I'd love to be Bertie Wooster: Fahad Samar

It's not difficult to picture Fahad Samar as P.G. Wodehouse's iconic English character. But unlike Bertie Wooster, who had his trusted butler Jeeves to extricate him from the most impossible of situations, Samar is his own man Friday. The director of cult TV shows such as Superhit Muqabla and BPL Oye wears many hats. When he is not making movies, he keeps busy as a film critic, presents a radio show, writes on food and travel, pens a newspaper column and labours as a novelist.

His latest one, Flash Point, released in February, is the second part of a Mumbai trilogy. Published by Harper Collins, the book tells the story of Zeeshan Haq, a Kashmiri immigrant photographer whose life in the city offers a view of the red carpet glitterati even as he gets ensnared in the dark underbelly of Mumbai and Dubai.

Sitting in his Bandra apartment and before he nosedives into composing the final part, tentatively titled Break Point, Samar talks about his love for reading, literary influences and more. Excerpts from the interview:

Which your all-time favourite book?
Midnight's Children. A wonderful Italian writer called Italo Calvino says that a classic is a novel that never stops saying to you what it has to say. That each time you go back to a classic, it has something new and varied and nuanced that it says to you. I've read Midnight's Children three times in the last 25-30 years and it speaks to me every time I re-read it. (Salman) Rushdie is a generation older, but I know the world he is talking about. As a young, educated, liberal, secular boy growing up in South Bombay, I inhabited that world that he talks of completely. It speaks to me on a personal level. His use of language, his irreverence, his wit and humour, as well as the subjects he deals with, are extraordinary. Midnight's Children is the quintessential Bombay book.

Which writer/writers has/have influenced you the most?
Hugely, varied authors... starting with P.G. Wodehouse and Truman Capote to Edith Wharton to the great Latin American writers, such as (Gabriel) Garcia Marquez, (Jorge Luis) Borges, and the eastern European writers, the Milan Kunderas of the world.

My aunt with whom I lived as a young boy introduced me to the joys of reading. She'd go to the Willingdon Club every evening and pick up books from the library there. I'd also read books from my school library at the Bombay International School. I remember finishing the Hardy Boys and very quickly moved on to the classics.

If you could ask a writer one question, who would it be? What would you ask?
(Ernest) Hemingway. Despite his hard drinking, hard life, Hemingway always espoused maximum grace under pressure and yet he ended up committing suicide, which was hardly emblematic of grace under pressure. So my questions to him would be about the whole paradox of life and death, and whether the entire canon of his writing was in anyway compromised as a result. It'd certainly be a very existentialist question.

Given a choice, what would you prefer to be: a commercial success or a literary success?
I have chosen consciously to write the books that I do want to write. My publishers Harper Collins call it 'literary commercial fiction', in that the language is of a certain calibre in terms of literary quality. At the same time, I am talking to today's generation. I don't want the readers to feel alienated or feel threatened by the language and the subject. So I use wit and humour to make a lot of points.

If you were a fictional character, who would you be?
Bertie Wooster!

Do you follow a particular routine while writing?
I put down at least 1,000 words every day, regardless of whether it is morning or evening or daytime. I find that a useful way of maintaining a regimen and self-discipline. I go through patches where sometimes the muse is upon you or at other times, when I am stuck, which is when I bounce ideas with my wife. And then there are other times — and I know this is a cliche, but still a wonderful experience — when my characters start to do exactly as they want contrary to what I've planned for them. Some of these characters have gone on their own personal journeys and taken me along for the ride... it sounds kooky and slightly crazy, but it's true. Writing is a lot of hard work.

Where do you 'meet' your characters?
I meet them on the streets, in the papers, on page 3, on the cocktail circuit, in salons and society soirées, I meet them everywhere. (Flash Point protagonist) Zeeshan is an amalgamation of several people I've met. I thought it'd be nice for readers to see Bombay from the point of view of a Muslim protagonist, and not just any other outsider. He has great affiliation to Islam, his religion is merely incidental to his identity.

Both your books Scandal Point and Flash Point, seem to be commentaries on society. Is that what you were hoping to do with the books?
I'm very aware of the fact that when you have a voice, then that voice needs to be of some consequence. With both these books, am trying to provoke the reader into (getting) new ideas and (delivering) social messages. Our society is obsessed with scandal and celebrity and gossip. (In Scandal Point), am saying that we've all become vampires who feed on the depravity of others. That we want our daily fix and the media has to give it to us and it's only when we've read the gossip and the scandal, that we are satiated. The schadenfreude we feel about the misfortunes of others — that wonderful sense of bringing people down to feel better about ourselves — that is what I'm really talking about. It's hilarious how people do not see themselves in any of this, and, on the contrary, wickedly derive pleasure seeing someone else in it. The second novel is much more dark, and talks about Bombay from an outsider's perspective.

What do you prefer between writing books and making movies?
I'd prefer that my books be made into movies (laughs). But I think (if I were to make the movies) that's be a very dangerous idea... you need aesthetic distance and objectivity. There is a lot of hubris that happens with the inability to let go...so it's wiser to let somebody else do it.