Please welcome my new guest, Shah Husain, a writer
of myth’s, legends, and fun stories from India, Africa, and other Ancient
worlds. Her books are quite a few to list, but they are full of insight,
intrigue, and information about a time in our history almost all but forgotten
in this modern age. And, since my series touches on the Genie, or Djinni lore,
I was fascinated about her work. I first became attracted to her books when I
saw the one about the history of the Goddess—the oldest known religion to the human
race. It is 25,000 years old. Right now, Shah is not promoting a new book, but
instead is working on a new pilot series in the UK where she lives, one that I
would love to know more about. I hope that all of you enjoy the interview and
don’t forget to leave her questions and comments.
Thank you Shah for letting me interview you for my
blog. I am looking forward to
getting to know you better.
Tell
us a little about yourself and back ground: Well,
thank you very much for inviting me on to your site, Lisa. I’m pleased to be here. My first memories are of London, UK, where my father was completing his studies to
practice at the Bar. Then we returned to
Pakistan. It was a very educated,
literary household, so we breathed books, stories, writing and reading, along
with the oxygen. It was an idyllic
childhood in many ways. We were
surrounded with gardens, greenery, hills and an amazing verve and vigour. Pakistan was not even 10 years old when we
returned to live there. It was country
full of hope – everyone had a purpose and a place and it was a brave new world,
specially for women. Who would have
thought we’d look ahead 30 years to such catastrophe. But as I grew up the sheer vitality and
optimism of people around infected me.
My mother worked hard to rehabilitate refugees and her general attitude
was, yes, some things are not so good YET, but we’ll fix’em. That attitude didn’t really allow the
self-doubt writers feel - I’m afraid
I’m going to repeat that writers’ cliché about writing since I learned to hold
a pencil. I never doubted even at 5 that one day my scribbling would be in a
story book. I started freelancing, interviewing and writing short stories for
magazines when I was in my teens – wrote for children’s pages when I was much
younger. I did radio programmes from
interviewing to weekly diaries– and then finally, started to write books. My first book was published in the early 80s.
I write for children and for
adults. Fiction is my passion though
I’ve written a fair amount of non-fiction too and I enjoy writing
screenplays.
I
would love to know about your pilot series, what’s that about?:
These are two TV series: one’s an adapatation from ancient
Indian myth and the other is a contemporary story centering on the paranormal. A high profile director approached me for a
collaboration about the first and as we worked on that I mentioned the second
idea and she was very taken with that too, so she took my proposal to the
network’s drama department and they went crazy for it. Both proposals are in
the early stages of development. We have
a fantastic broadcaster backing them.
But these things take time and there’s many a slip in the world of film
and TV – I’ve been around long enough to know these things can disappear into
thin air at any stage. I’m still
confident about these, though. So far everything seems to be progressing well.
There are actually signatures on dotted lines and all submissions have been
approved to date.
Your
writing takes us into a time long since passed, what has been your motivation?:
Indeed. Many of my books
are set in the land of never-never and magical, mythical worlds that still
survive in our unconscious minds. I grew
up in Pakistan and India listening to stories.
As children we were rarely told off or given instructions without a story
to demonstrate the point. Some of my
mother’s relatives in India lived in a deliberately un-modernised way in places
where TV did not penetrate until the 1970s.
This meant my siblings and cousins and I spent a lot of time amusing
ourselves in inventive ways. One of my
favourite pastimes was exploring wooded areas, orchards, gardens and scrub and
fantasizing about magical worlds within them.
One of my favourite pastimes was to listen to stories wherever I could
find them. Ghosts, jinns, witches,
fairies and demonic beings. I read the
stories too, of course, voraciously: all the tomes of European, English and
American fairytales I could find as well as Russian, Chinese and Japanese and
Middle Eastern ones. I found out many things
that influenced my later writing choices.
Firstly, I realized I liked listening to stories even more than reading
them. Secondly, that most myths and fairytales and legends fall into certain
patterns and contain similar motifs and themes no matter where in the world
they come from. So I chose to retell
fairytales in a colloquial manner and all my story collections for adults
(Virago Press) tend to be around a single theme – eg. Witches. Traditional tales demonstrate a universal
tendency, a oneness about humanity, which greatly appeals to me and which is
very unifying. According to Jung, these
stories come from an unconscious reservoir of story and we all share it. That was why I was thrilled when my recent
children’s book about a popular character Mulla Nasruddin was selected as one
of only 9 recommended reads by Chautauquan Institution for its Young Readers Programme. (link to interview in Chautauquan Daily
…. interview
Do
you have any ideas for a new book in your future?:
I am always exploding with ideas, Lisa. It sounds ungrateful but I kind of wish
they’d pause a while and allow me to write what’s already churning around in my
head. I’ve got a novel coming out next
year, set against sectarian violence in India and am two-thirds of the way
through a modern reinterpretation of an ancient Indian myth. It looks at Multiple
Personality Syndrome. I’m really
enjoying it.
I
am writing a fantasy fiction series and based my world on the Djinn. Not the
Djinn in a bottle, but a race of beings in another dimension. I named the world
Djenrye and the people are the Djen, (different spelling) but I wanted them to
be a people, not a typical trickster with wishes. What kind of lore can you
tell us about the Djinn?:
You’re on to something there, Lisa. In Middle Eastern tradition Jinns there are
races of Jinns distributed into tribes much like humans, with their own
motivations and activities. Interestingly, I’ve been thinking about Jinns
recently in connection with an episode for my TV project but I have been
fascinated with them since I can remember.
I grew up in a world where people freely believe in Jinns and speak as
casually about them as people in the west may speak about astrology or
psychics. They take them for granted and
take appropriate precautions as a matter of course. When I visit Bangladesh
people regularly refer to some precious object being found through the aid of a
‘controller’ of Jinns, in India they speak of Jinns inhabiting mosques and wild
places. In Pakistan, too. Apparently they love sweet-meats, shift shape
and sometimes live in mosques or in trees, love flowers fall in love with human
women, specially those with long hair and beautiful voices. When they do, they become very possessive and
prevent them marrying or having romantic relationships even if this means
making them mentally or physically ill.
They can be cast out, of course – but it’s hard because they are
apparently religious beings and so prayer is not an antidote. Of course the Arabian Nights stories – the
real ones, not the sanitized western versions for kids – reveal much of this
lore. I had a great uncle who spoke of
seeing them in the late 19th/early 20th century when he
travelled far and wide in India as a District superintendent. There are loads of tales about them
transforming into snakes - in oral tales and the Nights, so in a country like
India at that time, where there were lots of snakes, there was always the worry
that one of them might be a Jinn!! The
Quran describes them as beings of ‘smokeless fire’. It tells of many races of
Jinns, good and bad, and names some of their significant leaders. They are not immortal but they seem to be
somewhat invincible. I remember
fairytales in which they would hide their heart inside a bee, inside a fruit,
inside a parrot.
I really look forward to reading your book, Lisa. Best of luck with its progress.
Thank you so much for answering my questions. I
would love to sit with you and talk about these stories. First I love history,
and second, I love fables. If you would like, please leave us with your
thoughts and anything you wish to promote about your pilot, or your books.
Also, don’t forget to leave your links so everyone can check out your work.
Thanks again Shah, you’ve been wonderful and I appreciate you and your books!
You can find Shah's works on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble sites, or go to her website-http://www.Shahrukhhusain.com You can also reach her on FB and Twitter.
Thanks for joining in my wonderful blog followers and leave Shah a comment or question. she will be checking in periodically to answer. Until Thursday, have a great week!
Love, Lisa
What is your New Year resolution? Leave me a comment and let me know. Also, if there was something that happened in 2012 that you would like to share, please tell us about it. I would love to know. I wish all of you a happy, healthy, prosperous 2013! I appreciate your support in me and my first book, which is now my sister and I's first book, and I do hope you know that if you need support, I'm hear for you, just let me know.
