Bucking the hunky-dory trend, popular Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif said here that there was no point in Indians talking to Pakistanis “since they had nothing in common.”
“Many people talk as if we are long-lost brothers but it is not so,” said Hanif taking part in a discussion at the Kovalam literary festival on Sunday. “We don’t have much in common now. We may have had a common history, but our interpretation of that history is completely divergent.”
Hanif, whose satirical novel The case of exploding mangoes that revolves around General Zia ul Haq’s death has become a major bestseller, added that members of the Indian and Pakistani elite having polite conversations in conferences and parties does not matter at all.
“There is no point in saying that all our mothers make aloo paratha,” he said. “We are different. That is why I am cynical.”
Terming Pakistan a “house on fire,” the writer said Indian media’s perception of the country seemed to be stuck 20 years in the past. “Of course, we have some nut cases there but it is stupid to think that all the people are always thinking how to bring India down,” he said.
Noted writer and MP, Mr Shashi Tharoor, said that Pakistan was in a state of denial and recalled an exhibition in Islamabad where it had detailed the contribution of every country including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to its culture, but refused to mention India at all.