Mohammed Hanif on journalism, writing

	When it comes to a range of writing, Pakistani journalist and writer Mohammed Hanif has done it all. From working in the press, he’s written screenplays, radio plays, a movie script and is the author of the award-winning book, “A Case of Exploding Mangoes.” One of the speakers at the Kathmandu Literary Jatra held earlier this month, Republica sat down with the humorous Hanif to get his perspectives on journalism and writing. How did you get into journalism? At first, I was in the Pakistani Air Force.-I was in it for seven years but I wasn’t really very good at anything I was supposed to do. I was really bad at flying planes, I hated waking up early. So military life wasn’t really for me. However, I was good at reading and writing, and that’s how I drifted into journalism. I started freelancing and contributing when I was 22 for fashion magazines and show business magazines and stuffs like that. Then I got a job as an editorial assistant in a proper political magazine and that’s how I became a reporter and then a senior reporter and then I got offered a job by BBC and since then I’ve been working with BCC. Since you’ve been working in Pakistan and London, how has that been? Have there been any changes? I was in London for 12 years and then I moved back to Pakistan three years ago. There are lots more journalists now, they get paid a lot more than they used to and I think television has changed everything. With television, they have become kind of celebrities; they behave like celebrities and they get treated like celebrities. So I think that’s been one major big change – journalists are not just reporters of events but also kind of making them happen, journalists have become players as well. Now that it’s a tech-savvy fast paced world, what do you think journalism for the young generation should be? I’ve seen people who’ve done their initial training in print who have then gone on to work for TV or radio and they always are slightly better. Maybe I’m prejudiced because I started out in print, but in print your have layers of editors and sub-editions and section editors and you work gets edited two or three times before it reaches the readers. If you’ve spent some time reporting and editing your stuff, or seeing it being edited by experienced hands, surely you’ll be slightly better. You’ve moved from print to various forms of writing. What was that like? I think when you do journalism for a long time it can be slightly uninspiring, especially for regions like ours. All the stories are about horrible things  and you are trained, as a journalist, to be quite narrow in your approach. Everything has to be double sourced, everything has to have a purpose, and since I worked with BCC it was especially conservative, so there’s always this desire to leave all that behind and escape into this fantasy where there are no editorial guidelines and you can have a certain kind of creative freedom. So have you always had intentions of writing novels? I have always had intentions of writing stuff which wasn’t strictly journalism, so I started out by writing plays, I wrote a movie script, I wrote a couple of radio plays as well. But they all involve other people. Actors, set designers, and it’s all very nice if it works well, but if it doesn’t. Then everyone blames each other, whereas a novel – it’s all your own. You’re not limited by budget; you’re not limited by the skills of the actors, so I guess I wanted to do something like that where I could take the full responsibility. The trend in South Asia seems to be emerging writers writing in English but keeping it relevant to their culture. What’s it like in Pakistan? I think this trend only exists in the media, but it is true that younger people read but this isn’t new. I think when we were young, if you had five friends, two of them read and three of them didn’t. Whenever I do readings in Pakistan I’m always surprised that more than half the audience are young people, which (laughs) freaks me out because frankly I tend to think my books are for grownups – why are these kids interested in these? But I think it’s a good trend and I think some of them secretly want to write also, so they come to these readings and festivals in hopes that they’ll pick up some tricks of the trade, that they’ll be inspired and get some ideas. My first book was a bit of a thriller, it had some jokes, and it had a bit of gay love, so maybe young kids like that kind of racy style. I don’t know! Speaking of tricks of the trade, and since you’ve done various forms of writing, what is your recommendation for those wanting to start? Ah, I can tell you exactly where to start – read. You meet people who say they want to write and they think they have a story to tell but they don’t know how to go about it and the problem is that they’re not good readers. You need to be a good reader before you can be a good writer. I’m not saying you have to read high literature – read what you like but you have to read extensively. You have to read carefully because no one has come up with new tricks – they’ve all been used somewhere. And there’s where you go to learn them, nobody can teach them in a class or anything.