Apu’s World

Is this a paradox, or simply a coincidence, that just as things are heating up with Pakistan in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks, Pakistani writers are everywhere in our media? Daniyal Moinuddeen, Shahbano Bilgrami, Nadeem Aslam - you can’t turn a Sunday magazine page, it seems, without an interview with or profile of one or other promising writer from the other side of the border. And of course, one can’t forget Mohammed Hanif, one of the earlier ones in this gaggle, whose A Case of Exploding Mangoes created such an impact last year, with its almost-Booker and its highly political plot.

Somehow, I have come in late to the Booker party, partly out of a decision to read the books a little later, once the hype died down and there wasn’t a new review in the papers every other day. Reading so many reviews quite takes the pleasure out of reading. Ironical of course, considering that I am writing one myself now, but I do wish there was some way to read and enjoy literary reviews without letting that enjoyment impinge on one’s own reading of the book. Readers who know of any such fool-proof method are requested to please share kindly and much appreciated etc etc. 

Reading A Case of Exploding Mangoes, some time after its launch, this reader is pleased to report that the highly complimentary reviews that one read, are well-deserved after all. For starters, Hanif draws us into a murder mystery, and in this case, not the murder of your average Joe, but of Zia-ul-Haq, the infamous Pakistani dictator. And then, to make it more interesting, he stands convention on its head; unlike a conventional whodunnit, which must follow a funnel mechanism, starting with a cast of suspects and narrowing down to the perpetrator, Hanif starts with the victim (General Zia) and goes on widening the cast of suspects, until, at the end, we are still unsure whether the murder was the handiwork of one, two or more people or even an Act of God. 

Ali Shigri, a young army cadet convinced that his father was hounded to death on Zia’s orders, his friend and lover Baby O (Obaid), a blind woman wrongfully imprisoned, a crow sent as bearer of her curse, second-tier army generals scheming their way up - all have their hands dipped into the plot, and where A Case of… excels is in bringing all these threads together so skilfully, that at no point does it seem an effort. Particularly excellent are the chapters that look into the workings of Zia’s mind and the workings of the Pakistani army and secret services - as if in parallel to each other, both Zia’s mind and the army he commands, are whimsical, paranoid and frequently out of control, with consequences mainly for those on the lower rungs of society.

Occasionally, the friendship (romance?) between Ali and Obaid gets a bit unsatisfying; Hanif takes understatement too far with the result that the reader is left on the boundary of the friendship, unable to really get a grip on whether Baby O is an “important” character or not. This is one of the flaws in the novel - at times, Ali Shigri is such a dispassionate narrator and there are so many other narratives peeking in, that it is difficult to feel any empathy for him and those he loves, including his father Col. Shigri and Baby O. General Zia, ostensibly a negative character is dealt with far more sympathetically. His paranoia, his occasional buffoonery, his trouble with worms, his religious convictions bordering on superstition are all calculated to make us feel anxious for the man and what happens to him  - this is where the novel’s crowning achievement is - to take a ruthless third world dictator and transform him a human being. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is worth reading just for this exposition of one flawed human being. 

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apu The Literary life