations to much larger contexts of being citizens of a state or members of the human race. TNS: Where do you see the modern novel heading with special reference to Pakistan? KS: I think it's a particularly exciting time for the English language novel in Pakistan, with increasing numbers of writers being published every year. But we need a flourishing home-grown publishing industry to go along with it. I can't speak about the novel in the other languages of Pakistan -- I don't have the necessary knowledge. TNS: Are you frequently pestered with this issue of language and why you don't write in Urdu? KS: It comes up fairly often. My objection is that the question always sets English-language writing as being fundamentally separate from all other writing in Pakistan. The argument is that English-language readers are limited in number. Well, that's true -- but can you imagine someone telling a Seraiki writer they should write in Urdu to reach a wider audience? We are a country of many languages -- including English. There should be further attempts to translate works from one language into another, and to bring together writers from the different languages in order to promote writing and literature throughout Pakistan.
It is now an accepted axiom that literature should not be studied in isolation from its social and political contexts. The approach to set a literary work in the ideas, conventions and attitudes of the period in which it was written is, I believe, called historicism. (there is now New Historicism, which focuses on the intertexuality of literary and non-literary texts, but that is another issue). Those who are against historicism feel that critics are not really capable of gauging the conventions and attitudes of a certain period because they appraise cultural values of that period with today's sensibilities. Critical practices that explore the functioning of culture are often amorphous. In the last fifty years there has been a great deal of argumentation about culture. Is culture the outcome of a whole way of life? Or is it simply the selected highlights of a society's most intellectually, or artistically enlightened citizens? Is it the best of a civilisation, or is it a conglomeration of disparate and antagonistic forces which reflect the vibrancy and the vitality of a society at a given moment? If you were to look upon the areas of mass culture and take as its texts newspapers, magazines, pulpfiction, film, television, racy songs, it would not take you long to come to the conclusion that most people are influenced by what is known as popular culture. It may not be your cup of tea but you cannot ignore the fact that the majority of people tend to gravitate to those forms of expression known as awami. But if I were to say that culture is a body of values, transmitted from the past to the future through imaginative works, I would be dubbed as a recluse and a snob who is unable to see that culture is the totality of human habits, customs, traditions, monuments artefacts etc -- and that culture is the throbbing force that governs a community or a nation's behaviour. Does culture generate sensibility and taste? I doubt it. It is true that when culture becomes a mode of perception concepts like sensibility and taste evolve, but in countries -- like ours -- dominated by ideological concerns rather than cultural -- individuals alone worry about matters like taste. In our society the taste that we profess publicly is, more often than not, in conflict with what we cherish in our privacy. Films, television, internet -- and a whole range of technological devices for the distribution of images and information call into question traditional standards and accepted forms. In the face of its threats our younger audiences -- who like to reject traditional modes -- develop a sense of guilt because they dare not openly reject traditional pronouncements. What they learn then is not a new sensibility but hypocrisy. I grew up under an education system devised by the Empire builders. Its main aim was to establish superiority of the British in every field. I remember being awestruck when one of my primary school teachers told us that the streets of Britannia were made of glass. (Bartanya mein sheeshay kee sarkin hotee hain). The colonisers did not hesitate to use literature to legitimise their power. The role of Shakespeare in schools (and universities) was to promote Englishness and to justify the principle of hierarchy. Shakespeare's 'Henry V' asserted the value of English monarchy. As far back as 1878, Bulwer-Lytton, a Viceroy of India, had expressed the view that Great Britain must never ignore the essential and insurmountable distinctions of race qualities which were fundamental to its position in India. "The conceit and the vanity of the half-educated natives must never be pampered." The imperialists justified the legitimacy of their rule in India by impressing upon the people the independence and integrity of their own culture -- and by constantly downgrading the 'native' cultures which, they insisted, led to nothing but indolence and irregularities. There was, of course, resistance to the colonial rule. The British rule did not affect life in the villages much, but in the cities there were people opposed to the cultural -- and political -- domination of the British Sahib. There were murmurings everywhere. There were many committees, nationalist in tendency, that often met and gave vent to their anti-British feelings. The question that intrigued E.M. Forster was how did the 'half-educated natives' interact with their rulers? It led to him to write 'A Passage to India', a book dear to my heart, not because my name has been associated with it for nearly half a century, but because I consider it to be a monumental novel of the 20th century. When I got to know him a bit better, I asked Forster how his novel was received when it first appeared way back in the 20s. The great man, the most self-effacing individual I have ever come across, smiled. "Well" he said, as though recalling a painful memory, "A lots of letters appeared in the Morning Post saying, "How dare he paint our women like this." "You mean the Memsahibs", I asked. "Exactly," he said. The Morning Post was the mouthpiece of the Conservative party; later on it acquired the title of Daily Telegraph. As a cultural study, Forster's novel is an excellent example of how the 'natives' and the liberal Englishmen understood each other (or didn't understand each other). Fielding, the sensitive, sympathetic school master, is deeply perturbed when Aziz -- whom he has befriended -- is imprisoned for making advances toward Miss Quested. After the trial, during which it becomes clear that the accusations are false, Aziz is released; he leaves the court house as an embittered man. Fielding is pleased for his friend, but realises that the chasm which has developed between the two, cannot be bridged. They ride together and remain apart. Fielding puts it down to India and its complexities, resigns his job and returns to England. Aziz, for the time being, has become a hardened critic of the Raj. Forster, whose views were liberal and humane, depicts the muddled atmosphere that existed in India at the turn of the 20th century, with absolute brilliance. His India is a country unapprehendable and vast where nothing is identifiable, not even the birds. The English were in India to govern the Indians whom most of the pucca sahibs considered to be barbaric, lazy, uncivilised. "I have never known anything but disaster result when English people and Indians attempt to be intimate socially. Courtesy by all means. "Intimacy -- never, never" says the young Assistant Commissioner of the district of Chandrapore, where the action takes place. The crux of the novel is, to me, is not the sustained encounter between the English colonials whom he described as "well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds, and underdeveloped hearts" -- and the Indians, as one critic puts it, but the search for that 'quite something' which makes human beings connect with each other.
|
|
available in just about a year from now.
published?