What is your idea of perfect happiness?
The idea of perfect happiness.
What is your greatest fear?
Fear of gravity.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I am a perfectionist.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Complexity.
What is your greatest extravagance?
My profession.
What is your current state of mind?
Overworked.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Patriotism.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
The fact that my nose is the size of my thumb.
Which living person do you most despise?
This man called …
What is the quality you most like in a man?
Acceptance.
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Conviction.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
‘Oh yaaaar’ and ‘I wish I could have’.
When and where were you happiest?
Before I was promoted to Grade 1. (Prior to this I did not know what goals were.)
Which talent would you most like to have?
To become a utopian planner.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Deciding not to become an engineer.
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
Adam, and not eat the forbidden fruit this time.
Where would you most like to live?
Lahore, provided I can leave every now and then, which luckily I get to.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery
Discontentment.
What is your most marked characteristic?
I talk too fast.
Who is your hero of fiction?
Umro Ayyar from Daastane Ameer Hamza.
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
I am not sure who I really identify with but I am truly envious of Raphael.
Who are your heroes in real life?
My true heroes are the young boys who rummage through rubbish all day collecting papers one by one from all over the city. After hours and hours of work they barely manage to earn a little over 100 rupees, much less than a beggar would earn after 30 minutes at a traffic light.
What is your greatest regret?
My weekly to-do lists.
What’s your favourite quote?
“Tradition is an illusion of permanence”, a line from Woody Allen’s film Deconstructing Harry.
How many hours of loadshedding did you experience yesterday?
Luckily or unluckily I am not a starving artist anymore and have become one of those privileged few who do not get affected by the miseries that the majority endure in this country.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 5th, 2010.
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