I am the laziest person I know: Mohammed Hanif

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Geo on mute. A clean ashtray.  Four figure word count.

What is your greatest fear?
The war on drugs.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Gentleness.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Firmness.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Sort of….

What is your current state of mind?
Anxious.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Consistency.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
Weak knees.

Which living person do you most despise?
I never use that word despise…it’s an ugly word that says nothing.

When and where were you happiest?
On the days my mother made me halwa with poppy shells.

Which talent would you most like to have?
To cross roads fearlessly, to write without using adverbs.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I’d get new teeth.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Always thinking some other TV channel might be showing something better.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Self-righteousness.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Self-righteousness.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I have never been without a job since I was 16.

What is your most treasured possession?
Family and old notebooks.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Saturday suicide bombers.

If you didn’t do your current job, what would you choose to do?
Nothing.

What is your most marked characteristic?
I am the laziest person I know.

Who is your hero of fiction?
Alice.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Inshallah Khan Insha.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Dudes who sell sunglasses on the roadside. Kids who carry your stuff in Sunday Bazaar. Retired soldiers who work as private
security guards. Nurses.

What is your greatest regret?
A new one every day. Today: not saying no to a questionnaire copy-pasted from Vanity Fair.

How many hours of load shedding did you experience yesterday?
You just added that for local colour, didn’t you? Five hours.