Up close and personal with Urdu writer Musharraf Ali Farooqi

 

Q. When did you realise or decide that you wanted to be a writer?
A. A couple of years into my engineering studies I knew that I would never be an engineer. I imagined some sort of a literary career but it was a few years later, sometime around 1991, that I knew that I wished to be a writer, and I started writing my first fictions, and translating from Urdu.
Q. Over the years you must have read a lot of books and met a lot of writers. Who has been the biggest influence in your career?
A. Two people. Urdu writer Muhammad Khalid Akhtar who was one the greatest writers of Urdu language in the 20th century, and Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed, whom I consider Urdu language’s greatest living poet. I have been fortunate to know them and to learn from them about life and literature. I have also translated Afzal Ahmed Syed’s poetry, which will be available in Pakistan later this year.
Q. When you start writing a novel, do you plan the ending before hand or do you let the plot develop and then go with the flow?
A. I now write the plot outline, which still changes as one progresses with the writing, but I always have it as a reference.
Q. Tell us about your book Between Clay and Dust
A. It is a novel about the predicament of two artists, a pahalwan (wrestler), and a tawaif (courtesan), who find themselves facing tough choices after the [Subcontinent’s] Partition, as the world they had known, and which gave meaning to their existence, undergoes a change. How they act on these choices and the tragedy that ensues is the story of Between Clay and Dust.
Q. You have also written children’s literature. What inspires you to write for children?
A. When I started writing the only thing I wanted to write was fiction for children. I have always had a lot of fun writing for kids. Some of my favourite writers, Charles Dickens and Roald Dahl also wrote for children. Most of our major Urdu writers also wrote for children.
Q. You are participating in the Lahore Literary Festival. Tell us something about the importance of such festivals for an author and other book enthusiasts.
A. I think what every literary festival tries to do and what the LLF does is to bring into focus relatively unknown but important works and their authors, in addition to attracting the well-known writers and artists. It is an opportunity to learn more about them, and of course there are one’s favourite writers to hear. For me it is also an opportunity to interact with my readers and meet friends.
Q. You already participated in the Lahore Literary Festival last year. What are your expectations for this year?
A. I believe the festival will be a bigger, more widely attended event this year. I am participating in two panels. One is the book launch of an important work on Faiz – a dictionary of all the terms he used in his poetry – titled Deeda-e-Ma’ani Kusha compiled by Dr Asif Awan. There is ‘Reading Fiction for Children’ in which children’s writers and storytellers are participating. From India, Vishwajyoti Ghosh will be launching This Side, That Side, a graphic anthology of fiction on partition stories. It is a unique book and a unique experiment and I hope it will get a lot of attention at the festival.View the original article here