Considering Pakistan's sociopolitical atmosphere – torn between Enlightenment values of liberalism and a vicious interpretation of Islam – and the restrictive demand on Pakistani artists to write narratives that 'correctly' and 'realistically' represent society, reading Mirza Athar Baig's novel, Hasan Ki Surat-e-Haal: Khali Jaghain Pur Karo, is nothing short of a revelation. A novel that blurs the line between global and local literature, here is a work of fiction that wears hybridity, rather than ethnicity, on its sleeve.
Since his 2006 debut novel, Ghulam Bagh, Baig has provided crucial doses of formal provocation and theoretical nuance to the field of contemporary Urdu literature. He has written three novels and a collection of short stories, all of which have managed to stump critics while also becoming best-sellers for his publishers, an impressive feat in a country with a diminishing Urdu literary culture. The increased curiosity in Pakistani literature in Western publishing spheres, especially since 9/11, has done little to foster an interest in vernacular literature, whether in Urdu or in other regional languages of Pakistan. In fact, Western interest in English-language literature from Pakistan has adversely affected the creativity and imagination of the literary scene, conferring critical awards and financial benefits on a narrow field of themes and subjects.
From its beginnings in the 19th century, the modern Urdu novel confined itself to socio-political commentary in an overwhelmingly realist mode. Writers divided themselves on the spectrum of 'realism', and beyond some noticeable examples (Intizar Husain, Qurratulain Hyder), few broke with the conventions of a broad modernist aesthetic. With the publication of Hasan Ki Surat-e-Haal, Mirza Athar Baig has exploded the field of Urdu literature open with a surrealist bomb. And not just Urdu literature – unlike English-language writers from Pakistan, who have largely contended themselves with reworking 'local' forms and aesthetics for a predominantly Western audience – Mirza has chosen to rework a 'Western' aesthetic, surrealism, into a novel that speaks to 'global' concerns in local slangs and idioms. As he said in an interview: "The 'modernity' we have in our parts of the world is a vastly different socio-historical process than Western modernity, out of which the so-called post-modernity evolved. What sort of 'post-modernity' would bloom out of our 'modernity'? Something is laughable about it but a lot is poignantly serious. There should be a different name for it, and the name is Hasan Ki Surat-e-Haal."
Much of the novel develops around a group of filmmakers: a director educated in European film schools, two local writer-actors who begin to fall in love with each other, and a cameraman who is in equal parts confused and amused by the elite attitudes of the other three. The filmmakers are hell-bent on making Pakistan's first surrealist film, which they have tentatively titled 'This Film Cannot Be Made.' As the film runs into all manners of hurdles from the very beginning, the title barely appears to be absurdist: the industrialist funding the film expects sexual favours from the actress, the head of the National Film Institute begins to pressure the director to adopt a more realist filming approach, the filmmakers begin to receive threats from rightwing cultural and political lobbyists who believe money should not be spent on the arts.