on pak writings -- for roz

Roz:

imagination

yaar can you name one writer without imagination?...they have to have imagination...it is the use that may be suspect...or the execution of that imagination...well...they are writing in an alien language...even though they perhaps know it better than their mother tongue...

rootedness

well, you may have something there...if i read you correctly you are disenchanted with the way the English Pakistani writer depict their stories...or perhaps...how they try not to relate to their environments?...but they do...to their middle class instincts and upbringing!...wasn't shamsie criticised for writing about defence and not nazimabad?...

well...right and not so...(

digression: manto, ashfaque and ismat and bedi and krish’n etc...wrote on what they experienced first hand...besides they were great(er) writer in their own way so any comparison with emrging English writers from pk is as yet futile (including mohsin who has been a one horse saga like arundathi)...however, why did the English translation of abdullah hussain’s udas naslein ( which incidentally he translated himself) did not do well?...the story is well rooted...in fact too well rooted in the lower to lower middle class rural folks?...another digression within digression: while anny's (qurratul ain haider’s translation of her own novel aag ka darya (mythical past to partition era) did better)...it was rooted...in history, separation, past, myths...she is far too cerebral and knowledgable and used the millennium wide canvas effectively...

khair

so...have my doubts if the Pk English writers would come out with a blockbuster based on the lower or poorer bastees...first they don’t have that first hand experience nor the inclination....and secondly, ( i suspect) they don’t have the market...the audience we speculated earlier on...

incidentally

a very good desi friend of mine has just finished writing her first English novel...it is making the round of publishers here and one or two of them have shown an 'interest'...that novel is based in history...circa 1600s india...so there are more than one way to skin the cat...

...the Pk English writer have to have an obsession...and a fire in the belly....to dare, to daunt, to tread where others have not before them...unless this spirit materializes they will just survive...