The debut novel ‘From Pashas to Pokemon’ from acclaimed screenwriter and filmmaker Maaria Sayed is out now. Her book is both an insightful as well as an amusing coming of age story. A story about a girl who is essentially coming to terms with growing up and learning to understand herself and accept and love herself as she discovers, it is a hard journey for a woman.
Maaria Sayed is an accomplished film maker and her debut fiction novel focuses on Aisha. At 25, Aisha has seen more than many people do in a lifetime and has understood one thing, no matter who you are and where you are from, there are things that you can study and others that you can actually learn from and grow. Lively tales from family history and everyday life in a Mahammad Ali Road colony in Mumbai form the background of Aisha’s internal journey. Childhood memories mingle with her experiences while studying in London and are woven into a sharp commentary on the transformations in India over 20 years as she ponders her place in this ever-changing world. Narrated with a distinct humour and a throbbing heart, rooted in Urdu sensibility, the debut novel of Maaria Sayed is the story of a family caught in the shift to the new millennium, a touching story of love and compromised values, of West and East, of childhood and adulthood.
As Sayed describes it,
‘I am often asked if it is my story and I say a resounding no! However, when you grow up as a Muslim girl you realize that everyone around you decides who you are before you have the right to determine your own identity. So here is the coming-of-age story of a girl who grows into an identity that is all soul and falls deeply in love with herself and her motherland. I wanted to keep the aspect of a girl being totally rooted and totally flighty at the same time. Thus while the English is heavily influenced by the way we speak in Urdu because I wanted to ensure that the thought was multicultural this is not just about the language but the thought of the language that needed to feel like a mix of Urdu, English, Hindi and Hindustani. In a way this globalization has got us to this point, of course no one knows what is next but I would be happy to consider this a part of our collective growth as a species. We all need to constantly give and take to grow personally and culturally. Our ideas will grow if we meet other ideas. In that sense in order to reach the stage of reflection where we isolate ourselves, I think we need to mix with ideas and people that are different from us. Being open minded, that is probably why I love Aisha, my protagonist! She learns, she absorbs, she reflects, she chooses but ultimately, she embraces it all. She breaks walls and does not build them!’
While the transition to novel marks a new chapter for Sayed, the themes of ‘From Pashas to Pokemon’ follow in the vein of Maaria’s film work. Beginning as a writer for networks including Discovery Channel, Fox, and National Geographic, Maaria’s work has continued into shorts and a feature film project selected at Cine Qua Non Lab. Her films explore the transformation and the spiritual and sexual liberation of women from background.
The book was mostly written pre pandemic around 2018. Except the last chapter. It was ready with the publisher and the foreword too was read, Sayed then went through a personal tragedy within her family and decided to drop the book. She felt she was not ready. Then the pandemic happened and we all changed, the world changed. In 2022 she met Gulzar – one of the biggest literary figures in India and Slum Dog Millionaire lyricist – who wrote the foreword, he said other things could happen but Maaria should not shy away from releasing the book as it was written as a book and must exist as one yet Maaria had already started to see it through the eyes of a film maker. This gave her the confidence and she then restarted the process in 2023 and that is when she wrote the last chapter and today she feels the book would have been incomplete without the last chapter which took time due to her own personal growth and ongoing political developments in the Indian sub-continent . The truth is Sayed thinks she needed all those years of growth as a human being in order to write that last chapter.
As Maaria says, ‘Timing is everything in life!’