Fatwa against Mohammed a mechanic & Mary a maid

It takes me back to my childhood. If I was not allowed to attend my school for non-payment of a ten
paisa of fee, my grandmothers unperturbed comment would be, Tell your teachers to go out with a
begging bowl, you take the cow for grazing. I still see myself a half naked urchin aimlessly scurrying into
the dusty lanes of a village.
Life was too hard to be lived without stories. There is no other reason that I am a storywriter today.
Story, no doubt, makes a man human but lamentably antagonizes gods cousins with its underlying
audacity. And a time comes the writer is hounded simply for his fault of being a writer. Most of the
people have not read my book Mohammed a Mechanic & Mary a Maid beyond the title and have
labeled me a blasphemous- a kafir.
My Savitri of Easy Savitri is not a Sati (a chaste woman), she is almost a whore and is suspected to have
killed her husband while the legendary one brought her husband back from the hands of Death. Yes, the
allegory is essential to the story, not just intended. Similarly, in the title story Mohammed a Mechanic &
Mary a Maid, theres no reference to the Prophet, rather my character is based on a Mohammed who is
actually a mechanic. My Mary is a domestic I knew and not the Virgin Mary. For that matter I can
present to the world my savitri, a happy old woman still there in my village. The truth is that most of the
deprived people dont have fancy names; their names are ironically derived from those of gods.
The world is getting more and more intolerant with the writers at the receiving end. In a much more
politically hostile world the readers of Hemingway and Manto showed more grace, I believe.
You may rubbish my book as a piece of literature but save me from the uncalled for smothering. And
do it before the murmurs catapult into a fatwa against me, and I realize that I had better gone by my
grandmothers innocent advice.