Writing philosophy that sells

Mirza Athar Baig talks about his love of philosophy, language, postcolonial knowledge and his debut novel Ghulam Bagh

By Arif Waqar

The News on Sunday: Your debut novel Ghulam Bagh was not an easy read — the readers had to be constantly on their guard — but still it has enjoyed a reprint within a year of its publication. It rarely happens even in popular literature in Pakistan, while yours was dubbed a highly philosophical novel. How do you account for this popularity?

Mirza Athar Baig: I do not agree with this edict in the first place: ‘not easy to read’ books, novels especially, and on top of it those compelling the readers, as you put it, to be ‘constantly on their guard,’ hardly get reprinted within the first year of their publication. And almost 40 percent of the second edition is already sold out. The popularity of the book is in fact due to its readability, not the other way round.

TNS: Ok, then we put it differently. How would you analyze the readability factor of your novel?

MAB: Readability is a fairly elusive trait of a text, a response entirely relative to the total cognitive and aesthetic orientation of the reader. The same piece of writing can be easy for one reader and a jumble for the other. Then, readability as such, has never been a touchstone for the worth of literary fiction. There had been highly unreadable classics, like Finnegan Wake of Joyce on the one hand, and a page-turner like Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera on the other.

TNS: So which of the two models have you been following?

MAB: None. But when I started writing this novel, I decided I would incorporate whatever I deem conceptually and perceptually important in the narrative and I will also not compromise the interest factor.

TNS: But that sounds hardly simple. How did you go about it?

MAB: I focused on creating reading experiences, no matter how unorthodox, even bizarre at times, to incorporate what I wanted to say into the total scheme of the novel. But interestingly in most of the cases the unusual reading experiences served as an impetus for enhancing the readability of the text instead of impeding it. As for as dubbing it highly philosophical, and that perhaps in a derogatory sense, has come from the circles which could easily jump to the conclusion that, because the writer happens to be a teacher of philosophy, in his novel there could be nothing except philosophy. The opinion was not based on any in-depth analysis of the novel.

TNS: So you confess that your novel is philosophical.

MAB: (laughs). Rather I plead guilty of philosophy. By the way, making confessions has been one of the themes of the novel as well. In fact, the philosophical elements are so deeply ingrained in the fictional narrative that they never disturb an ordinary reader, but of course by ordinary I mean a reader of literary fiction, not merely popular fiction. And here again, the deeper philosophical structures of the novel have added to its readability by creating an engaging reading experience.

TNS: General public, especially young people have been buying or borrowing your book throughout the year and vibrant discussions have been reported in the students’ circles, but I have yet to see it being discussed at a serious academic or intellectual forum. What could be the reason?

MAB: I will not say that there has been a conspiracy of silence against me, because then you will advise me to become a part of it, but yes there is silence or rather inaudible, hesitant mutterings and uncomfortable groaning about Ghulam Bagh among the quarters you have alluded to, and I have pledged a degh of rice at Datta Sahib, if they break their silence, because you see, otherwise, I am doomed as a writer. So help me God.

TNS: I happened to meet once some students of your university who called themselves the Ghulam Bagh group. They appeared to have adopted and interiorized the four main characters of your novel to the extent that one could feel that Ghulam Bagh had become a tangible, living world for them. Their talk gave me creeps at times. Can we say that it is the beginning of some cult formation around your novel?

MAB: For God’s sake, no. All of them are serious students of literature. Two of them, at least, are creative writers themselves. They are becoming rather playful about their reading experiences of the novel. What they are really interested in are the matters of interpretation and aesthetic appreciation.

TNS: According to Abdullah Hussein, “Ghulam Bagh is located vastly at variance with the tradition of the Urdu novel. The technique employed is rare even in English fiction. Its roots are to be located in the European, especially French, post-modern novel”. And then he has commented on the language of your novel, “Mirza Athar Baig’s language though apparently simple, when placed in the total design of the novel acquires a vigour which is hard to be found in the nature of the traditional diction.” Are you satisfied with these comments?

MAB: Well, it is not a matter of being satisfied, I feel honoured at the nice comments of my mentor.

TNS: Without going into philosophical technicalities, how would you make the deeper structures of the novel understandable to the general public?

MAB: Of course I cannot go into detail here, and also, essentially there should be no need for a ‘key’ for the novel from the writer’s side, but if I talk about it as a reader, as if I have not written it, I would say that the most obvious theme of the novel is the phenomenon of dominance, ranging from inter-subjective and intra-subjective levels of the individual to their collective manifestation at the historical, cultural and civilizational planes.

TNS: Some critics have pointed out postcolonial themes in your novel, do you agree?

MAB: Yes, at a more manifest level there are fairly well recognized postcolonial themes running through the narrative and they determine in a very marked sense the course of events. Of course everything is actualized through the immediacy of the psychic and cognitive turmoil of the protagonist which on the one hand entices him to playfully reject Western theory, and on the other hand leads him to a cataclysmic revelation of “dobarra likho” ‘write again’ implying, obviously to rewrite history and create knowledge from the perspective of the marginalized humanity, the ‘urzal naslain’ or the wretched generations.

TNS: What do you have in the pipe line right now?

MAB: A novella, or should we call it a novel, because it would definitely be a two hundred plus affair, would be coming, hopefully along with the collection of short stories. It is entitled as ‘Cyber Space kay munshi ki surguzushat’

TNS: A strange title that!

MAB: Deals with a world, even stranger! The world as it was transformed during the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty first century. I have tried to understand it through the almost picaresque adventures of a software engineer with an oppressed feudal background. Then another novel–no ambiguity about that, Jamal Shumssi aur Freed Rujab Ali ki tareek duniya, is almost ninety percent complete, hopefully to be published next year.

TNS: Two other areas of your career, I mean, as a teacher of philosophy, and a TV drama writer; how, and in what sense, if at all, have they affected the course and shape of your creative writing?

MAB: They had indeed a profound and, at times, weird effect on my writing. That is a whole vista of experience which I have preserved for my English novels.

TNS: Forthcoming?

MAB: (laughs) Hardly so. Though I am fairly on my way, as far as the one dealing with my career as a philosophy teacher is concerned, but the one which would be about the television world in Pakistan, I have only the title with me so far. What a piece of luck.

TNS: And what is the title pray?

MAB: ‘Hold it’

TNS: (Laughs) Sorry I can’t hold it. One last question, aren’t we still in the dark about your drama writing?

MAB: Yes because darkness prevails there now. But earlier I enjoyed for years the rare distinction of being the most unpopular TV drama writer, with more than fifteen drama serials and almost hundred odd plays to his discredit. Though I have learned a lot about the craft of fiction writing from drama writing but I have now ended up as a jinxed television drama writer, and my name has become synonym for a ‘sure commercial disaster’ among the TV drama producers.

TNS: (chuckles). Surely a highly exaggerated account that!

MAB: What else do you expect from a fiction writer?

TNS: Anything in Punjabi?

MAB: Don’t entice me to sloganeering please. When I shall write one I shall talk one.

TNS: Going back to your college days: after your graduation in science with Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, you drifted towards Philosophy. Literature, I guess was already there. How do you explain this diversity?

MAB: You can call me a medieval type, a philosophical synthesizer, or a big mess up who is not a jack of all trades even. When I was a student, I realized education has nothing to do with knowledge in our part of the world. So I tried to keep my higher education as low as possible; a bare minimum for survival in the academic world, just for naukri.

TNS: So that’s why you didn’t go for a Ph.D.

MAB: (laughs). Yes, but there was another more pertinent reason as well. I wanted to camouflage my jehaalat–please don’t translate it into bland words like ignorance, lack of knowledge etc, our jehaalat is far more profound– in less obvious ways than doing a Ph.D.

TNS: Ah, thank you…

MAB: (Impatiently interrupting). You have not asked me anything about my food habits, my favorite dish, and stuff like that. I have fantasized throughout my life that if I am interviewed for any reason in my life, I sure would request the interviewer to put me some such question.

TNS: I am afraid my editor will not allow that.

MAB: What a pity. Then do tell the readers at least that the interview was conducted in pure English; no tri-lingual mess was involved.

TNS: Trilingual mess! What’s that?

MAB: Some other day, sir. May be we can have a whole session on it.

(Literati, The News, 11-May-2008)