DISCONTENT AND ITS CIVILISATIONS
Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London
Mohsin Hamid
Penguin Books; 188 pages; Rs 399
Pakistani-born Mohsin Hamid studied at Princeton and Harvard, landed a prized job at the American consultancy firm McKinsey and Company, but left a few years later to pursue his own passions and, eventually, to the astonishment of his wife, announced that they would be leaving the West to return to Lahore. If this bald outline of his life makes Mr Hamid sound a bit like Changez, the central character of his most famous novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, this collection of his non-fiction writings reveals a rather different man.
"People often ask me," he says, "if I am the book's Pakistani protagonist. I wonder why they never ask if I am his American listener. After all, a novel can be a divided man's conversation with himself." Implicit in that observation is a liberal faith in the power of conversation, and a belief that animates this book - that people have multiple identities.
The 36 pieces in this collection, written over 15 years for various publications, span personal musings, reflections on writers and writing, reportage from a consulate in New York, a train in London, or a movie theatre in Lahore, and political commentary, often for the op-ed pages of newspapers. Pakistan dominates because, as Mr Hamid says, "I am preoccupied with Pakistan's future, as most Pakistanis I know seem to be."
Not surprisingly, then, the best writing here is on Pakistan. "In Concert, No Touching", his extraordinarily sensual account of standing motionless in sweaty communion with a young woman he does not know at a Sufi dance/trance event, is as strong as anything in his novels. It is a rendering, by an insider-outsider, of the Pakistan to which he returns for holidays as a college student; a place where a young man denied female companionship must perforce develop a taste for subtlety.
Indians readers will find much that is familiar in "Don't Angry Me", which juxtaposes the daily rhythms of life in Lahore with snowballing protests around the film Innocence of Muslims. Hate first swirls around on BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter, Facebook and chain SMSes amid "the standard advertisements for English-language training courses, dengue-thwarting mosquito nets, energy-efficient air-conditioners and pay-by-text Koranic guidance". It then gets taken up by fringe politicians who "lurk in the nether region where the plankton mist of perceived persecution meets the vent of ready violence". People die, the government declares a holiday to avert further violence, phone networks are switched off. "Don't Angry Me", a message painted on the back of a rickshaw, sends him on a trail of speculation about who wrote it and why.
There is the same quality to his explorations of another recurrent theme: the East-West encounter in an age of "terror". In the ironically titled "International Relations" Mr Hamid, seeking a visa at the Italian consulate to visit his girlfriend, must present a "notarized love letter" to secure rights of passage. "Down the Tube" is a wry account of the impact on London train commuters, himself included, of a raucous fellow in a suspiciously loose kurta and "the kind of moustacheless beard tabloids associate with Muslims fundamentalists".
Against such vivid writing, some of the political commentary sounds flat; especially when it was journalism, written to mark an event or a moment that has long passed. Among the timeless pieces is a short essay on the persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan. Among the more forgettable, reflections on the 60th and 65th anniversaries of India and Pakistan, on US President Barack Obama's speeches and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's death.
Sometimes Mr Hamid's personal musings, too - on e-books, on childhood journeys, on fatherhood, on likeable characters in fiction - seem feathery and insubstantial, especially when read within the covers of a book rather than the pages of a magazine. You suspect that he might have tossed them off during coffee-breaks from the more exacting task of re-drafting novels, of which the slimmest took him seven years to write.
You tend to forgive him these lapses, not just for the elegance of his prose but the quality of his engagement with Pakistan. His Pakistan is much more than what he wryly calls it, a "villain in the horror sub-industry within the news business". It is the place where the inventive music of Coke Studio is heard on the ringtones of bankers, shopkeepers and carpenters, where students flock to literary festivals and "welfare microsystems" of families and friends bind people together in the absence of an effective state. "For me, to live in Pakistan is to know extremes of hope and despair," he says. Ultimately, Mr Hamid chooses to hope.
Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London
Mohsin Hamid
Penguin Books; 188 pages; Rs 399
Pakistani-born Mohsin Hamid studied at Princeton and Harvard, landed a prized job at the American consultancy firm McKinsey and Company, but left a few years later to pursue his own passions and, eventually, to the astonishment of his wife, announced that they would be leaving the West to return to Lahore. If this bald outline of his life makes Mr Hamid sound a bit like Changez, the central character of his most famous novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, this collection of his non-fiction writings reveals a rather different man.
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Like his protagonist, Mr Hamid regards 9/11, the war on terror and the backlash it caused against migrants as calamitous, life-changing events. Like Changez, he is attracted to and is disturbed by America, and greatly attached to Pakistan. Like him, he is sharply political, questioning and given to black humour. Yet Mr Hamid is ultimately what Changez is not - a skilful, rational and humane traveller between different worlds.
"People often ask me," he says, "if I am the book's Pakistani protagonist. I wonder why they never ask if I am his American listener. After all, a novel can be a divided man's conversation with himself." Implicit in that observation is a liberal faith in the power of conversation, and a belief that animates this book - that people have multiple identities.
The 36 pieces in this collection, written over 15 years for various publications, span personal musings, reflections on writers and writing, reportage from a consulate in New York, a train in London, or a movie theatre in Lahore, and political commentary, often for the op-ed pages of newspapers. Pakistan dominates because, as Mr Hamid says, "I am preoccupied with Pakistan's future, as most Pakistanis I know seem to be."
Not surprisingly, then, the best writing here is on Pakistan. "In Concert, No Touching", his extraordinarily sensual account of standing motionless in sweaty communion with a young woman he does not know at a Sufi dance/trance event, is as strong as anything in his novels. It is a rendering, by an insider-outsider, of the Pakistan to which he returns for holidays as a college student; a place where a young man denied female companionship must perforce develop a taste for subtlety.
Indians readers will find much that is familiar in "Don't Angry Me", which juxtaposes the daily rhythms of life in Lahore with snowballing protests around the film Innocence of Muslims. Hate first swirls around on BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter, Facebook and chain SMSes amid "the standard advertisements for English-language training courses, dengue-thwarting mosquito nets, energy-efficient air-conditioners and pay-by-text Koranic guidance". It then gets taken up by fringe politicians who "lurk in the nether region where the plankton mist of perceived persecution meets the vent of ready violence". People die, the government declares a holiday to avert further violence, phone networks are switched off. "Don't Angry Me", a message painted on the back of a rickshaw, sends him on a trail of speculation about who wrote it and why.
There is the same quality to his explorations of another recurrent theme: the East-West encounter in an age of "terror". In the ironically titled "International Relations" Mr Hamid, seeking a visa at the Italian consulate to visit his girlfriend, must present a "notarized love letter" to secure rights of passage. "Down the Tube" is a wry account of the impact on London train commuters, himself included, of a raucous fellow in a suspiciously loose kurta and "the kind of moustacheless beard tabloids associate with Muslims fundamentalists".
Against such vivid writing, some of the political commentary sounds flat; especially when it was journalism, written to mark an event or a moment that has long passed. Among the timeless pieces is a short essay on the persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan. Among the more forgettable, reflections on the 60th and 65th anniversaries of India and Pakistan, on US President Barack Obama's speeches and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's death.
Sometimes Mr Hamid's personal musings, too - on e-books, on childhood journeys, on fatherhood, on likeable characters in fiction - seem feathery and insubstantial, especially when read within the covers of a book rather than the pages of a magazine. You suspect that he might have tossed them off during coffee-breaks from the more exacting task of re-drafting novels, of which the slimmest took him seven years to write.
You tend to forgive him these lapses, not just for the elegance of his prose but the quality of his engagement with Pakistan. His Pakistan is much more than what he wryly calls it, a "villain in the horror sub-industry within the news business". It is the place where the inventive music of Coke Studio is heard on the ringtones of bankers, shopkeepers and carpenters, where students flock to literary festivals and "welfare microsystems" of families and friends bind people together in the absence of an effective state. "For me, to live in Pakistan is to know extremes of hope and despair," he says. Ultimately, Mr Hamid chooses to hope.