Alighting on Pakistan

But why fiction — steering clear of his father’s journalism and his mother and aunt Moni Mohsin’s delightful satire? He smilingly blames it on “the entitlement that comes to you when you are hanging out with authors like Amitav Ghosh and Zadie Smith”. He did creative writing courses with both of them and the novel developed from a sketch he did for Ghosh.

“There are different layers of Pakistan — there is a western yuppie culture,there is a huge Bollywood influence,there is state-sponsored Wahabi culture,there is the Sufi culture. I was trying to explain Pakistan to myself and to others through this book,” says Sethi. “In my younger days,Zia’s Islamisation had penetrated all layers of culture. There was Kashmir Diary on TV that began with India’s atrocities in Kashmir. All we knew was state-controlled history.” But in the book,he keeps it light — Bhutto appears only as a hoarding; Musharraf is not even named. “Fiction works in suggestion,” he says. “It is a cheap trick to name people to draw attention to a story.”

Even as he is surprised that Delhi is disgruntled with hour-long loadshedding when “we have 18 hours of loadshedding”,Sethi says,“Pakistan should look towards India for cooperation rather than the Middle East as we are part of the same ancient world that stretched from Iran to Bengal and its wisdom.” He is the wish maker. And then there’s Bollywood. He laughs,“I am the DDLJ generation,but my adolescence began and ended with Amitabh Bachchan. Sholay was a rite of passage for every boy in Pakistan.” But he has had enough of fiction for now. “Next will be travel writing plus some investigative journalism,” he says. “A hybrid form suited for the multimedia era.” And with a candour that does not come easily to a new author getting into the promotional regimen,he says,“I cannot claim that reading my book is more important than watching news. After spending 400 pages of making mistakes,I found that fiction is not as effective as nonfiction or journalism in reflecting or effecting changes,although it has a much longer life.”

And then there will be music. Ali is back in Lahore,occasionally rushing to his neighbour Farida Khanoum for a quick ghazal until she dismisses him peremptorily,and taking lessons in Hindustani music. “Illiteracy is a huge problem in Pakistan. A writer is not so vital in such a society. A singer,on the other hand,can be radically more effective,more entrenched in society,” he says,humming a line from Faiz: “Mujh se pahali si mohabbat meri mehaboob na maang….”