His brevity with words is well documented. Equally well known is his humility and the constant endeavour to share the limelight with those who helped him through his prize-winning work Home Boy . An American-returned-Pakistani, H.M. Naqvi has kept a profile that would have been more suitable for an anonymous pen-pusher at a nondescript government office.
Yet it is this very quality, the ability not to scream for attention, to retain his head when others are losing theirs, that distinguishes Naqvi, now settled in Karachi, a city lacking neither stories nor heroes. He has that rare ability to find “a story under every stone”, the talent to introspect and analyse without giving himself too many brownie points. He can be almost deprecating at times.
At the recently concluded Jaipur Literature Festival he was awarded the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for which he was in the fray with the likes of Manju Kapur, M.A. Farooqi and Amit Chaudhuri among others. In his hour of greatest triumph, Naqvi retained his perspective, merely saying “I feel honoured and grateful” though a long speech would not have been amiss on the occasion.
Of course, he remembered to thank his wife Alia and was candid enough to reveal that the work was a product of a time of constant challenges with adversity as a frequent visitor!
At times his subjects sting, at others his treatment hurts. Yet at the end his words either heal or help you change your perspective. Welcome to the gently opening world of Naqvi where turmoil is never far from the centre, yet is almost always kept under wraps….
After winning the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature you said you wroteHome Boy(published by HarperCollins) as a destitute. Could you please elaborate?
When I gave up my job in 2003, I had savings that would buy me about six, maybe eight months. In those six months, I began writing on a draft of Home Boy . In the four years it took to complete the novel, however, I made about $11,000, net of taxes. I lived below the poverty line.
Mercifully, I received a grant from the creative writing programme at Boston University, a two year programme, and afterward, I was asked to teach. In retrospect, it was at once a fraught and fabulous time. I wrote, for instance, every day. I cooked. And when I saved some money, I went out for movie, or a drink. There's certain solace in that simplicity.
The jury gave you the prize for “evocation of a generation that cannot go home again”. Do you think somewhere it is as true of anybody from India or any Third World country as a Pakistani?
We like to believe that the drama of the immigrant experience is unique or uncanny but it isn't. There isn't much drama at all. Those who left Russia after the Communist upheaval or Uganda after Amin or Iran after the Ayatullah cannot return home. Denizens of the subcontinent can travel back and forth at any time. It's a luxury.
There have been a lot of authors from Pakistan who did not necessarily start off as writers yet switched tracks into their 30s. Is that a sign of the intellectual climate of the nation or are the authors mere exceptions?
I'm not sure but I'm sure that you don't become a writer. You are born one.
Of late, one is noticing a reverse brain drain to Pakistan with well established writers coming back home, and making Pakistan their place of residence: Daniyal Mueenuddin, Mohsin Hamid and Hanif besides you. Is it something about the home country that is attracting the writers back, a kind of nostalgia or the feeling of being an outsider in the West?
I don't have empirical data on the matter. I can, however, speak for myself. I returned because I had no money. In any event, there's no place like home. I love Karachi. It's a wonderfully animate city. There are people on the beach at two in morning, traffic at three. You can have breakfast at four – halva, puri – and nihari at five. Moreover, as a writer I wouldn't want to be elsewhere for long. There's a story under every stone.
Finally, how lonely is the writing process for you? I ask because some people manage with regular day jobs, and use evenings to write, others chuck up their non-literary jobs to settle in as a writer.
It's a horribly lonely vocation, not unlike being a security guard at a morgue.
