In Conversation with Fatima Bhutto

A brief chat with Fatima Bhutto on her new book Songs of Blood and Sword.

It’s coincidental that we meet on a day which also happens to be your grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 31^st death anniversary. How has Pakistani politics evolved over the last three decades?

Well I wasn’t alive for all those 31 years but with his death – his murder actually – a very dangerous precedent was set. The first democratically elected leader of the country, who was truly committed to socialist principles put to death which sends the message that when we disagree with our political leaders, we don’t entrust the people to vote them out.

Any country, over a 31 year period, goes through tremendous shifts and changes but in Pakistan what we see is that problems like corruption are allowed to continue; the people are not given an agency that they deserve in a participatory system

In the book you write very glowingly of your grandfather but a lot of people in India and elsewhere would like to believe that he was more dictatorial than his predecessors. How would you react to that?

First of all, I didn’t write glowingly about him. I wrote very critically of Balochistan and of the powers he increased for himself towards the end. But I think the assumption that he was more dictatorial than his predecessors was totally unfounded because his predecessors did not come into power on a one-man-one-vote ballot. They didn’t even abide by the Constitution let alone pen a Constitution. His predecessors followed the dictates of America and the Soviet Union rather than engage in foreign relations with Asian and African countries. Certainly, he made mistakes like we saw Mujib in Bangladesh and Indira Gandhi did.

Also, if one looks at Pakistani history, certainly there hasn’t been that sort of freedom in terms of the right to vote, right to a constitution etc. All these things are now identified with the repression in Pakistan like the Hudood laws, the blasphemy laws etc which came after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

In recent interviews you’ve been called ‘the other Bhutto’, ‘the lonely Bhutto and ‘Benazir’s niece’. Have you ever felt that your individual identity as a writer has been overshadowed by your surname?

No. It’s a very South Asian thing to bio-data everybody; even on the book cover you see it written. And I have to say, this phrase ‘the other Bhutto’, I’ve only heard it in India. This book, obviously, is a very big book and a book on an important family..

But even when your previous book, 8.50 a.m. 8 October 2005, came out you were referred to as Benazir Bhutto’s niece…

And it’s very strange; it’s way for people to connect something which I completely understand. In countries like ours, which are so dominated by life figures, it’s easier for people to say ‘oh this person comes from so and so family’ when in fact, neither my family nor I had anything to do with the earthquake relief work. It is a very strange thing because for two years I wrote very critically of the Musharraf regime; at that point it wasn’t Benazir Bhutto’s niece. It was only when my aunt returned to Pakistan and I spoke about her it became ‘oh look, the criticism is coming from inside’. I was in Hong Kong for a literary festival and I remember being introduced as being the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, niece of Benazir Bhutto etc… And I said, you know these things have their place but when it is referred to as a profession, then we’re losing sight of things slightly because as South Asians we do have multiple identities. Yes, I am all of these things but it feels very restrictive to be told ‘you are only this’. I for a woman in a South Asian country, you are always someone’s something. It takes a while to break out on your own. But I’m not worried about it; it (being labelled as Benazir’s niece etc.) doesn’t affect me.

You spoke about South Asian countries, which have a long history with dynasties. Is there a problem with our political systems that we throw up dynasties? Do you think these systems need to be re-examined?

Well I think if we look at this region, we also have to remember that for hundreds of years we ruled by foreign powers and when they left, they didn’t do so willingly; they left begrudgingly and left incredible cleavages in our country. I don’t think there’s any mistake that in all the countries the British left – Greece and Turkey, Palestine, the Irish – they left us with really fractured senses of self. And not just that but the way they ruled when they were here was really vile; by pitting people against each other, by strengthening education systems in one part and neglecting the other. For me, the main issue with dynasty is that it negates participation. And the British, if nothing else, were famous for not encouraging participation.

I think it’s one of the tremors they left us with. I think it was their refusal to deal with the country as a whole; it was their tendency to create factions that leaves not only Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, but Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma and Bhutan all with these ridiculous dynastic systems that otherwise we wouldn’t have had. I think, unfortunately – and this is probably an unpleasant thing to say – we still have this complex when it comes to Britain and America and our countries. We still have these ridiculous sort of histories told through foreigners’ eyes. The best sort of writing on Pakistan is by Tariq Ali and on India by Khushwant Singh. It’s not people who parachute themselves and explain our countries to us. Certainly, we don’t go to England and write their histories for them; I think colonialism has a lot to answer for and dynasty is one of them

Most reviews in the Indian press say that your book is a partisan account. In fact, one reviewer went to the extent of saying that you’re being ‘vengeful’. How do you react to such statements?

There’s not a drop of vengeance; this is a search for justice. There is no calling for violence; there is no calling for revenge. My father’s murder is reconstructed through the eyes of survivors, witnesses, police officers and judges. So anybody with the faculties to read can open up the footnote section and see it. And I would ask those critics what is vengeful? And I would ask them to find me a part that is vengeful. I don’t believe in vengeance as a human being. And in terms of partisan, I am a Bhutto and I’m writing about the Bhuttos so I will be partisan.  What does objective mean? There is no such thing as objective history because we are writing about countries we know, we live in, we’ve experienced. So the idea that it is partisan is not pretended – it is very clear here on the cover. There are the people who killed and I’m writing about them, I love them. As objective as I can be, I am. In fact, the opposite is said of me in Pakistan; ‘you’re too critical of your family, why are you being disloyal’. So I hope that at the end of the day, critics who read the book, read it and see that there are sources and they can double check. This is ultimately a labour of love and there is no call for blood in this book.

After the death of your grandfather, your father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto moved to Kabul and travelled frequently to Damascus and Libya. Do you think that if he remained in Pakistan, he could’ve been the political heir to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto rather than Benazir?

I don’t think it was possible because the two sons (Mir and Shahnawaz Bhutto) were sent out because Zulfikar believed there was a threat against them and he turned out to be correct; Shahnawaz was killed six years later. But I think my father was on a quest for justice, not for power. So before Afghanistan, Libya and Damascus, he spent two years travelling the globe meeting human rights activists, presidents, publishing newspapers, books and organising law conferences. So his quest was really very different from Benazir’s; his quest was to get justice in the murder of his father, to get clemency in the case of his father. Not to sort of take hostage a political legacy. So had he stayed, his quest would’ve been different from his sister’s.

But don’t you think that had he stayed in Pakistan, his task would’ve been made easier?

Not under Zia because, as you know, the patriarchal societies that we live in, the son would’ve been assumed to be the political heir of his father. So would Shahnawaz have lived had he stayed back in Pakistan? I don’t know because this was an environment where you had journalists flogged in public. And not only that, the family of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto never saw his dead body. The Army claims that he was hanged but there is no proof of that. So I think that Murtaza and Shahnawaz’s fate wouldn’t have been very different from their father’s.

You call this book a search for justice; what is the next step in this search? How do you see this search going forward?

This is not the first attempt; we’ve been fighting for justice for 14 years and it has consistently been denied to us in the courts. Of course, we understand the courts in Pakistan are not always free especially in these last few years. They’ve been heavily influenced and heavily hijacked. For me, justice is not revenge because that means violence and that I’m not interested in. Justice is about memory. To be here and talking to you, it took 14 years to reach this point. For me, justice means that there is a remembering of these men who were killed and not just in my family, but the 3000 people who were killed. That this never happens again; that we are never faced with a government that kills 3000 people in a period of one year. So it’s a long road ahead.

Is there any hope for justice?

There is always hope for justice

Even with President Zardari at the helm of affairs?

President Zardari will come and go but the truth and justice are much stronger than his corruption of his government, of any government. If people say that they believe in truth and justice, then there is no force stronger than this belief.

Fatima Bhutto image courtesy: The Daily Beast

Songs of Blood and Sword image courtesy: Amazon

Next Big Thing: Wilbur Sargunaraj

If you’re one of those who troll the Internet looking for mindless entertainment, you probably know who Wilbur Sargunaraj is. If not, log on to YouTube and search for this 32-year-old, US-based Tamilian, whose satirical videos and tutorials on marriage, blogging, talking in German, ordering burgers, and cricket are becoming quite a rage. His Love Marriage video, by far the most popular, has already been viewed by over 2.5 lakh enthusiasts and is getting downloaded as a ringtone for mobiles too. Another hit is Blog Song, which has been creating quite a buzz in the blog community.


But what makes Sargunaraj — looking out of sorts in corporate attire while singing and dancing and beating, literally, drums in one of his videos — such a hit? He knows that he lacks singing and dancing skills. But the manner in which he combines this knowledge, complete with bawdy lyrics and catchy tunes, produces a heady concoction.
Sargunaraj’s motto, in his own words, is quite simple: “Making the common, extraordinary”.


In Love Marriage he does just that. He’s prancing around with villagers, moving around in a humble bullock cart, singing a song where he’s requesting his parents to let him have a, well, love marriage. He may describe his style of singing as “vocal chanting” and though he’s anything but a singer, his music videos are bound to make you laugh.


Sargunaraj has been doing standup comedy in the US for a while now, but only recently decided to venture into music videos. “I always wanted to be an actor,” he confesses. But instead of waiting for an opportunity to come his way, he created one himself. “I wrote songs and through my music videos, I was able to sing, dance, play drums... just like an actor.” He calls himself a “pure entertainer” and going by his online fans’ comments he is a hit. Hailed as a “global superstar and a visionary” by one fan, another follower remarks that “Wilbur inspires me....” What other plans does Sargunaraj have? For the moment, he says, he plans to release more videos, before concentrating on another album, which, he says, will release later this year. “I’d love to do a world tour so that all my fans have a chance to sing and dance along”. That apart, he also wants to host a travel show. “God willing, movies will happen soon”, he adds. That can wait, after all, he’s already dealing with being the Internet’s newest sensation.


(Did this for the Sunday Business Standard. Also, this piece was inspired by Aishwarya's blogpost so a big thank you to her as well!)

Jaipur Diaries 2: Decoding Diana; Tina Brown talks to Vir Sanghvi

This was a session I was really keen on attending because, just before the literature festival, I had read Tina’s biography of Princess Diana, The Diana Chronicles, and wanted to talk to her about it during the event. Alas, that never happened because Tina was, literally, mobbed by the media. I do plan to send her the questions over email but before that happens, l’ll write about the session at Jaipur which was about the book.

Moderated by the venerable Vir Sanghvi, ‘The Diana Chronicles’ session was – quite obviously – a discussion about the book. It was published in 2007 and is a fascinating account of, not just Diana’s life, but also of the Royal family and of British society through the 80’s and 90’s. Meticulously researched and written with a trademark irreverence and panache, The Diana Chronicles is a revelation of just how complex the late Princess was.

But the question to be asked is ‘Why Diana?’ and that’s exactly how Vir Sanghvi started the discussion.

“The Diana story is one of the most compelling that one would ever have read. Beauty, vulnerability, fragility, ambition, loved, rejected, royalty, monarchy…is it death, is it murder? I mean, come on, there is every single element you could possibly imagine (in her life). So it’s just too interesting for it not to be re-examined”.  But was she worried that she was writing her book after all the principal characters – Diana’s secretaries, security officers etc – had written their versions?

“One of the things I’ve learnt as an editor is that, just when everybody’s had their say is when you don’t know anything at all; because so much information is recycled and rewritten thanks to journalism and so much garbage gets written. And there’s always more to find if you go back, re-interview everybody and those who’ve never talked before. So, I think it’s these big stories which get so much coverage that need to be re-examined.”

In India, Diana is seen as a tragic figure who married a man who just wanted an heir and was having an affair with his mistress. But the Diana in Tina’s book comes across as a much more complicated person.

“Well if Diana were to be canonised soon after her death, she’d be far less interesting than the vain, mysterious, scheming yet tender-hearted, yet very sexual. She was a very empathetic girl; there was no question about it. Her desire to help people was absolutely authentic; her connection to people was authentic. She could look in a crowd and identify a person who was lonely or sad and connect to him on a one-to-one basis; that was absolutely real. But on the other side, she was also very troubled and that’s what made her appealing.”

A startling revelation of the book was that Diana had an affair with Barry Mannakee, her protection officer, quite early on in the marriage. “Yes, she did. And it was quite early on in the marriage; within one and a half years of it.”

Talking about Charles, Tina said that he did get married in “good faith” but that his “heart belonged to Camilla and, from Diana’s point of view that was something she couldn’t take.” So is that the reason why Diana had so many lovers? Could she have been faithful to Charles if he had resisted Camilla? “I think that Diana was a highly starved and a very needy woman and it’s possible that no one husband could have ever been reassuring enough for Diana” she said. “Diana tended to stalk them (her lovers) while she was involved with them to the point that she drove them away. She would call them a 100-times-a-day, demand constant reassurance and men got really freaked out by this” added Tina. “She freaked out Gulu Lalvani, who was one of her lovers later in life, because she couldn’t stop calling him, going to his house, checking on him all the time. And she did the same with Hasnat Khan; calling him a 100-times-a-day in the middle of his operations. So there was this tremendous insecurity and it’s possible that no man could’ve been enough for her” Tina added that had Diana married a man who was “tender and re-assuring, it’s possible that she would’ve settled down.  But she married into the chilliest family in the world. She was looking for an elder woman to be a mother figure because her own mother had left her when she was six and who did she find? The Queen of England, who wasn’t the kind of mother-in-law you could say ‘let’s have a cup of tea and talk about the problems.’ She was quite aloof in a sense. So there was this massive insecurity which only made her very much worse.”

Diana’s choice of Gulu Lalvani and Hasnat Khan – both Asian men – is intriguing. “I think Diana wanted to be with someone who was outside the Royal family. She felt, at that point, that because she had alienated the Royal family, most of the people she might have been involved with from the outside world (Englishmen), believed she was from there (the Royal family).  And although the Royal family doesn’t have the same powers it feels it does and you are the sort of person Diana wants to be involved with, you just don’t want to alienate the Royal family” said Tina and added “the celebrity she hung out with wouldn’t give her the neediness. So, in a way for her, the Asian men provided her with a new culture to explore; also the kind of men who were more willing to respond to her without the anxiety an Englishmen would”. Her choice of Lalvani was understandable – a playboy, rich and a member of Anabelle’s – but Hasnat Khan seemed to be an odd choice.

“Hasnat Khan for her was the ultimate person. As a doctor, he was a good listener, patient; Diana was inspired by his selflessness. Khan, in turn, loved the fact that Diana wanted to be associated with humanitarian causes and was quite proud of her. And that was the best thing about him” Tina said it was “rather tragic” that they broke up because “he was the best thing to ever happen to her”. “But then, like so many good things that happened to Diana, she drove them away. Also, it was very demeaning for a man to be the boyfriend of Diana; pictures in the papers, can’t lead a life without being hassled. Hasnat couldn’t take it and very few people can” claimed Tina.

But did Hasnat like her, asked Vir

“Yes, I think he loved her very much and perhaps loved her more truly than anybody did” said Tina. “But he also had his career and wanted to be a real, professional doctor and did not want to be Diana’s boyfriend. When I met her in July 1997 in New York, she said ‘everybody thinks I’m the most glamorous woman in the world but for me, it’s so hard to get a man in my life to put up with the celebrity status that I have and it makes me very lonely’”.

Tina added that Diana “dreaded” the following month because her children, William and Harry, were going to their summer retreat at Balmoral and that she would feel very “lonely”.

On the subject of Dodi Al-Fayed, Tina said that Diana was with Dodi because of the protection he offered her. “Diana kept referring to him and said that ‘he has all the toys’. By toys, she meant all the accoutrements of glamour, wealth and protection.”

Contrary to what Mohammed Al-Fayed said, her love affair with Dodi was very short and one which she embraced when she was very “vulnerable” according to Tina. “Dodi for her was a great blessing and at the time he invited her to the south of France, she was at her most vulnerable; it was a very tough time for her because she had to deal with the fact that Prince Charles had thrown a 50^th birthday party for Camilla Parker-Bowles at their former marital home in Highgrove. And that really, really upset her”.

Tina added that when she met Diana in New York, Diana was “obsessed” with the fact that she didn’t lose Charles to Camilla but that Camilla had had him. “Here was this woman who had always been there (in Charles’ life) and this is what irked her most.”

Tina said that while Dodi might have been a “sweet” fellow he was, essentially, “stupid”. But, Vir asked, did 

Diana seriously contemplate a future with Dodi? “She may have considered that as a many-solution option for her; slap in the face of the Royal family, the only person who could take them head on, slap in the face for Hasnat Khan. He (Dodi) was a good option in a sense but ultimately, it was only romance which would’ve helped”.

However, in the same breath, Tina also talks about Diana’s “other side”: as a professional who took her role very seriously. “She was a terrific executive and her secretarial staff loved her because she was decisive and organised. She did what she set out to do, never ever let anybody down, super committed and performed when she was asked to do it. And, she connected with people in a very real way. Dodi, on the other hand, never showed up anywhere on time. His staff said he functioned on ‘Dodi time’ which was nine hours later. He would drop into a restaurant any time he felt like it; Diana wouldn’t have been able to stand that.  So many, many reasons why the relationship would’ve ended soon”.

So there was a certain tension between the humanitarian Diana and the one who was on a yacht in the south of France?

“Well, that’s what made her interesting. Diana’s need for love and attention always interfered with her good side and that was the problem. Her marriage was so loveless that she had to keep looking for validation outside it. What she never got tired of was the attention so, in a way, the press became her lovers. She would treat celebrity coverage to believe that she was somebody of worth. And that’s a disaster because it (press coverage) was all fickle and invasive. In the end, she became very distraught, fragile and frightened”

But why would any man who married Diana want to leave her for someone like Camilla? Tina said that Charles’s marriage to Diana was “agony from the beginning”. She added “Here was a man raised as being the centre of attention; from the day he was born he had flunkies, courtiers and sycophants dancing around him. I mean, he would make a serious comment and people would roar with laughter and you’d think ‘that wasn’t particularly funny’. But how would he ever know? And then he marries Diana who he is enchanted by at first; this nice little, lovely girl whom he loves very much. But very quickly, it turned to rage and it began on their very first trip (a tour of Wales).  They were walking on a path and split up – Diana goes to the left and Charles to the right. Everybody on Diana’s side screamed, shouted and waved; people on the side were cold and seemed to be saying ‘we got him!’. By the time they finished their walkabout, he was in a rage”.

Among the many other things that were discussed at this session were the infamous “tampon transcripts”, Prince Harry’s paternity issue (Charles is understood to have said “I didn’t know what she was doing at the time!”), Camilla’s mistressy ways and Diana’s sexual inabilities. But I guess those are bits of salacious gossip that we’ve heard a lot about in the past and were injected into the session to add some spice to it . What really emerges out of the book and this session is that Diana was a very complicated person and that she remains an enigma till today.

Until next time, Ciao!

(Note: The statements which are not attributed to Tina Brown are either comment by me or by Vir Sanghvi, unless otherwise specified. The same statements have been rephrased and rewritten for this blogpost and every attempt has been to report them without diluting their meaning or accuracy.)

In Conversation: Chandrahas Choudhury, Author, Arzee The Dwarf

In all the author interviews that I’ve done so far, this perhaps was the most different and most enjoyable since it was a free-flowing conversation about not just Arzee The Dwarf but about blogs, cinema, books and writing. Hence, I’m reproducing the interview as it happened with minimal editing. Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did

If you were to compare Arzee to a movie character, which would it be?

(Pauses) Never thought about it. And to answer the question with a question, why is it necessary that we compare him with a movie character? What is it about Arzee that necessitates a comparison?

It doesn’t necessitate a comparison; it’s just a thought that came to my head while reading the book. Let me put it this way; if he were to be closest to a movie character which would it be?

Well for that you don’t have to look into the past but into the future. There’s been some talk of film rights as well but (in the film) it would have to be a new Arzee. Some of the things in the book would have to go. Arzee will be himself in the movie, not somebody else

So there is there a movie version of the book in the works?

No, no, no. As with any novel that comes out these days, there’s been some talk but I can see how – or maybe its just my presumption as a writer – there are some elements in the book that mind lend themselves cinematically.

When and where was Arzee conceived, and how? Was it an incident, a place, an experience, a person…?

Hmm. I think maybe a short story comes that way but with a novel its just the work of years. Some of the things which are in Arzee today – and which are the most important - came to me in November of last year. The book was already bought (by the publishers), I was on the stage of the last draft of it and one of the good things about novel writing is that so many of the good things come to you so late and you have to wait for it. So what you initially start off is a very thin which stems from an incident or any one experience, but that can never be enough. So I would say when it comes to novels, or works which go onto much longer, the initial idea may not have the same significance for a shorter work. What comes later is more significant, the kind of work you do on what was your initial draft is more important.

But suppose you’ve done 70-80% of the MS (manuscript), how difficult is it to incorporate what you’ve thought of later into what you’ve already done?

Its just got to be done. Some passages have to be cut…you need to have a view of the whole from above and you need to know that if you’ve put something here then you have to cut something out there. You just have to wait for the moment where you know you’re text and do what you like with it because you know, you’re in control. Working in an uncontrolled way just produces further burden!(both laugh out loud) That is NOT to be recommended! So it’s a process of striving, of confusion and finally a kind of clarity at the end of the day.

How much of Chandrahas is there in any Arzee? And how much of Arzee is Chandrahas in real life?

Umm, you know every author is his character in some way. If he wasn’t then it wouldn’t be a good character. I think it was Flauber who said something about Madame Bovary bou vouen but he didn’t really mean he was Madame Bovary but the thought that has to be expanded from those four words is if you can’t imagine you character into life then nobody else would be interested in it. And every character’s fund of experience can only come from what the writer knows about the world. So author and writer are connected and yet the trick of character creation is to use your experience or to use somebody else’s. Because that is a weakness in a book; when all protagonists look autobiographical and even the women somehow seem like an expression of a male’s mind. So I consider these weaknesses in writing. So when I was writing Arzee in the early years, I was also jobless – deliberately so, self-willed – and I didn’t have very much going on in my life. I used to wander around the old cinemas; partly to research and partly to spend my own time. You know, just experiencing the world of vagabonds who don’t do anything. So, for a brief period, maybe, partly I shared the values of that world. So you never know in a book how much of it is yours, how much of it you’ve gone out and found and how much of it comes with the mixing of these elements. But finally that is the tension you have to put together. It’s best not to put a rigid boundary of these things.

One of the most striking features I noticed was that your blogposts are better paced and slightly more engaging as compared to Arzee The Dwarf? Is it because of the nature of writing that such a difference is visible?

You mean by book reviews?

Not just those, but your blogposts in general

Well, you know a blogpost, or even a review, is an expression of someone i.e. my thought. And while my book is also an expression of someone, inside that book is also an expression of Arzee’s thought. Also, a review doesn’t live in time, the way a novel or story does. A story has to speed up and slow down and it has to have those changes that register. While, conversely, an essay has to be smooth and has to have an even tone so that’s what works best for it. So it’s just the nature of the medium. And Arzee especially is a dramatic story and a lot of things happen so I had to change the pace a bit.

Which Bombay cinema hall bears the closest resemblance to Noor cinema?

(smiles) I’m not going to say that!

You describe the interior of Noor Cinema as “… air let in on a primordial evening and never let out again…” Is that a metaphorical comment on Bombay?

I hadn’t thought of it that way but now that you say it, it can be expanded outward to say how congested it (Bombay) is getting.

The reason I ask is because when I was at XIC in Bombay, we were shown a documentary about Bihari labourers who’ve come to the city to earn a living and one of them says that “ek baari aap Bombay mein aa gaya, toh vapas nahi jaa sakta”

Well its good you read like that and I’m impressed by this kind of connection. My precise intention in writing about that was when you go to an old, decrepit cinema which has a particular smell when you enter the hall. I wanted to say that it’s not just the inside of the hall but the entire cinema which is enclosed like this. But, yeah, you can sort of think of the world outside representing it. There is air but its thick, congested and doesn’t allow anybody in its way.

For that matter, there’s a lot of Bombay inside the novel…references to the movie Saathi, Arzee looking at the portraits of Waheeda Rehman, Nargis etc.

Also there are things like his travels around Bombay once he loses his job and roams around the city

Exactly, so were you influenced by any of the old movies?

No, there’s no specific reference to old movies in the book. There are old movies and new movies. The only thing I was particular about was that I shouldn’t make my book parasitical on Bollywood. Because I feel that Bollywood is so overpowering that unless you defend yourself against it, it just rushes over and then you’re only talking Raj Kapoor sang this about that so, although there are references to Bollywood, there’s none of this. There are passages where Arzee specifically sees or remembers something or starts randomly chatting about Saathi but I’ve tried to keep them under control. But, in a way, the book is about the most general experience of cinema. Arzee doesn’t particularly remember somebody saying a particular line. I wanted a particular style and language and Bollywood would over run it and ruin it.

Another thing that struck me while reading the novel was, when you talk about the closure of Noor cinema, it seems like a larger comment on vintage Bombay – places like Café Naaz and Irani cafes - which are shutting down. It seems as if old Bombay is fading away, giving way to the new glass-n-steel structures.

There’s no way to stop against change, finally. But, at the same time, there are some people who are stuck or caught up in a particular thing or world that the new has no attraction for them. And the pleasure of writing is to find out the tension between these two things. So, yeah, the book is partly about the people left behind by the changing world. And there are some other elements, references to capitalism; all the things that people are required to do some things differently from what they used. But it wasn’t my specific intention to make Arzee think about Café Naaz shutting down. For him the only thing is Noor Cinema. In fact, he doesn’t care if everything else shuts down.

You’ve set the novel in Bombay, a city which is fast-paced, bustling and moving at a rapid pace and yet there’s Arzee who’s in his own world oblivious to what’s happening outside. How difficult was it for you to carve out Arzee’s rather slow-paced, dreamy-eyed world from Bombay?

It wasn’t that difficult, rather, it was the attraction in the story because as any writer will tell you , the best way to work is through contrast. That’s when you generate tension, energy, colour etc. For instance, another contrast in the book is that Arzee looks up at people as he walks down the street but then once he enters the building he looks down from, what he calls a room in the sky. And since the room is on the top floor, he towers over everybody else metaphorically. So these kind of contrasts were attractive to me; they were tender and yet there was a joke in it. So in the same way pace in the novel was quite important to me. The first five chapters take a whole day and then there’s a chapter in the middle which takes ten days to go through. So there’s that kind of pace which Arzee loves because it’s insulated by the Noor from the world. And it’s insulated from the pace of Bombay by the Noor too, because when he goes into the streets, there are all these schoolchildren who run past him and he stands on the bridge with trains passing by every minute. But he knows at the back of his mind and sees the Noor when he’s going up there that that’s where it all ends.

That could also be a larger comment on people wanting to insulate themselves from the world. Especially, in the case of Bombay where I’ve come across a lot of people who say “yaar abhi bahaut ho gaya”

Yes, that’s a classic comment on Bombay where people say ‘I hate it’ and yet they would never leave

You’ve just finished editing an anthology after this book. How different does it feel editing an anthology as compared to writing a novel? Did you miss anything?

It was extremely relaxing after the pressures of writing a novel and there are two sides to my writing: writing about literature and writing a novel.

One comment on your writing is that its too erudite..

Well I’ll take that as a half-compliment but I think that what keeps me grounded is that I read a book by somebody else every week and try and pay close attention to that work even as I’m working on my own. Also, I feel as a writer you can never be above literature; you’re always part of a tradition which is bigger than you. And it is your job to look for a tradition and decide what elements are most interesting to you and what you can pass on to other people to share because if you live a life in literature, there are some things which you can give to people who don’t have the time to sift through things. They want an argument about why to read something. So for that reason I was very happy working on an anthology because there are lots of stories in it which people who follow Indian literature would never have read. Stories in translation, stories from the 60s and 70s, things that came out in journals or periodicals and it’s a chance to showcase my taste to the world without having to go through the pressures of composition myself . It’s very nice to do such things while you’re working on your own books because it takes you out of yourself and for a while you’re thinking about other writers and what you love about their work. Also, it’s a chance to learn because Indian literature is so big that no one of us has the full picture because there are so many languages

Also, as a writer I think it helps you lose your ego a little. For instance, if I hadn’t this work in the last five months, I would’ve finished my manuscript in January and kept waiting for May or June for my book to release. And here I forgot all about it, went to libraries and kept on reading. It keeps you busy and you can think things other than your own book.

On the first anniversary of your blog – The Middle Stage – you said that, given a chance, you’d like to do an expansive work of non-fiction. Any particular subject that you’d like to work on?

Yeah, but I won’t say it because it’ll be stolen then! There are a lot of non-fiction writers prowling around looking for ideas (laughs). Not that they don’t have any of their own, many of them have excellent ideas. In fact, I would say that one of the pleasures of working for Mint was that before Mint, I was primarily a fiction reviewer but at Mint, reviewing a book every week meant lots of non-fiction and the amount of things I’ve learnt about philosophy, literature, history, politics through the work of contemporary non-fiction writers…I owe them a lot, so at some point I’d like to be part of this but you know it requires a different kind of mindset and I don’t want to think of a novel in the one or two years that it takes to work on it.

Coming back to Arzee, don’t you think that there’s an Arzee in everyone of us in the sense that we all look for love, dignity and a good job…

Well one review about the book was titled ‘Arzee every man’ and I agreed with it at least up to the title. I didn’t want to make his circumstances as a dwarf so special that no one could participate in his miseries. They are the same troubles that everyone has and Arzee himself wants to be seen as just as everybody else; that is his main problem with life that he is stereotyped by his height. So I don’t think there’s anything – apart from specific issues of perspective – which readers wouldn’t know; like falling in love, feeling lonely in the world, being overcome by the senses and smells around you. Everything is at the universal level.

Will there be a sequel to Arzee The Dwarf?

Well, it’s always a good idea for a writer never to discuss a book if he’s not written a single word of it! I think if there ever was a sequel it will not take off from where this novel has ended. It will jump into a new point in time; maybe Arzee will be 40 or 50 years old and maybe I would be that age too! But definitely not for a few years. I have different projects in mind.

At a different time in life when I have a different view of things, that’s when a sequel is rich because it doesn’t rely or lean upon the original anymore. It’s got an identity of its own and yet people who have the memory of that character can, from the first page, make out what’s going on. So at some point there may be a temptation. But I wouldn’t like to write a bad sequel since sequels can be extremely dangerous.

On your blog, you mention about how Delhi has played a role while you were writing this novel and how your friends in this city read the manuscript. Cities do tend to play a key role while writing a book right? In this case, it was your foster city rather than your native Bombay.

Well, Bombay is the city around which the novel is centred around but the resources that I have now in my brain, for reading Bombay, I got from my education and friends in Delhi where I lived for a few years. I followed it up by going to England to study further and that was the beginning of it all; that gave me the brain, resources and temperament to sort of come back to Bombay and start writing. I’ve lived in Bombay before so it’s nothing but a Bombay book but yet a lot of my world lies in Delhi and I think I’m one of those rare people who love Bombay and Delhi equally and not complain about one.

While writing Arzee.., did you think of any other writer or did you follow a particular writer’s style?

No. In fact that might be someone’s idea when they’re starting out but if, midway through the novel, you’re still using that approach, it means you’re not doing anything original because it shows you haven’t got out of that starting block because that’s was the aid to you to start off with since you’re not confident enough, but it shows you still aren’t. Every book has its own specific kind of and sound to it and that you discover as you work and that’s inside the book waiting to be discovered. So while working on Arzee… most of the time I had to keep the same sound throughout the 185 pages of the book.

As a book reviewer yourself, how do you react to reviews of Arzee The Dwarf?

I would reverse the emphasis of your description of me. I started work on Arzee in 2005 which is around the time I began reviewing books seriously. It’s just that novel takes four years to write as compared to a book review which takes less time. So I was a writer who was doing nothing but writing book reviews while he was working on his first novel because he didn’t want to subject Arzee to the pressures of some other circumstance. So I wanted all my time to be free and this fitted very well with that sort of life. So I would call myself a writer who writes essays about books just like any other writer does. I just do it in a more structured way because I don’t have any other resources to make my living and I enjoy it very much. It’s a way for me to learn what’s going on, to read and to get paid for it. So therefore I have the same attitude to reviews as any other writer. I look forward to them but maybe, having written lots of reviews and upset lots of people, I’ve told myself not to react. Everybody can make mistakes; I may have made lots of them and you should give other people the right to do that as well. Literature is about interpretation, debate and about people arguing loudly till they reach some kind of conclusion. I think you should have the self-discipline to finish your book and let those be your last words.

About your blog, why have you just done four books interviews? Why not more? They are so wonderful to read.

I would love to do more because it’s a great chance to discuss the craft of writing with people. It’s just that there are the weekly reviews for Mint and there’s stuff in these interviews which papers may not publish. For instance, questions like ‘what is your favourite meal’. Also, it’s really hard work trying to write your own book, write different reviews for the blog and the newspaper and lead a normal life. You can’t shut yourself to the world. But yes, I realise what you’re saying. I enjoy doing those interviews because they help spread the word about writing. I’m one of those people who think that one of the best ways of learning is not through monologue but dialogue. So, many people ask me ‘why are those questions so long’ They’re long because they aren’t questions. They are attempts to start a conversation where I may have something to offer. I’d like to do some more, maybe even do a book of them.

You should because I, for instance, enjoy your non-fiction essays and books interviews more than the essays on fiction

Well that’s the reverse of what I think of myself. I’d say of the many purposes is of my blog, the first is to try and understand what works for fiction and what doesn’t and to try and pay close attention to the elements of fiction; narrative, point-of-view, metaphor, style. I try to make some sort of intelligent remark about how these work in a novel. Because I feel that sometimes we tend to read novels non-novelistically. We try and see is it significant? Is it about some big issue and what is its theme? These to me are not really the most important things about a novel. The most important things are the sentences and what it does with the story. It’s the words on the page which are more important rather than the over-arching idea of it. That can only be expressed through words. A novel is a conglomeration of sentences, words and paragraphs written in a particular way, speed and with regard to a particular end in mind. So I like reading through these kinds of ways and looking at what works and what doesn’t. That’s how I read a book.

So my first goal is to try and communicate to readers how more than anything else a novel is a serious way of thinking about the world and of thinking about people, relationships in a sort of non-pressurising way. For me that’s the excitement and the thrill of fiction

Is there a writer(s) or book(s) which has influenced the way you think and write?

Let me take an unusual name so that people go and actually order it. When I was 22 years old, and I feel ashamed saying this because it shows how I ignorant I was, I read a novel by Willa Cather, an early 20^th century American writer, called The Professor’s House and till then my mind was so small that I couldn’t totally grasp the world of a novel. I would read novels but I never sort of had a higher view of it. I was reading for a literature degree and would struggle to write about novels. So I read this book and it has a tripartite structure and it’s about the life of a professor and his house. One of the great things about Willa Cather’s writing is her description of houses and places are great apart from people. And after you’ve finished reading it, you look at your own room and start imagining what you’ve just read.

So the first part is about the life of this professor in whose life many changes are going on after years of stability and he feels his health is slipping away. He remembers this student who died many years ago very tragically. Even in the third part is about the life of the professor.

It’s the middle part which is about the life of the student, Tom Outland, and it’s told in Outland’s voice. The professor decides that he’s not going to look at history anymore but is going to write a story Outland told him. Outland came from very far off and found an old Indian colony somewhere. It showed me what you can do with structure in a novel; the middle section is so different that it changes your entire view of the entire structure. Catha herself spoke about it a lot and I would read up on it because was at a place where any book wanted was available to me; at Cambridge where the University library is 13 floors tall.

So she spoke of it as trying to put a wedge in the middle of the story and that wedge is not an obstruction but something that raises all parts of it to a higher level. I’ve never forgotten the thrill of suddenly realising what could be done to a novel. And that’s what taught me to be an attentive reader and that’s why I love novels as compared to non-fiction. They make meanings at different levels.

Lastly, since the first half of 2009 has ended, which are the books you’ve enjoyed reading the most?

M G Vassanji’s travel book about India, A Place in India. It’s got a few passages about Delhi which I thought I knew about but it shows how conceited a writer can get. Sankar’s novel The Middleman (translated by Arunava Sinha) I read a couple of weeks ago. I have rarely read something so beautiful and moving. Daniyal Mueenuddin’s book, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, was a great book. Some of the stories are absolute gems and are unconventional since they don’t have a typical beginning-middle-end format. Mridula Koshy’s If It Is Sweet is also very good because she doesn’t pander to the reader at all.

In non-fiction, I read these two books by Utpal Dutt on theatre and cinema. All of us think of him as a comic figure from movies such as Kiraayedaar and Golmaal but he writes high above anybody else on movies. He was an extremely perceptive and engaged thinker about theatre and cinema. In Bengal, people know of him as a stridently Marxist actor, director and theatre person and sometimes had very narrow views but was always interesting to hear. So in these two books On Cinema and On Theatre there are pieces on film and theatre history in which you can actually visualise that same booming voice which you can visualise him speaking in. Also, some of the arguments are really very good. For instance, there’s not much criticism in India about the TV serial Ramayana except that it led to a right-wing movement. But Utpal Dutt thinks of it as a capitalist scam. He calls it a fairytale told by an alcoholic.

In addition there are great essays about Charlie Chaplin, Mrinal Sen and filmmakers we don’t even know about and, when you read about them here, you might want to find them in the archives. And even though he was a strident Marxist, he never gave into the banalities of socialist realism of alienating audiences and telling them higher truths about how to resist the bourgoeise and things like that. He knew the craft of storytelling and he knew how to exercise it brilliantly. I can’t recall a week recently where I had such fun reading these essays and marking them up. You might not agree with his politics all the time but he gave you such a different picture of the world which is missing in our commercialized world today.

Goodbye Steve!

Just heard that Steve Bucknor is going to retire as umpire next March. Am instantly reminded of a college assignment I wrote at the height of the Sydney Test fiasco last year. Reproducing it here again.

(Warning: For those of you who hate anti-media rants, ignore this post)

The second cricket Test match played between India and Australia at Sydney will be remembered for the controversies it generated rather than the cricket which was played. Umpire Steve Bucknor, member of the International Cricket Council’s Elite Panel, made as many as 11 blunders against India. And to make things worse, the Australian cricket team alleged that Harbhajan Singh made racist remarks against Andrew Symonds.

Given the undue attention that is paid to cricket in our country, it was but natural that the media would devote reams of newsprint to this story. In its article that appeared on Jan 6, 2008 titled “India laid low by Benson-Bucknor duo”, the Indian Express called Bucknor “blind”. The Hindu which is normally measured in its reportage carried a front page story on January 7, 2008 confirming a three Test ban on Harbhajan Singh. News channels went on a “Breaking News” blitzkrieg and certain sections of the electronic media alleged that Steve Bucknor held a grudge against the Indians.

Being an avid cricket fan, I saw most parts of the match and shared similar sentiments on the quality of umpiring. But to say that India lost the Test only because of poor umpiring is hard to digest. On the last day, our team which boasts of such cricketers as Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Yuvraj Singh among others could not bat for 70 overs. It shows that besides poor decisions, it was a batting collapse that contributed to the loss at Sydney. Says Pradeep Magazine of the Hindustan Times “Despite all the wrongs done to them on the field, India could have still salvaged a draw and been in a much stronger position to take a high moral ground and tell the umpires and the Australians of what they thought of them”

Also, I think the media is wrong when it says that Bucknor holds a grudge against India. The argument presented by the press is that the umpire, on numerous occasions, has repeated his mistake. To substantiate this point, it has been repeatedly stated in several debates (such as The Big Fight on NDTV 24X7) that an ICC enquiry found Bucknor guilty of incompetence during the 2007 World Cup final. However, there has been no official enquiry which can prove that Buckor bears a grudge against India or any other team. Hence, to say that an umpire of this stature, who has officiated in over a 100 matches, bears ill will towards a team is false.
In addition, a leading Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, in one of its programmes committed a factual error. The anchor said that Steve Bucknor is a Be-Imaan (cheat). This is a very serious charge as it questions his integrity. And before making such a sweeping statement, one must take into cognisance the age factor: Bucknor is 61 years old. He may be past his prime but there is no evidence to suggest that he is a cheat. This is yet another example of the media getting its facts wrong.

In the aftermath of this controversy, the ICC replaced Bucknor, who was to officiate in the third test at Perth. The Times of India, in its January 9, 2008 edition, carried a front page story titled “India wins Sydney test” with reference to this development. In its editorial the newspaper writes “The ICC has hit the right buttons by initiating action against those who were on duty at Sydney. They bungled and an exciting Test match ended in a mess.” In a country where cricket has achieved cult status, the media ought to have acted in a mature manner. This decision by the ICC was not a victory for India. Instead, it was a sad day for the game of cricket. And inspite of being aware of Bucknor’s sloppy umpiring in the past, why didn’t the Indian cricket board appeal to the ICC to replace him before the start of this series? The board owes an explanation to not only its players, but to millions of cricket lovers in the country.

In conclusion, it was an episode that saw a high quality Test match being reduced to a mere controversy. What was even more appalling was the coverage by the Indian media which was mediocre, to say the least. Instead of being jingoistic about this issue, it could have shown a sense of maturity.

In Conversation with Mukul Deva

It's tough describing Mukul Deva. You could call him a former army officer turned author whose writings span such different genres as short stories, business leadership, women in Indian cinema, corporate warfare and crime fiction. But then, he's also an entrepreneur who runs a security firm in New Delhi. In addition, Deva is also a corporate trainer on disaster management and business continuity. So, who exactly is Mukul Deva? 

"At heart I am a writer. But in India writers starve so I have to run a business to sustain my passion hence I am a businessman. Deep down, I am still an army man because you can take a guy out of the army but not the army out of the guy." Finding time to write amidst managing all the roles is a tough task, but not for Deva. "I have a two-hour window where I only write. I need six hours to run my business and four hours to be with my kids and family. I sleep, watch movies and read during the remaining 12 hours!"

Born in Lucknow in 1961, Deva is an alumnus of the La Martiniere College, Lucknow, the National Defence Academy, Pune and the Indian Military academy in Dehradun. He was an army officer until 1981, after which he took premature retirement and started his security business in New Delhi. 

Although Deva's writings span a various genres, his most widely acclaimed book has beenLashkar, an action thriller based on the 2005 blasts in Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi. And his latest offering is its sequel Salim Must Die with terrorism as its central theme. 

About his books Deva says "I wrote Lashkar because I was angry at the way these terrorists were striking at us. Also, given my army background I had a potent story to tell which gave me another reason to write it. While writing Lashkar, the principal characters — Anbu and Iqbal — were literally crying to be taken forward which is why I am doing a four-book series of which Salim Must Die is the second." 

Despite his anger, Deva prefers to confine to writing and not be in the fore to assist investigations given his army credentials. "You know, the Indian government, over the last 30 years has proven its inability to think strategically," he says. "They think in tactical, short-term methods. They are trying to cure the symptom and not tackle the disease. So, I thought writing a book which would actually tell the public about other alternatives to the government's actions" reasons Deva. 

On his books, Deva says that both his works are completely different from each other. "I found to my horror that, a lot of what I wrote in Salim.. a year-and-a-half back, is coming true already." He sounds like a soothsayer when he says he "wishes he would have also been able to foresee the sensex falling"! On a serious note, Deva attributes his predictions to logic and history. He says "History has a habit of repeating itself and whatever I have written is firmly grounded in reality and in history. And although these are fictional books, even they require bedrock somewhere.

For instance, Deva says he wrote about the newly-formed National Intelligence Agency a year-and-half ago. "So when you read it you will realise how uncannily it's coming together now." Research, he adds, plays a very important role in writing such potboilers. "For the last four years, I spend a few hours reading and understanding the smallest terror incident in the world. Else you cannot write military action thrillers. So, I have been breathing and living terror in all its forms!" 

Deva is part of a new breed of Indian writers whose works stem from incidents in everyday life. More often than not, they are criticised for not being too 'literary' (a la Chetan Bhagat and Vikas Swarup). Simple storytelling and interesting plotlines — sans highbrow language — is the key. As a result, these novels are often labelled as 'pop-literature'. 

This Delhi-based author, however, refuses to accept to be classified under these media-induced jargons. "Terms like pop-lit, chick-lit really don't matter," says Deva. "Not every story has to be Shakespearean or an Arundhati Roy," he explains. "People like Chetan Bhagat and Vikas Swarup have great stories to tell. These are stories which happen all around us and people from different backgrounds narrate them." 

And what about the highbrow language? "Dude, when you quit school in class 10, how many big words do you really know?" laughs Deva. The author deliberately chooses the potboiler narrative tool over a scholarly one as it would ensure more readers. "It's like making a movie: do you want to make it for the masses or do you want to make it for the Cannes film festival?"

Deva's reading tastes are as eclectic as his writings and he ranks Chetan Bhagat and Advaita Kala amongst his favourite authors. But his all-time favourite book is J.D. Salinger's Raise High The Roof Beam. And Deva's works are not just restricted to literature. 

About his future plans, Deva is writing a crime thriller The Shades of Black "which explores the dark side of the human mind. You know who the killer is and you know how he did it but you have to understand why he did it." Despite a prolific 'literary' journey, Deva is still unsure of any other genre he plans to explore. "I am growing as a human being and evolving in my own head. I don't know which way I will go."

This was an assignment for BusinessWorld Online. You can also read it here