Special Interview series – Urdu writers

Writing is like making love: An interview with Mustansar Hussain Tarar

No, I don’t believe in preparation. I started keeping a schedule only twenty-five years ago. Before that, I never bothered with a schedule. I’d write wherever and whenever I felt like it. My father had a seed business in Gawal Mandi and I’d write between dealing with customers and entertaining my friends who’d often drop by the shop. You are a Lahori yourself, so you know how it’s like in Gawal Mandi. There’re shops that’d stay open the whole night. It gets pretty noisy there but even that cacophony and the din of the market never disturbed my writing. The urge to write is as involuntary as the urge to dance. Writing is like making love. There is a kind of exhilaration, intoxication, titillation I find common to both these experiences – of writing and making love.