THE BUTTERFLY THAT COULD

EDITOR’S NOTE

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” -- Rumi --

Such is the essence of creativity. To take daily, uneventful, supposedly meaningless experiences, turn them on their heads, tune them into our souls and churn out a story. This is the theme in today's SLR.  The editorial interview with author Moni Mohsin exemplifies how an overheard conversation can be a starting point while Philip John's story outlines a life based on the motif on a carpet. Which just goes to show that our life, even at its humblest and most indifferent hour, can hum with its own story – we only have to listen carefully.

MUNIZE MANZUR

Moni Mohsin is the author of the Indian bestsellers “The Diary of a Social Butterfly” and “Duty Free”, based on her hit column in Pakistan's Friday Times, and a novel, “The End of Innocence”. Her writing has also appeared in The Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and other publications. Born in Pakistan, she lives in the UK. In this Editorial interview, we see how she turned both a fluttering of tongues and a shamed silence into interesting novel material.

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SLR:  Tell us a bit about the art of writing satire.

MM: I don't know if what I write can be described as 'art' – it seems far too grand a word for the Butterfly! Nor do I think I'm in a position to give advice because I too am making it up as I go along. But the one thing that helped me in writing satire was: knowing my subject inside out. I knew how she thought, how she spoke, how she dressed, how she acted, what her aspirations, prejudices and insecurities were. I was also on very familiar terms with the society in which she moved. So if we think of satire as an exposé of a class or society or a powerful individual or institution, then I think it is vital to understand all their contradictions and absurdities to mock them effectively.

SLR: What inspired you to write “End of Innocence”?

MM: “The End of Innocence” was a story that I had carried with me for a very long time. I was about eight years old when a sixteen year old girl, a friend of my older sister and the granddaughter of an old servant, suddenly disappeared from our village. I kept asking about her whereabouts but nobody would give me a straight answer. In fact, every time I asked, I'd be shushed in a manner that made me feel as if I was trespassing. Eventually I stopped asking but the questions remained and it wasn't until several years later that I discovered that she had been the victim of an honour killing. Thirty years later, when I sat down to write my first novel, I had no idea it was going to be about her or indeed about the '71 war but the girl and the war appeared out of nowhere and took over. The shame surrounding her death conflated in my mind with the shame surrounding the loss of East Pakistan. In fact, the two events had happened around the same time in my life. Just as nobody had wanted to talk about that girl, everyone avoided the shameful subjects of ethnic cleansing and the rape camps. But I needed to talk about both.

SLR: Do you think it's fair to categorize the Butterfly Series as 'chick lit'?  

MM: As V.S. Naipaul said, “Books are orphans. They make their own way in the world”. Writers have no control over how their books are read and interpreted. There is nothing fair or unfair about it. It just is. But if you're asking me, I think I write social commentary, not chick lit.

SLR: What books have influenced your life most?

MM: Oh God, so many. Too many to mention.

SLR: What book are you reading currently?

MM: I'm reading “A History of Modern Indonesia” and re-reading Marquez's “Love in the Time of Cholera”.

SLR: How did the character of Butterfly come about?

MM: I was at a lunch party in Lahore when I overheard a bitchy conversation between two Begums about the many 'shahtooshes' they owned. And suddenly it occurred to me that I should be writing about these characters in their voices, reflecting their concerns. And so Butterfly was born.

SLR: Despite her being a Pakistani Socialite, there's a certain universality about her that appeals to many readers globally. Why do you think this is so?

MM: The Butterfly is very Pakistani in the way she speaks but wealthy, frivolous socialites living in their very privileged bubbles are to found all over the word. They may dress and speak differently but their concerns are pretty much the same.

SLR: Why do you Tweet as Butterfly?

MM: I Tweet as Butterfly at the request of my UK publishers! When “Tender Hooks” came out in the UK they asked me to tweet, get active on Facebook and maintain a blog in order to promote my book. I said if I did all that when would I find the time to write? Since of the three, Twitter is the least demanding in terms of time, I chose to Tweet.

SLR: If Butterfly had to interview you, what would she want to know about you?

MM: How much I paid my maid!

SLR: What's next in the pipeline for you?

MM: A non-fiction book.