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interview comment Price or
praise
The Story
of Sister Alice “I was only clearing my throat with the first one; here I feel I have a voice” By Arif Waqar Mohammed Hanif has been many things, dedicated newspaperman, aspiring screenwriter, playwright and a successful chain smoker. 2008 saw Hanif turn into a novelist as well. A Case of Exploding Mangoes proved which some already knew; that if nothing else, Hanif will be remembered for being a gleefully satirical man. Considering that Mangoes had at least three humans: a blind woman, a Marxist-Maoist street cleaner and a junior Air-force man and three things: a snake, a crow, an army of tapeworms in for the “assassination” of General Zia. Hanif now is back to roast
audiences over his savage humour with Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. The News on
Sunday sat down with Hanif to talk about Alice, the process of writing and
other things. The News on Sunday: After the tremendous success of your first novel, you had the safe option of staying in the memories of your readers as a one-book wonder. How did you convince yourself for the risky venture of a second novel? What were your fears and apprehensions, if any, and how did you deal with the so-called SNS or Second Novel Syndrome? Mohammed Hanif: Not writing was not really an option. I thought of taking up dairy farming for a bit but for that you have to wake up really early so I stuck to what I knew. And now it seems that the first novel was just a preparation for writing this novel. I was only clearing my throat with that one; here I feel I have a voice. Writing the first or the fifth novel is always going to be difficult. SNS doesn’t exist. It’s been invented by our media friends just like they invented “common man” and “real Islam.” TNS: What is the general atmosphere in the publishing world today, compared to, say, when you started out? MH: I don’t really know, I try to keep away from the business side of it. All I know is that it’s a really old-fashioned, slow-paced world. Missing your deadline by a couple of years is almost a job requirement. A good designer will sit on a manuscript for a few months before suggesting what font to use. And I like all of that. Some people might be scared that this quaint little world will disappear because of e-books etc. But I don’t know. It must be a bit like what radio people felt when TV came along and the TV people must have cried doomsday when they heard about the internet. But now, just more of everything. People love their trash in every medium. TNS: Do the publishers try to “type-cast” an author? Do they insist on tried and tested material; did they ask you to write another political comic thriller, for example? MH: It seems you are thinking of show business. I wish it was like that but sadly nobody is interested in casting you in any role. I might have heard from my publisher twice or thrice during the last four years, and that too just to ask if I am still there. I was never asked what I was writing. And never told anyone what I was writing. TNS: Your second novel is a breed apart, it has an altogether different ambiance, an island of Catholic minority in the vast ocean of an Islamic state. How did you get into that strange world? Was it a chance encounter, or a planned study of a minority culture? MH: I really loathe that
word, minority, especially when it’s applied to minorities. I have never
met anybody who doesn’t consider themselves a minority of one. I am not
educated enough to do a planned study on any community. But if you were to
ask Catholics, I am sure they are not likely to say that they are an island
in some Islamic state. Garbage dump of this supposed Islamic state may be,
but definitely not an island. I don’t actually know what they would say
because I have never asked anyone what it feels like to be a Catholic in our
Islamic Republic. That’s kind of insulting. Also I don’t find anything
strange about this world; it’s as normal or bizarre as your “majority”
world. Do you remember that nice man, Bishop of Faisalabad, John Joseph? The dude who shot himself to protest against blasphemy laws. You realise that committing suicide is a crime, so he committed a crime while trying to protest against what he believed was a crime against his community. A lot of people in majority communities are also forced to act like that. But before you get the wrong idea, there is no blasphemy and no suicidal bishops in Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. TNS: While the theme of your first novel was very local, its treatment was wholly universal: the language and idiom was carefully adapted for the Western reader. On the contrary, the theme of your second novel is more universal, but the language used is very local and falls more in the category of Indian English. There is no “key” for the frequently used desi expressions. Does it mean the book is produced only for local consumption? MH: The military language sadly is quite universal. And that language spills into our everyday lingo with such frequency that we don’t even notice. Everyone talks in terms of strategy and tactics, bankers read The Art of War. On the other hand nobody seems to know the difference between hij’r and firaq, words that apply to all human relationships, in all languages. As far as the language in Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is concerned, you have to remember that it is fiction, it is all made up. Sometimes you ask yourself that how come everyone in Manto’s stories speaks Urdu when most of his characters actually are not Urdu-speaking. So it’s a valid question if you ask that how can people who are barely literate talk to each other in English in this book? I don’t really have an answer. All I can say is that I am only writing some petty fiction. But then in real life we live in some grand fiction where we are supposed to shut up and bow our heads as soon as somebody says something in Arabic even when we don’t understand a single word. What you are referring to as desi expression is probably the fact Jesus Christ is referred to as Yassoo sometimes. It’s what we call Him in Punjabi. For me He was Yassoo way before he became Jesus. I like the sound of it and I am assuming that nobody is going to mistake Him for Vishnu or Moses or Deepak Chopra or anybody else. Yassoo in every language is Yassoo. And a few years ago when I was still in the process of naming my characters I saw Jeeway Yassoo written on the back of an auto-rickshaw. I took it as a sign. TNS: Keeping in view your utter irreverence towards the reverends, fathers, mothers, saints and other Catholic paraphernalia, do you anticipate any Catholic backlash? Any negative reaction from the Christian minority? MH: Are you seriously saying that a Sunni, Punjabi, Male, Muslim should be scared of what you insist on calling a minority? What are they going to do? Declare me a kafir? Shoot themselves in the head? I haven’t disrespected anyone. I respect all kinds of clergy; I wish I could be one of them. There are some characters in my book who don’t think very highly of their clergy, which doesn’t really break any taboos. Catholic clergy is not very different from Muslim clergy. It always starts with land grabs and little boys and then reaches for higher things. Like our own mullahs and muftis, some of the Catholics also manage to blur the line between respect for divine things and their personal careers graphs. They start to believe what’s good for their bank account must be good for their god. I haven’t done much research but I have been told by more than one people that Catholic youth are increasingly becoming overtly religious. I guess they live with us; they were bound to learn something from us. And let me again clarify that I don’t know any one in Catholic clergy and I respect them all. The only person I have personally known was a trainee priest in London who had been thrown out of every seminary in England because he used to protest loudly if the mass wasn’t said in Latin. He also had the strange habit of mixing absinthe in his tea. I respected him a lot. TNS: Now that you are out of that initial two-book deal with your publisher, and fiction readers of the world already know your name, what is the first thing you want to do, to fully enjoy this new found freedom? MH: Yes, when you are working on a long project you hope that once it’s finished, you’ll be free, and then life will become this endless party. It doesn’t work like that. When I finished Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, I felt as if a long-time lover, a close friend who used to argue with me every evening, has abruptly left. But you can’t wallow in your misery for long, because there is dinner to be made, dog to be walked and interviews like this one to be done. TNS: There certainly is a vast market for your novels in the vernaculars. What stops you from publishing them in Urdu and other South Asian languages? MH: I don’t really know about the market but there are friends who don’t read English and they would like to see a translation. When ever I boast that my book has been translated into Serbian or some such language, they always say how I even know it’s my book. And they are quite right in saying how do they know if it’s readable if they can’t read it. So someone is translating it in Urdu and another one in Sindhi. But the translators are my friends and even lazier than I am, so it’s been a slow process. See
the book review in Literati
Three very disturbing incidents have happened in the past few weeks which further indicate the growing interference of the state agencies in curbing the building of an open society. The Omer Asghar Khan Assembly held by Sungi in the Hazara Division ended with a cultural event in which artistic tribute was paid to Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Sheema Kirmani, the lead dancer choreographed a dance performance based on the verses of the poet. The next day the organisers, summoned to the divisional administration’s office, were given a dressing down on holding immoral dances and warned of punitive action in case of such “transgressions” in future. Recently Nairang Art Galleries in Lahore was raided by the police. The staff and people who were in the café of the Galleries were harassed and it was alleged that the gallery hosted immoral activities. Nairang Galleries over the years, with a number of site shifts, has now become the hub of cultural activities in the city. It not only holds exhibitions but music programmes, literary meetings and film shows. A musical play ‘Avanti’ which was being staged at Lahore’s Alhamra recently was stopped abruptly and the organisers were told to pack up and leave immediately for the play promoted or represented a culture that was alien and went against our cultural values. There have been two or
three red rags which have always been dangled for a furious censorial
response. As there has been no acceptable and consensual definition of
culture itself, the ruse of Indian and Western culture has always been an
easy excuse to impose a crackdown on cultural activities. These two phobias
that we have been grappling against since the very beginning, if seen in the
context of effectiveness at stopping or minimising their influence, have been
abject and unmitigated failures. For us, Indian culture means nothing more than Bollywood. They were banned for a long time from the mid-1950s onwards and all Pakistanis listened to film music on the radios and discs while a few sneaked over to Kabul for a trip to the cinema as well. But VCR proved to be more invincible as it demolished all the highly fortified walls that could be built. It has since been followed by satellite television, cable, dish and internet that have made a mockery of the conventional methods of quarantining ones public from corrupt foreign influences. Western culture too has been for us Hollywood and whole generations have been bred on the diet of Hollywood cinema. While Pakistanis have been queuing up before the embassies for visas, green cards and citizenships, the propaganda wars against Western culture continues its counter-productive march. Due to our intellectual poverty, music, literature, education, our method of analyses has been totally take over by the theories and discourses emanating from the West. Actually we have been fighting them with the methods honed in their academic institutions. It has been a losing battle — because the best way to fight and resist another culture is to fortify the bases of one’s own culture. A stronger culture has no fear of being dwarfed, actually it is strong enough to assimilate and absorb. Living in today’s world, it is extreme naivety to imagine that insularity of culture exists. Since it does not. The culture should have the capacity to absorb, assimilate and grow. If not then it festers in anachronism. What is feared is that these censorship policies will either drive culture underground or these culture activists out of the country. The occasions where cultural programmes can be held have been drastically reduced — throwing artistes out of work. Similarly, many music and theatre artistes for one reason or another have been either harassed to the point of quitting the profession. It is feared that Pakistan will become a consumer of culture rather than a producer. This area has always prided itself with being the producer of culture, the breeding ground of ideas, new expressions and forms. It produces poetry, fiction, painting, plays, films... But gradually it appears that if the promotion of the arts and freedom is attacked in the name of either morality or patriotism we will also become consumers of culture — like so many of the countries that we look up to and rhetorically admire. These countries have set up entire museums, art galleries, universities and have lavish festivals of performing arts all imported because they have little of their own or are too scared of a home-grown culture that does not only mean entertainment but a mediated reflection on the soul of the collective. We can see that happening here too. Our film industry is now totally wound up and professionals are seeking work in the other film industries of the world. Television productions thrive on exchange of creative ideas and investment. Painters are also working for a market that thrives outside the country, especially driven by the diaspora. It is clear now that this interchange ability of immorality and art is a deliberate effort at creating confusion. A certain type of order is being imposed where the space for the arts, particularly the performing art, does not exist. And this order also has no place for education, particularly girls’ education, no place for co-education and surely no space for building a society that cherishes openness above all else. It is quite sad that the arts become the first victim of this way of life — and perhaps that is why it is so important to open wider the door to the arts. This dangerous trend can only be stopped and reversed by cultivating a culture that is inclusive. In the way we will stay faithful to our past enriched by the variegated expression of our land and people. The three acts quoted above are reminders that no lesson has been learnt and we continue to press on the sanitisation of society, next best to a mummified existence.
Price
or praise “What do they think? Am I stupid or crazy enough to purchase this painting? For this price I could buy a ten marla plot in Defence Lahore”. The frustrated call and the frantic outburst was made by a Spanish collector living in Lahore expressing her displeasure on the price of a student’s work displayed at the degree show of NCA’s Fine Arts Department in 1993. The piece which brought out such forceful reaction was a miniature (actually big in size) composed in conventional style depicting the map of Lahore. It was priced at one million rupees — eighteen years ago when the prices of art were not so high and artists of Zahoor ul Akhlaq’s stature were selling their works at less than a tenth of this price. Askari Mian Irani was the only exception who managed to get the six digit figure for his canvases causing a stir in the art circles. The student’s miniature failed to create any ripples in the art world; its value dropped at every subsequent exhibition coming down to Rs65, 000 for which it was finally sold. Falling from the grand
amount of one million to a mere Rs65000 must have been a quite a shock for
the miniature artist. It also pointed at the structure of the art world and
the psyche of our artists. The desire to demand exuberant sums is not
specific to a single individual, a certain genre or a particular art
institution. One has witnessed the incredible rise of art prices everywhere
in our surroundings; to the degree that it is impossible for several artists
to purchase their own works. The prices of graduating students are often
higher than many established artists, despite the fact that no one is sure if
a person who has just emerged from the art school will continue to work or
survive as an artist. However, the issue of pricing — a crucial development maybe — does not concern serious viewers of art. It is a matter which is supposedly decided between the maker and the collector of art; the gallery, which pretends to be supporting the artist and safeguarding the interest of the collector at the same time, protects its own share in the profit. As for the serious viewers, they enjoy looking at work, talking to artists, reading about art and perhaps remembering all that experience in their banal lives. Yet every discussion, in the newspaper, among artists, between friends, at the gallery, during a seminar or within the art studios and class rooms, ends up in a debate or argument on the current prices of art work, who is selling more than whom, and guessing the real value of art works in contrast to the announced prices. It seems as if the artists are interested only in prices which, for them, are synonymous with praise — a big sum confirms the great level of praise. An admiration or homage that is paid in hard currency is considered more important than words. Due to this frame of mind, the value of art is now calculated in cash only. It doesn’t matter whether you are defending the rise in price or criticising this commercial phenomenon, you are still occupied with the issue of price than Art (just like the present piece of writing). In a way this attention to prices is justified because the transformation of Pakistani art into a profitable business has amazed everyone. Also if an art work is priced higher, an ordinary viewer as well as a connoisseur or a gallery owner will believe it to be of great artistic merit. Thus works of big commercial value will be shown more often at prestigious venues and at prominent places within a group show. In a society where wealth, howsoever accumulated, is the only worth of a human being, the art’s appraisal equated with cash is not a surprising phenomenon; hence the artists’ struggle to sell their work for a grand sum is a natural outcome. When somebody accuses the practitioners of one genre or another for having inflated the prices, it sounds superficial; it is rather immature to classify artists on their chosen medium of expression, or even according to their training at art school. If an individual was trained to become a miniature painter, his education does not bind him or confine him to fabricate traditional (and modern) miniature only. Examples in the openness of approach can be seen in the art of Shahzia Sikander, Hasnat Mehmood, Aisha Khalid and Noor Ali who studied miniature at NCA but have been making works beyond the miniature format, especially in video and three dimensional forms (and these kinds of works by Khalid and Ali are recently short listed for the prestigious Jameel Prize at the Victoria & Albert Museum). Ditto for artists trained to be print-makers, sculptors and painters; none of them may stick to his or her technique and medium. After some years of practice, it becomes irrelevant which discipline of art you pursued or if you studied art or not (like the brilliant case of Iftikhar Dadi, who was not an art student, but is now a leading contemporary artist). The habit of classifying is rooted in the past when focusing on a specific discipline was regarded as the ultimate achievement. Contrary to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who painted, sculpted and designed buildings, and were artists, the recent graduates from art schools across the country are producing works which are not connected to their special areas of study. They have understood the secret of art: of not succumbing to segregation in the name of excellence but to view art in its totality and supremacy.
Dear All, Good news for fans of
Mohammed Hanif’s writing: his second novel is out early next month. It is
called ‘Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’ and its eponymous heroine is a 27 year
old nurse working in a Karachi hospital (‘Sacred Heart’), and navigating
the difficult course of life in Pakistan as a doubly handicapped person — a
woman and a Christian. Which is the worse fate in Pakistan? To be a woman or to be a member of a religious minority, liable at any time to be labelled a ‘kafir’ by the inheritors of General Zia’s great Islamisation project? Alice’s story certainly makes clear that neither constitutes a very pleasant lot. The novel tells the story of the young woman from the ‘choorah’ neighbourhood ‘French Colony’, who dares to defy the injustices society seems to send her way and whose crisis of faith in both her religion and her fellow human beings makes her a bit of a challenge to all around her. This is a love story of sorts: police tout and former junior Mr Faisalabad, Teddy Butt is smitten by ‘Sister Alice’ and they manage to snatch a brief time of happiness in the urban chaos they inhabit. Obviously their love is doomed, but their story is perhaps not altogether unusual, its ending created by the forces of intolerance and ignorance that simmer and boil over in the cauldron of Pakistani society. Mohammed Hanif takes the
reader into the world of Alice and her horrible wonderland, the world of the
oppressed and scorned, the world of the ‘untouchable’, the world of the
woman whose daily ordeal consists of lewd intentions, groping hands and
assorted little cruelties. We enter the world of the lonely but defiant
Alice, the world of the ‘Sacred’, the world of Teddy and his dubious
police ‘squad’ — a world rife with habitual violence and repeated
humiliations. This is the world of ‘Muslas’ versus ‘Choorahs’, of
smoldering class war, of lithium and mental illnesss, of superstition,
premonition and alleged miracles. ‘Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’ is an astonishing book: it is grim but it is also full of wry humour and sharp observation. Hanif conveys the rhythm and flavour of local parlance nicely (like Teddy telling Inspector Malangi, “Here I go and here I come back” or referring to the Hospital’s head of Orthopaedics as “Ortho SIr”, his popular title). Many of the characters are quirky tragi-comic personalities and their foibles are very amusing even though their lives are bleak. Hanif’s debut novel ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ was a hard act to follow, but the writer has managed to create a totally different sort of book from his first one and one that is chillingly topical given the recent case of the Christian woman Aasiya Bibi, the killing of her most outspoken advocate Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and the subsequent murder of the Christian MNA Shahbaz Bhatti. Hopefully this novel will generate a great deal of debate and discussion but perhaps many readers will be slightly baffled by their reading experience and discomfited by their reactions. Whatever the case, one thing is definite, in the defiant, detached and doomed Alice Bhatti, Hanif has created a great and memorable character, a character who will live on in literature long after the book’s initial impact. Best
wishes, Umber
Khairi |
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