Jabeen Akhtar launches debut novel in Bangalore

Jabeen Akhtar is launching her debut novel, but she’s quite a veteran at fielding tricky questions. This, she proved at the launch of Welcome to Americastan held in the city on Tuesday evening.

The perception of a Pakistani-American writer is as a Pakistani ambassador for matters cultural and beyond. The expectations from her, therefore, were definitely those from a spokesperson for India-Pakistan-US ties.

One of the first questions from the audience, who had come to hear her talk about her novel was about her take on India-Pakistan relations. She hesitated to answer.

“I am not the right person to answer that question. I am not an authority on the subject, nor have I been in Pakistan that long to know it well enough,” she said.

Akhtar added that her personal opinion, gathered from the young Pakistani Americans she has come across, was that the pain of partition was easing, and that the geographical boundaries are becoming less confining. And Internet is a great leveller —“Kids in Lahore are playing videogames online with friends in Delhi. So where’s the room for animosity?”

A lot of her experiences in the US have found place in her book.

“And also experiences of my friends.” One verdict her readers agreed on, Akhtar said, was that her book was “really funny”. The story of a Pakistani growing up in the US is a unique and completely different tale from the kind usually told by other Pakistani-English writers.

That’s where she finds her quirky humour standing out, she said. “Now, there are a lot of stand-up comedians from Islamic background, poking fun at their own ways. That means a lot of Pakistani-American youth really want to laugh at the situation, the terror-scare and all that.”