A season for martyrs: literary enthusiasts to get a rare account of Sindh

Karachi
Sindh is underdeveloped, poverty-riddled, and stalked by malnutrition, women suffer on account of male domination and things are not at all rosy.
This is the backdrop to Bina Shah’s novel, “A season for martyrs”, an enlivening discussion on which was held on Monday at the Alliance Francais.
The novel pivots around a 25-year old Sindhi youth, Ali Sikandar, who is greatly influenced by Benazir Bhutto.
Coming from a different socio-economic background, he joins a television channel. In time, owing to his rural origins, he cracks under the pull of the centrifugal forces that he faces in the intra-office situation.
The problems compound because of his Sindhi Hindu girlfriend.
The dialogue was moderated by Nadya Chishti-Mujahid, an academic, who initiated it by asking Bina questions about various aspects of the novel and in the process bringing to the fore her writing technique and her views on social issues.
Having taught at SZABIST (Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology), as she puts it, added to the material for the novel because there were young men and women who were going through a rather tortuous experience of balancing their conservative rural origin with the diametrically opposed urban values and ways, Bina said.
The novel conveys the message of Sindhis leaving home and facing large multicultural areas, starting with the Sufi saints of Sindh, we come up to the present. “Some Sindhis still feel an allegiance to the Sindh they knew. It is a triangular structure.”
Questioned by the moderator about her writing technique, she said, “The writer must go all-out for the truth. You have to tell a story that has reason and depth. The writer must be true to himself and his feelings”.
Bina said, “We had to meet Shah Abdul Latif, Pir Pagara (father of the late one), and Bhutto as they reflected the landscape of Sindh.”
“I envisioned Benazir Bhutto as a person who didn’t know who she was. She cajoles a servant into taking her to a fortune house where her destiny is disclosed to her”.
She lamented that the Indus meant so much to Sindh and its very soul yet the connection and other things about the river were destroyed. She expressed disappointment at the fact that today writing was turning into a commercial corporate activity, robbing it of its aesthetic and literary value.
Shah has had a glistening career in journalism and authorship. She is a regular contributor to Dawn, International New York Times, UK-based The Guardian and the Independent. She has published four novels and two compendia of short stories.