Mohammed Hanif's Session In Ayaz Melo Nothing More Than Promotion Of His Novel's Urdu Translation

Sometimes we put high exceptions from certain people and it hurts badly when those people don't even come nearer to such high expectations. The very same thing happened regarding Mohammed Hanif's session in Fifth Ayaz Melo ongoing at Hyderabad. 

Though the session was scheduled on 23rd December, but because of mismanagement or some other reason it was conducted on 24th December. Satirically speaking (which happens to be the favorite genre of the above mentioned novelist) the much awaited superstar appeared on the stage accompanied with his translator Kashif Raza, who was the moderator of the session.

 Though there was a switch of gears and the moderator became the speaker, while the speaker became the moderator. The way this entire session was conducted, it seemed that both the speaker and the moderator were having a mock on the audience, the reason might be Sindhi audience in larger number, both the novelist nor the Urdu translator considered that Sindhi audience good enough to share their valuable thoughts on burning issues and most importantly on the future of democracy or dictatorship, which happen to be Hanif's favorite topics.

After a fifteen minutes of light chit-chat between the interchanging moderator and the speaker and ridiculing the audience (remember larger number was Sindhi audience) no one knew what happened to Kashif Raza as he started to read from his Urdu version of "A Case of Exploding Mangoes", perhaps he was trying to convince the audience how beautifully and masterfully he'd translated the novel into Urdu, it seemed that he wanted to read the entire novel in one breath. 

Just for reminder Mr. Raza, we could have read the novel at our homes and enjoyed it far more than we got bored from your reading, but sorry to say it wasn't a reading session, and it showed clearly that either both of them had not done the homework for the session or they came with a mindset to promote the Urdu translation of an already popular novel.

Let's not be unfair to the poor devil, allow me to give the devil due credit, there were some good moments in the session. For example, after Hanif's intro and exaggeration made by Mr. Ashfaque Laghari, might be one of team members of management. Mohammed Hanif tried to clarify a remark made regarding "The Case of Exploding Mangoes", about Ejaz ul-Haq, son of dictator General Zia ul-Haq regarding reading the novel. Hanif clarified that:

"Ejaz ul-Haq sent me message claiming I had written a novel, which his wife had read and I had written strange things about his father. I replied; it is amazing that all your works are performed by your women. He said that if his father was alive, I would have not dared write that novel. I told him you are correct, I would have never written as I would have been in a cell as my old friends."

As I told you earlier, there was shift of gear in the session and Hanif became a moderator and asked Kashif Raza, what motivated him to translate his novel into our dearest Urdu, to which the moderator-cum-speaker-cum-translator-cum-novelist and so on (my dear ones don't get offended I am just using my right of freedom of expression), replied their mutual love for General Zia forced him to translate the novel.

In answer to question regarding future plans Hanif said that he was working on his novel, an opera titled 'Bhutto' which would be performed next year in United States of America and Punjabi journalism.

However, I don't feel the need to mention (with or without using wikkipedia) that  Mohammed Hanif is author of three novels including A case of exploding mangoes (2008), Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011) and Red Birds (2018), while he also contributes for many national and international publications.