From: A P
'Very Difficult To Be Both Indian And Pakistani'
'With every generation it is worse... They have had their pure society, so they are not used to the idea of hybridity. They have been fed a lot of nonsense...'
Anjali Puri
When did you come up with the idea of a book about your life?
I have been trying to write a book ever since I was 21. I have one failed novel, which was a novel purely for the drawer. And I was well on my way to a second failed novel. The second was dealing with this material (of his life) in a fictional form. I was working as a journalist but didn't have my heart fully in it. I was trying to pay my way so that I could write fulltime. Working in Time magazine, I had reached a very frustrating point. My job as a reporter was almost clerical, I wanted very much to get out. The book happened because of an extraordinary set of situations. Time magazine brought out an issue called the Soul of Islam, and I did some reporting for them in the northern part of Britain, I had interviewed Hassan Butt (a Muslim radical). Time magazine used one line of it! The interview was published by Prospect magazine a year later, when I did my first cover piece for them. And then I got this letter from my father (criticizing the piece) and that letter constituted a kind of emotional shock. It seemed to bring together the different strands that I was working on.. I wanted to figure out how my father had acted like a Muslim. How despite his faithlessness, total faithlessness, were the impulses of the religion still in some way working on him. Why was he angry with me? The reason why I discuss his faith is that the other side of religion, the practice, the belief, is totally missing in him.
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Link to this story as it appears on the site :- 'Very Difficult To Be Both Indian And Pakistani'
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