The art of interviewing

‘An author’s work and thoughts, rather than their person, are the subject of a literary interview’ .

LAHORE:

A lot is often lost in translation and that is also the fate of the following account of the session, Harfay Mano Tu – The Long Lost Art of Literary Conversation, on the last day of the Lahore Literary Festival.

It was because of the camaraderie and comfort that the panelists – Masood Ashar, Asif Farrukhi, Kishwar Naheed and Intezar Husain – shared amongst them, the fact that they spoke in Urdu (which was a welcome change) and their command over the language. It wasn’t just about the words they uttered but also the ease with which they flowed.

Farrukhi interviewed many literary giants in the 1980s and the literary exchanges now form a small volume, with a second one on the way.

Ashar started the session by asking if the art of literary conversation had indeed died. Farrukhi said he did not believe so. He said talking about literature in a literary sense was as important as literature itself. He said his interviewing skills had been honed in conversations with the likes of Zahid Dar and Kishwar Naheed.

The interviews came about when Herald’s then editor Razia Bhatti asked him to interview Ghulam Abbas, who was famous for being hard on those who came to interview him. That interview, he said, was “all answers and no questions”.

Some of the people he interviewed had to be interviewed more than once – Intezar Husain five times and Kishwar Naheed twice – in order to feel “complete”.

Naheed and Ashar described the interview of Faiz as Farrukhi’s weakest in the book saying it was more of Faiz’s opinions and less about his work. Farrukhi agreed.

Asked what set apart a routine interview from a literary one, Farrukhi said the latter brought out the work of the authors, rather than facts about the authors themselves. Naheed said she got interview requests everyday and always asked whether the interviewer had read her work. The answer was mostly in the negative. She said she told them to get in touch once they had read it.

She commended Farrukhi for doing a good job with the interviews. “You can tell that he handles each writer as an individual. There is a difference between how Farrukhi has handled Umar Memon, who easily gets irritated, and others like Ghulam Abbas.”

Ever the feminist, she asked why Farrukhi hadn’t interviewed more women? “Does that have to do with a gender bias or a preference for poetry over prose?” Farrukhi said it was because he couldn’t find many women who could match the kind of interview Naheed had given.

Ashar asked if the panelists felt that interviewers had done justice to their personalities and work. Husain said when he had started writing, interviewing wasn’t a fad. “You don’t find interviews of Iqbal or Manto.” His first interviews were full of questions about how many books he had had published and their names. Once, he said, he was interviewed by a young lady from Karachi who had no idea what an Urdu short story was. He explained it to her and then gave the interview. When it was published, he decided that the photos were the best part of the interview and didn’t even read the entire report.

Asked if whatever was happening in the country today would find its way in his writings, Husain said the task would have to be given to a great novelist. Poetry could do better justice perhaps, he said mentioning Zehra Nigah and Naheed as ones who had done a good job of portraying what the country and the nation were going through.

“Literary festivals have brought back literary dialogue. It was dying. In an age where we are being dehumanised it gives us hope to see people want to talk about humanity,” said Husain. “You lose literature when you become afraid of it,” said Farrukhi quoting Suuny Mehmat. He read a few lines from his interview with Mehmat who, in an answer to a question, said, “We are scared to have a conversation for fear of being recognised as cowards and hollow.”

Someone in the audience asked who was to be blamed for the growing gap between literary figures and the readers. “There used to be ‘sessions’ and places like Pak Tea House.”

Asked how to “save Urdu literature” in an age where most of the kids in English medium schools found the language more difficult than algebra, Farrukhi said everyone had to play their part by reading literature and talking about it.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2015.