Hanif takes darker turn in new novel

Mohammed Hanif’s 2008 debut, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, employed satire and the distance of a recent historical setting to bravely grapple with issues of military dominance and authoritarianism that continue to afflict Pakistani society.

Mr. Hanif has followed this success up with Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, a novel set in contemporary Pakistan which is darker, less humorous and perhaps more daring than his earlier work.

The novel centers around Alice Bhatti, a beautiful, scrappy 27-year-old whose father is a drain cleaner from French Colony, a poor Christian quarter of Karachi, as she tries to make her way in life by training as a nurse, marrying a bodybuilder and becoming a mother.

Karachi, one of the world’s most violent cities, is a faintly-sketched backdrop for the daily degradations that Alice must face as both a woman and a poor Christian. She’s attacked at nursing college by a group of Muslim girls for being a “kafir” and later jailed for an operational procedure gone wrong that was not her fault. She is sexually assaulted by a rich, gun-toting man from an “old money” family in the VIP room of a hospital, with a casualness which is sickening.

Full report here WSJ blogs

A clash of worldviews

It’s chick lit. Good lord, no, it’s far from chick lit. It’s very funny. Oh yeah? Then how come it makes you shudder? It’s vastly different from the kind of novel we’ve come to expect from Pakistani writers. No, it’s just the same. You want to whack the heroine, she’s so annoying. You want to hug her and take her away to a place where life is less traumatic than where she is now. You laugh at the way the media is portrayed in the book. You wince because it seems so familiar. You send up a silent prayer of thanks to whoever is responsible for where you live. You know that, if you weren’t so deliberately blind, where you live is actually quite similar to where this book is set.

Beautiful From This Angle
Maha Khan Phillips
Penguin
Rs250; pp 240

That’s a lot of internal argument for a novel that’s only 232 pages long, but you can’t read Pakistani writer Maha Khan Phillips’s Beautiful From This Angle without putting it down every few pages to struggle with yourself. The blurb makes it seem simple; so does the first chapter. Then, everything explodes.

So, here’s Amynah Farooqui, a 24-year-old Page 3-type chick who writes a column called ‘Party Queen on the Scene’ for a magazine in Karachi. She’s rich, her parents have separate love lives, she drinks, smokes, does coke (not the soft drink), picks up lovers whenever she feels like, is friends with a TV producer who’s making a reality show featuring British celebrities called ‘Who Wants to Be a Terrorist?’, and is writing an Oppressed Woman’s Novel, about a British Pakistani girl whose father forcibly marries her to a cousin in the homeland — a man who beats her, incarcerates her and kills her dog, Fifi.

Life, for Amynah, is good.

Full review here Hindustan Times

Pretty cosmetic

Beautiful from this Angle
Maha Khan Phillips
Penguin; Rs 250; Pp 240

Maha Khan Phillips’ Beautiful from this Angle follows the well-trodden path of upper-middle-class authors from Pakistan exploring complex relationships of feudal, cocaine-snorting free spirits carrying the woes of the world on their Armani-clad shoulders. We glimpsed some of this angst-ridden world earlier, albeit very sensitively etched out, in books such as Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke. Author Kamila Shamsie too has brought a youthful, fresh and frank voice to social and political issues concerning Pakistan’s feudal and middle classes. About a decade back, this was new and considered revolutionary writing. Indeed, given Pakistan’s increasing Talibanisation and on-and-off military rule, this genre of books had an edgy danger. It was courageous, and even shocking.

Other writers, such as Moni Mohsin, used wicked wit in books like The Diary of a Social Butterfly — and gave us a delightful insight into the low shenanigans of a very hypocritical elite in Pakistan. In her new book, Phillips has brought in elements already covered by all these authors, and tried to blend them with a dark humour.

Full report here Indian Express 

Raees Amrohi’s 22nd death anniversary today

Sep 22 marks the 22nd death anniversary of Syed Muhammad Mehdi, known as Raees Amrohi. A noted Pakistani scholar, Urdu poet and psychoanalyst, Amrohi was assassinated on September 22, 1988.

Born on September 12, 1914 in Amroha, India, to a notable family of scholars, almost all of Amrohi’s family members were poets. He migrated to Pakistan on October 19, 1947 and settled in Karachi.

He was known for his unique style of Qatanigari (quatrain writing). For many decades, he penned quatrains every day for Pakistan's largest daily Urdu newspaper, Jang. Amrohi was a supporter of the Urdu language and Pakistan’s Urdu-speaking people.

Amrohi cannot be classified as a psychoanalyst in the traditional sense, as he perceived psychology spiritually, rather than scientifically.

Full report here Samaa

‘Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi’ launched at KPC

Pakistani author Azra Gorakhpuri’s Hindi book Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was launched at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday.

Addressing the gathering, Gorakhpuri said Pakistan was working sincerely for the improvement of Pakistan-India relations and India too had, at times, shown positive behaviour in this regard.

She said keeping in view the global situation, the two countries needed to maintain good relations with each other. Her book is a part of the peace process, she added. She also said she had met Indira first in Lucknow, then in Gorakhpur when Indira had visited her house in 1979, and again at the Gorakhpur Town Hall in a general public meeting. Highlighting the contents of her book, Gorakhpuri said it contained description of Indira’s childhood, her education, her illness in connection with lung infection, her stay in Switzerland for medical treatment, her education in London and closeness with Feroze Gandhi, her family, her marriage with Feroze, her dispute with her father Pandit Nehru on her marriage, her political career, her visit to Gorakhpuri’s house ‘Zia Manzil’, her personal relationship with Gorakhpuri’s family, her love for Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the role of Sonia Gandhi as president of the Indian National Congress, and other topics.

Full report here Daily Times

Can Karachi get a new start?

A tourist visa to Pakistan, priced at Rs 15, roughly the same as a local bus or Metro ticket in Delhi, sounds like a deliciously tempting bargain but getting there, at this twisted juncture in India-Pakistan relations, is not a joy ride. There is only once-a-week PIA connection between Delhi and Karachi. Writers like Fatima Bhutto, who is promoting her family memoir Songs of Blood & Sword in India this week, or the literary critic Muneeza Shamsie who is the regional chair of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize to be announced in Delhi in later this month, have to travel to Delhi via Dubai. Everywhere I went during the five days I spent in Pakistan last week, friends, acquaintances and colleagues complained of the hardship in getting Indian visas. Fehmida Riaz, the country’s leading feminist poet who spent several years of exile in India during Zia-ul-Haq’s regime, spoke of the tedious paperwork involved including translated and attested copies of ID cards.

Karachi is not reputed as a sub-continental beauty spot. Jihadist battles, gang wars and gunfire are familiar street sights and sounds, drug trafficking in its vast slums, kidnappings and political violence between Sindhi nationalists and MQM, the muhajir party of immigrants from UP and Bihar, are the stuff of everyday life. The horrific kidnap, torture and beheading of Daniel Pearl by Al Qaeda operatives in 2002 certified Karachi as the bad news capital of South Asia. Kolkata, with its slow-moving strikers and fading hammer-and-sickle graffiti or Mumbai with its “maximum city” appellation of overall wretchedness, seem vaguely hopeful in comparison.

Full report here Business Standard

Indian poets enthrall KU students

The Audio-Visual Centre of the Arts Faculty, University of Karachi (KU) was packed to the capacity with the students of the Urdu Department. They were patiently waiting for the Indian poets who were in the city to participate in Mushairas organized by the Jang Group in connection with the initiative of ‘Aman Ki Asha’ in association with the Times of India Group.

The Department of Urdu had invited acclaimed Indian poets including Nida Fazli, Khushbeer Singh Shaad, Shahnaz Nabi, Ahmed Mahfooz and Tarannum Riaz for a lunch as well as a poetry recital. This was done to get the students oriented with their poetry and the message of love that they have brought from India.

The poets were accompanied by the Vice Chancellor KU Dr Pirzada Qasim, Group Editor Jang Mahmood Sham and Chairman of the Urdu Department Dr Zafar Iqbal.

The Indian poets enthralled the students and the teachers with their recitals of intricately woven verses that spoke of love and care that the people of both the countries had for each other.

Full report here News

Poetry of passion for peace

The cool breeze flowing across the lawns of the Arts Council of Pakistan on Tuesday, March 30 night brushed gently against those who had filled the venue. It was the perfect setting for a Mushaira: there was passion and a festive mood; it was fun and revelry, a will to carve a peace with India; and most of all, there was poetry from the poets of the two countries that were in a flamboyant mood to talk about peace. And they did so poignantly.

Eminent personalities of the city, as well as Indian and Pakistani poets celebrated the occasion held under the auspices of ‘Aman Ki Asha.’ Almost everyone took part in setting some pigeons free — a poetic representation of hope for peace that has eluded the India and Pakistan for over six decades. The stage filled with the white flags waved by these people whose enthusiasm was simply contagious.

Everybody danced to the tune of ‘Lal Meri Pat’ sung passionately by Shazia Khusk, and received equally by the audience, who were jovial and showed their approval to the peace effort launched by Jang and Times of India groups.

Singer of the ages, Mehdi Hassan, was also there to give credence to the occasion. Javed Miandad, Shoaib Muhammad, Behroze Sabzwari, Kashif Khan, Salahuddin Sallu and others representing cricket stars, actors and elite of the city also pledged their support to the Jang Group.

Full report here News

Women poets foster India-Pakistan relations

Women poets from India and Pakistan have gathered here in a bid to foster ties between the two countries through their verses, a media report said.

The 'Indo-Pak Women Verse Concert', held at the Karachi Arts Council, featured well-known poetesses from Pakistan and India, who expressed the wish to build an atmosphere of love and peace between the two nations through their poems, Geo news reported Thursday.

The concert Wednesday was presided over by prominent Pakistani poetess Adiba Kishwar Naheed and hosted by television actress Bushra Ansari.

Dignitaries and audience present at the concert later said both Pakistan and India share similar cultures, which were reflected through the verses presented by all the poets.

Full report here Little About

Karachi Literature Festival off to auspicious start

Sponsored jointly by the British Council and the Oxford University Press, the first-ever literary extravaganza in town, the Karachi Literature Festival, got off to an auspicious start Saturday, March 21 morning at a local hotel with two days (March 20 and 21) of intellectually refreshing and productive programmes.

Mahshood Rizvi, Director, British Council (Sindh-Balochistan), welcomed the guests to the two-day round of activities with a resolve to make the festival an annual event and to make it a major international one. Mrs Ameena Saiyid, Managing Director, Oxford University Press (OUP), said that publishing faced many challenges in Pakistan. One of these, she said, was cultivating the reading habit among the public, which she thought was at a really low level. “We have to bring them from the jewellery shops to the bookshops. The field was really wide in Pakistan, she said, but stressed that what was needed was for publishers to be innovative and imaginative. Pakistan, she said, was a researcher’s delight and the opportunity awaiting the publishing industry in Pakistan was like an unborn spirit anxiously waiting to come into this world.

Shamsur Rehman Farooqi, a noted literary figure from India while felicitating the organisers of the festival, lamented the very tardy pace of transportation and communication between India and Pakistan. He said that when coming out to Pakistan for this trip he was dismayed to learn that there was only one flight to Pakistan every week and that for the coming two weeks, he could just forget travel.  He was of the opinion that festivals like these entailing people-to-people contacts could go a long way in mitigating the absolutely futile hostility between the two countries, a hostility that has proved mutually detrimental to the people of both countries. He said those born in the 1950s and the 60s on both sides of the divide had no idea of, and no affinity to, each other. It is this category of people between whom interaction should be initiated.

After the inauguration, noted literary figure and an authority on Shakespeare, conducted a workshop on creative writing. He lamented that the overall decline and change for the sake of change, had brought about some rather unwanted changes if the novel today, which he said today was not at all character-centred. Quoting novels by Dickens and others, he said novels in the past were character-centred which gave them a profound and poignant quality. He said the undesirable change began in the 1960s with Saul Bellow’s works which sounded the death knell of classical fiction.

He lamented that today, writing of fiction was market-driven.

Another session with US-based Pakistani novelist, Bapsi Sidhwa, was a very profound exercise. The session, moderated by Ishrat Lindblad, got all the participants involved in a lively discussion about issues arising from her novels, like, The Bride, The Icecandy Man Cometh, and others. The discussions of most of her novels were a nostalgic trip back in time, to the time of the partition of the sub-continent and the traumatic events that entailed, and how it profoundly affected lives.

Full report here The News

Book on Walmarts of India launched

Former director of Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE), Iqbal Ismail Calcuttawala launched his first book Footprints in the Sand — The Rise and Fall of Walmarts of India at an exclusive gathering of dignitaries from different walks of life at a local hotel in Karachi.

The book details the achievements of three Bantva companies that dominated Indian trade in the early 20th century. It also shed light on the pivotal role that Haji Habib Haji Peermohamed, Hoosen Kasam Dada and Sir Adamjee Haji Dawood played in the struggle for independence of Pakistan under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam.

Ismail said that the book is a chronology of major institutions that formed the backbone of Pakistan’s economy then and even now are a part of it. He also said that he felt honoured to have penned down the birth, rise and fall of the ‘Walmarts of India’.

Full report here The News