Humour and satire: A case of inspiration, hope and absurd opinions

Mohammad Hanif’s witticisms left the audience in stitches.

LAHORE:

For Mohammad Hanif, inspiration comes from newspapers, especially opinion pieces in Urdu press. While many of these pieces, he says, are brilliant, some are just “utter nonsense”.

He was speaking to a packed hall on the last day of the Lahore Literary Festival on Sunday where the audience spilled over from the seats to the aisles and even the floor. Titled Love in the Season of Mangoes, Hanif’s session with Navid Shahzad mainly featured Hanif’s books, his source of inspiration and hope reflected through them.

Hanif said reading news and opinion pieces had always inspired his own writings. “The way some of the utterly nonsensical pieces are presented “itni shaan se” is simply amazing,” said the writer of A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

Hanif had the crowd in stitches over his description of some of the Urdu opinion pieces he said were nonsensical and dull and their authors. “And Irfan Siddiqui is the dullest of them…really!” he said, as the hall roared with laughter. Hanif’s discussion on humour gave way to politics, “When the government nominated Siddiqui for the peace talks committee, I was very happy for the first few days,” he said, “I was sure he’d bore them so much they would beg him to leave them alone...that unfortunately did not happen.”

On the subject of missing Baloch people, Shahzad asked Hanif why the media had been silent on the matter. Hanif agreed with her to an extent but also said, “We can’t just blame the media, or even the government...we are citizens of this country and each of us has to take up the issue.”

Discussing the many roles of a writer, Shahzad asked Hanif whether he viewed himself in a specific role. He replied, “I take on many roles...all of us play many roles. As novelists, we have the luxury of escaping these roles when we sit down to write,” he said.

Shahzad also asked Hanif how often he discussed the brutalities committed against women in the society. “Do you think the world will always remain as messed up as it is for women?”She asked. To this, Hanif quoted a conversation he had had with a journalist who had said that writing a novel was an act of hope. “So you go to your desk, make up things.

That inspires you to write and there is hope. That is the kind of hope I am talking about as a writer.”

Hanif and Shahzad kept the audience engaged throughout the session alternating between discourse on sarcasm, wit and humour. Responding to Shahzad’s question on what languages he was well versed in, Hanif said, “Three languages and then some. I know Urdu, Punjabi and English...a little Arabic because you know, we are all Muslims.”

Hanif shared an anecdote about a child who asked had him to recommend a book to read. “I told him, well…emm…read whatever book you like but then don’t stop at one. Read at least two.” Responding to a question from the audience about the extent to which A Case of Exploding Mangoes was based on fact, Hanif said, “See, there are no facts in that book. If you are looking for facts, maybe you should read something else.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2014.