Homebody’s Awards for the Karachi Literature Festival

Yesterday, homebody rubbed shoulders with Shoba de and envied her patli qamar, laughed affectionately at Willy Dalrymple and gave a hug to Mohammad Hanif. Of course, the fact that most of these people were on stage while I sat in the audience and didn't really talk to me personally proved no obstacle in the way of my fanciful imaginings. It left me so excited that I sit early in the morning, sipping my morning-tea-without-sugar, struggling to write this blog post even though my eyes are still not entirely open.

A great many adventures took place, mostly in the Carlton’s ladies’ bathrooms. One was out of operation and homebody found a man in the other, asked him what he was doing there and then ran out before he could reply. Another hapless bathroomite reported to have walked in on a lady reprimanding a scarf-wearing woman who had wet the entire bathroom after wuzu. But the purpose of this post isn’t Carlton hotel (though my humble request is that OUP choose another venue with better food and catering) it’s to give a series of awards to the people who made an appearance on the first day of the festival.

The highlight of yesterday’s event for me was Willy, as Kamila Shamsie so affectionately called him while moderating his event. Dalrymple was a natural story teller, a big white teddy bear in a creased blue-coloured cotton shirt reading out from The Holy Mountain, The Road to Xanadu, The City of Jinns, imitating the Pakistani accent and telling the mike-walas to be ‘khamosh’ and talking about how the Ahmed Ali’s of this city hate Karachi and wish to go back to Delhi; while the audience, including homebody, laughed and hooted and found him utterly charming. He was a master story teller and a natural performer, the Bee’s Knees, the butter-content in the literary choc-fest. He gets the award for the King-Pin, the lovable Panda Po.

The Diva Award goes to the resident sex symbol at KLF, which was undoubtedly Shoba De. This literary star, dressed in a hot-pink sari told women that they didn’t need to look like frumps at sixty. Instead, they could take the pressure off and look glamorous in an off-shoulder midnight blue Armani gown: ‘You don’t have to be the stereotype’ she said in an attempt to give women all over the world hope. She proudly proclaimed that her tattoo represented the feminine principle and motherhood. Her composure was momentarily ruffled when after rendering a proud proclamation that she had paved the way for women writers in the sub-continent, Mohsin Sayeed (God bless him) stood up and asked her what she thought writers like Ismat Chughtai, Qurat-ul-Aine Haider and others before her had been doing? Ms. De leaned against the podium for emotional support, smiled graciously and began to talk very fast, amending that she was just citing a personal example. For homebody, Shoba represents the ultimate rebellion, because it was her book that homebody read at twelve years of age when she was absolutely forbidden to do so. The raunchy descriptions of sex during a funeral as one sister cheated on her own flesh-and-blood with her brother in law are still fresh in my mind. Evidently, they are fresh in the mind of the male reading public because five mustachioed men sidled up next to her, attempted to touch her bare back but were glared away, said something complimentary and sidled off as fat, balding men are wont to do.

No literature festival is complete without the Grinch and the KLF 2012 Grinch Award goes to Hanif Qureshi, a man who might have guts, but also a case of irritable bowel syndrome because he looked massively displeased throughout his reading of Buddha of Suburbia. What he read was fantastic, full of homo-sexual innuendos and shaved chests; very witty. But the inner-Grinch is not to be thwarted and when a woman got up and asked him, a little tactlessly, that he didn’t seem to like women (based on the women he presented in his fiction) he paused, twitched, proclaimed, ‘That’s a stupid question,’; glaring into the awkward silence as the moderator tried to cover it up. Now quite frankly, I think he deserved a tomato in the face for that answer. He has come to a literature festival in a city where people are just getting used to such events. The public can be depended upon to ask silly questions. As a writer, even as a good writer, even as the ‘biggest name’ (whatever that means) at KLF, a question like that merits an answer because it’s a badly worded perception of his literature which he could have corrected, explained, or used as an opportunity to explain how a piece of fiction doesn’t necessarily represent a writer’s own biases. But he just snubbed her, felt superior and moved on. And the general public loved him for it. Mr. Grinch continued to be bombarded with more stupid questions about the brilliance of Karachi and the ‘hush-hush’ themes he wrote about (again, badly phrased question which Qureshi also made multiple sardonic references to) and ended on popular applause. All the world loves a Grinch.

The Rockstar Award goes to the audience-puller; the man who evokes such adoration by virtue of his wit and writings that his fans giggle, hoot and call out his name feverishly every time he walks on stage. If he ever broke into song, there would be a stampede and men and women, old and young, would hold up lighters and wave their arms from side to side. Mohammad Hanif rocked again with the book launch of Alice Bhatti, but the focus of the questions remained on his first book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes which showed that his second book didn’t quite touch the pulse of the nation as the first one. The reason Homebody is a Hanif groupie is not because of his writings or his sense of humour – it’s because of his patience with questions from students and aspiring writers who insist on asking him how many drafts he writes and what advice, in thirty seconds, he can give them that can trigger off their Inner Writer. He is not just a ‘writer’, he’s someone who makes other people believe that, if they tried, they could write too. That makes him rock-star in homebody’s book.

But the real highlight of KLF is not the writers. It’s the people who go to listen to them. There are aggressive aunties who follow writers around and fight with the moderators to get an autograph on their newly purchased copy of a latest novel; there are emos who grab the mike when the moderator has selected someone else and tell the writers how their writings helped them to get and stay married (which I must admit is a mammoth achievement) and then press-conferencers who sit next to homebody and don’t let her listen to what the writer’s saying because they insist on telling her what their opinion of the proceedings are. There are head-nodders who express their assent vigorously and their heads roll off their necks (but they pick them up, re-attach them and continue to nod), there are sleazy-smilers who will adore every ridiculous thing people on stage because they feel that if you are on-stage, you are undoubtedly right. There are angst-driven intellectuals who scoff at each question the moderator asks and there are whiners who can’t get over the fact that everything began forty minutes late. And finally, there are aspiring writers who gaze starry-eyed at these gods of the written word who have done what they most want to do. And these last are the soul of the literary festival and I give them an enormous KUDOS for being a part of the event and hope that their dreams come true.