Nida Tahseen
Lahore

Rachel Holmes straight away asked, why Satire?
Ashok Ferrey, a Sri Lankan born satirist replied, “In my case I came to writing quite late in life. When I wrote, people said, it’s so funny. That time I realized I can make people life. It is rarely a boring job. I interned in an insurance company. Then I started worked for building sites. My father got cancer so I found relief in writing. So that’s the story of my life.”
Mohammad Hanif, a Pakistani writer and journalist explained his journey by saying, “I don’t consider myself a satirist, I think I am a proper writer.” The audience laughed at his remarks. “That is properly our dirty secret. Since I have grown up, we have been going through a lot of stress as a nation. So you go to sleep at night. So I have begun to realies that Punjabis especially have this bad addiction with jokes. Men will be sitting on the corners and cracking jokes with village elders. It somehow expresses the punch lines. I am kind of stuck in a bad joke. E.g. These days are news channels’ main offering are a comedy shows, these are the programs that offer endless jokes and you can’t escape from it.”
Ned Beauman, British based journalist and writer begun by saying, “I might get jazy in my description. I am imitated by 1930s and 40s sculptures and culture and British-German theatre. In those days I didn’t know if these things can qualify as a satire. For me it was pure aggression and I thoroughly had fun with language of that era. I spent a portion of my life trying to find jokes inside exaggerations and contradictions of their styles.” He explained further, “For me satire has to be something punching that can punch back. For instance, these days modern military marketing is one directional. So there is a little bit material of that kind. When I started writing in 2010, I dint have much interest and understanding on the military fun. And by the way, I don’t consider myself a satirist infact an admirer of words and their usage.”
Rachel’s next question was about the origin of humour in current diaspora. To which Ashok responded,“I come from Sri Lanka and it’s been 27 years that we are in war. Thatdoes not have to do with satire. Everybody has their different sight of the war. Therewas somebody’s thumb in my garden once, due to a bomb blast. Sri Lanka is like that even today. It’s very surreal . Rachel asked truth is stranger than fiction, what’s you say on that?
Hanif replied, “It is someways stranger than fiction. Living in that cycle for long that when you look around, you think it is not satire. Here in a city we have festival. Government said we cannot give you security in an open place which is right next to this place. So sometimes you really don’t need to divert from reality because the satire is already there.”
Rachel finally asked, what does satire in self-defese means?
First Ashoktook the initiative to respond, “Well, when you say something, and someonegets offended, you say oh, I was only joking.” Ned said,“I am not in any danger or threat from politicians. In UK I said something against government and it was deliberately repression than any other form of repression. Satire and defense does work in the same way that you are working. Various different levels of irony. People are afraid to switch positions with you. There are certain things that you say can make you unpopular onsocial media but if I say it in a humourous way than it spares me the damage.”
Hanif highlighted the tendency of writers towards reading, , “The writers are tend to read a lot and they are in a habit to live in another book. Their mind is there. What has influenced me is all the books that I have read in Karachi, Okara, London I am kind of influenced by them.”
Ned talked about him being inspired by his upbringing. Whereas Ashok was of the view that I never read for 32 years of my life unfortunately. But humour has changed me. There are many humorists now and many are not even funny. They have to find the extremely wise sentence because little diversion can kill the joke.”