25 year-old Lahore-based writer Ali Sethi chats about disappointment at Benazir Bhutto's inability to keep promises, underground coke parties, and the wish to walk freely from Delhi Gate in Lahore to Lahori Gate in Delhi

Dressed in a laid-back garb, black jeans and tee, a muddy brown shawl casually thrown over his shoulder, 25 year-old Pakistani author Ali Sethi seemed quite at ease with all the attention he was getting at a soiree intended to welcome him to Mumbai, before the India launch of his debut novel, The Wish Maker. His charm is manifold it could do with the fact that he's tall, dark and good-looking, or just simply because, as the New York Times put it, "Sethi's prose evokes the comic mislocutions of Jonathan Safran Foer and the vertiginous mania of Zadie Smith."



As he sat surrounded by a captive audience, talking of a childhood spent watching Chitrahar on Doordarshan, expressing delight when Indians say they watched Dhoop Kinare (a popular Pakistani TV soap) with fervour, and hoping out aloud that one day it would be possible to walk down from Delhi Gate in Lahore to the Lahori Gate in Delhi, he looks wise beyond his years. His maturity reflects in the unpretentious tone of his book too.

The Wish Maker, set in Lahore of the 1990s, follows the life of Zaki Shirazi who returns home from America to attend a cousin's wedding. Through Zaki, we are introduced to his autocratic and conservative grandmother a willful woman who ruffles official feathers through the magazine she edits and his teenage cousin, whose only aim is to find her "own Amitabh Bachchan". "But it's not just about a couple of characters. It's about the Pakistan they are living in, which was swayed by the promise of democracy made by Benazir Bhutto," Sethi says, digging into a Turkey and Tomato Sandwich, over an interview the next afternoon.

If he looked like a brooding rock star at the soiree, at the interview dressed in a deep red kurta Sethi looks like the epitome of the urban Pakistani one that's not common, but depicted vividly in his book.

"There were still no bars or nightclubs in Lahore or the rest of the country, where alcohol was banned. Isa said it was unnecessary since people went on doing what they had always done. "Over here," he said, "everything goes on underground. Everyone does everything. Parties-sharties, coke-shoke, anything and everything."

"Pakistan is like any other country, the only difference is that our government is confused. There is no clarity on what we can do and can't do. Under Zia Ul Haq, women had to cover their heads, while Pervez Musharraf tried being a bit more liberal. But we still don't know where things stand. So, if a woman wears a tee and jeans and steps out, nothing may happen to her, but then, something could too," he says.

And though he insists the book isn't autobiographical, he talks candidly of similarities. "My father's family wasn't very well off, my mother's was. So, I saw a slice of rural and urban living. I saw the world through my parents' eyes the way they supported Benazir and their disappointment when she failed to deliver. These instances find place in my book. They had to, it was imperative," he says, adding, "The day Benazir died was a shocker.u00a0

It was all caught on camera, but no one has been able to find out who did it. That's what's so scary. Despite all the media coverage, justice hasn't been served. Because if the ISI or the government has done something, you will never know, no matter what," he says.

The book's hero returns to a booming Pakistan, reeling under Coke-sponsored concerts, fashion shows and private TV channels. "We all benefited from the boom. My cousins got jobs, and there was an illusion of prosperity. But it didn't last. There is no consensus between the state and society in Pakistan. The state has to focus on socio-political reform," he says passionately, "But that doesn't mean we haven't grown at all. We have progressed from where we were, and things will only get better." At the centre of the book lies the undefined relationship between Zaki and his cousin Samar Api, whose life is filled with ups and downs thanks to her inability to hang on to a boyfriend. It ends with her marrying a man who she may not love, but who, as she says, "loves me, and I'm happy." Sethi looks pensive before saying, "You can be Freudian about it. Zaki may just have a little crush on his cousin. But she affects him like no one else. Though the book addresses stronger issues, it could be seen as a simple tale of two people who are in the process of finding themselves. It's all about finding an identity. That's all.

Chapter 1, page 22
"Orgies," said Moosa with a smile of depravity, a guilty smile that suggested complicity of intent if not in the act itself. "Swapping partners. There is a club in Karachi where you swap your car keys first." He laughed mordantly, as if at a hard but distant memory of the thing. "And gays. So many gays." He said it with a sigh of amazement, a yearning for a time when it was still an occasional occurrence and not a pervasive phenomenon, a thing that happened but didn't demand a reckoning by showing up so obviously around him.

"And bombs?" I asked.

"And bombs," said Moosa, who hadn't thought of it like that. "And bombs."

"Basically it's all changing," said Isa, whose vision of it had suddenly expanded and gone beyond the horizon; he saw it all at once and it compelled him to bring up his hand and rock it to either side like a raft in water.

"It's all up for grabs," he said. "It's all up for grabs."