In the late 1970s, my family was persuaded by Qantas to pose for a brochure. It was part of a now-forgotten series the airlines had done on families around the world; so you had typical Australian families represented by a Chappell or a Marshall, a typical Nigerian or Canadian or Greek family, and the Roys representing, inadvertently, the typical Indian family.
It was only when the brochure came out that we realised how significant the quotidian details of our lives were. Our humble Ambassador car represented the material aspirations of the growing Indian middle class, my sister’s school report card represented the growing educational opportunities of the new Indian woman, and the somewhat slapdash muddle of scrambled eggs-vegetable bakes-Parsi-and-Anglo-Indian dishes that found their way onto our table were firmly banished in the brochure, which informed the world that the Roys sat down to a simple meal of dal, rice and curries every day.
A better critic than yours truly would point out that we had been co-opted: behind the apparently simple Day-in-the-Life of the Roys narrative lay the inescapable burden of representation, as we symbolically stood in for the Changing Indian Family.
The Qantas brochure died a merciful death, but I am reminded of it every time I look at anthologies of writing by nation — from compilations of Latin American literature to Rushdie’s notorious Mirrorwork to last year’s Granta Pakistan issue. With the release of The Life’s Too Short Literary Review: New Writing from Pakistan (Hachette) this month, there’s a basis for comparing the two Pakistan anthologies.
When Granta 112: Pakistan came out last year, one of the responses to the anthology was witheringly caustic. This was Faiza Khan, in The Caravan: “In choosing writing from and about Pakistan as its theme, the latest edition of the prestigious Granta magazine encourages readers to look to the country for more than violence, religious extremism and abject desolation. It chooses to do this with a collection dominated by pieces about violence, religious extremism and abject desolation.”
Granta’s issue featured some brilliant writing, as Khan acknowledged — Pakistan fields a good team on the literary playing fields, with the usual suspects, Mohammed Hanif, Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie, Daniyal Mueenuddin, all arrayed in perfect batting order. And yet, Faiza Khan’s criticism was on point; and several other commentators remarked on the absence of languages other than English in the anthology.
Anthologies from the subcontinent often seem to appear in pairs. Rushdie’s Mirrorwork, an otherwise excellent selection of new writing from India, enraged critics and readers by confining itself to English — on the grounds that little new writing of note had happened in other Indian languages. This was in 1997, and four years later, the Picador anthology of modern Indian literature, edited by Amit Chaudhuri, appeared in counterpoint, its pages a reproach to Rushdie in their even split between writings in English and writings in other Indian languages.
The Life’s Too Short anthology doesn’t position itself as a curative or a riposte to Granta’s Pakistan issue; this, say Faiza Khan and Aysha Raja, came about as an exercise in curiosity. It’s in the last sentence of the editors’ note that Khan and Raja set their compass: “While it is tempting to look to writing from Pakistan for insights into a troubled country, we hope that this collection is read simply as good writing, conflict zone notwithstanding.”
As a collection, The Life’s Too Short anthology has the strengths and weaknesses of similar anthologies of new writing, from Penguin’s First Proof to the now perennially awol Civil Lines series. Some pieces, such as the translation from the racy lesbian romp, Challawa, are wonderfully entertaining; writers like Sadaf Halai and Ahmad Rafay Alam prove every cliché about there being a new generation of writers coming up from Pakistan.
And yet, the tension between Granta’s Pakistan and this relatively more humble, less ambitious anthology of new writing, remains. For years, Indian writers of a certain stamp bristled when their country’s writing was reduced to a set of stereotypes – arranged marriages, three-generation family sagas, pickles and pickle factories, the entire mango chutney school of writing – but were forced to admit that for all that was left out, there was some truth to the clichés.
Taken in tandem, The Life’s Too Short anthology and the Granta anthology are up against the emergence of a set of Pakistani stereotypes — these would be violence, bomb blasts, terrorists, assassinations, in shorthand, plus a dose of Karachi nostalgia, Pakistani arranged marriages and the other inherited clichés of subcontinent. Books that don’t fit the mould are treated with caution — Mohammed Hanif’s viciously comic riff on General Zia’s reign, for instance, received far more nervously non-committal reviews in the UK than Daniyal Mueenuddin’s easier-to-parse, delicate short stories.
In the case of writers like Daniyal and Jamil Ahmad, whose insightful and compelling The Wandering Falcon was just released this week, judging them for their ability to “introduce” Pakistan to readers from elsewhere does them a disservice. And this, perhaps, is what Faiza Khan, Aysha Raja and The Life’s Too Short team are protesting: writers are not tour guides, and literature isn’t a set of welcome-to-Pakistan brochures.
