In the daily mayhem and blood-letting of a Taliban-infested Afghanistan, it’s not easy to spin a love story, and that too, a novel which is interspersed with generous doses of sex and wit. But this is precisely what Finnish journalist Pia Heikkila has done in her debut novel entitled “Operation Lipstick: Mission for Mr Right.” Well, it sounds like a lot of chicklit pulp, but it’s just a narrative frame to weave a romantic picaresque novel that revolves around Anna Sanderson’s quest for love and fulfilment in the country that hogs limelight for all the wrong reasons. Sanderson, a war correspondent working for GNN channel, is a go-getter, wildly uninhibited woman who sleeps with countless men, discovers the romantic side of the Taliban and manages to find Mr Right amid the sounds of gun fire and shifting politics of a nation in transition.
In this free-wheeling conversation with Manish Chand, Heikkila talks about how and why she chose to write a chicklit novel set in Afghanistan, her talent for transforming her experiences as a war correspondent into a riveting piece of fiction and her itch to discover the real Taliban.
In this free-wheeling conversation with Manish Chand, Heikkila talks about how and why she chose to write a chicklit novel set in Afghanistan, her talent for transforming her experiences as a war correspondent into a riveting piece of fiction and her itch to discover the real Taliban.(Excerpts from the interview)
Q) As a journalist, what made you transit from journalistic dispatches to writing a love story, and that, too, a story amid the blood and mayhem in Afghanistan?
A) Well, you see it is obvious that once you see Afghanistan, you fall in love with it immediately. It is a stunning country. This transition from a journalist to a novelist came to me when I realised that there was a story to tell. Everybody who goes to Afghanistan realises that there is a story to tell in this country.
Q) So when you started writing the story, what kind of audience did you have in mind?
A) I wondered whom am I going to tell the story to. So I thought that I am going to write about those people who hardly read the headlines or have interest in war novels. The immediate thoughts were the female readers. They are the ones who have been completely shut out from the world of war and all that talk about weapons. Therefore, I targeted them.
Q) What do you really mean by “people who normally read chicklit never really read about the Afghan tradition?”
A) I wanted the country to be much more accessible to the women readers but also to those readers who would not read about Afghanistan. People like, who would not pick up a book by Andy McNab, or maybe a book like ‘The Kite Runner’. My target is then female readers. I also wanted to focus on the entire forefront of the war, with all the Afghan people. I have portrayed them in a very sympathetic and realistic way, but in the process have taken care not to make it massively inaccessible or difficult to the larger audience.
Q) Are you worried that people might call you a populist?
A) Yes, there are people who might call the novel populist. But I am telling the story of a country and yes, my protagonist is a woman. But I also have other characters in the book, and not to forget the Afghan people in it. My main aim was to marry the two genres in this work- chicklit and war literature and create an adventure book for women, with sex in it.
Q) What has been the response to the book so far?
A) The response has been good. I believe that women readers have been reading the same kind of chick-lit and the same kind of characters. I wanted to create a spicy character. My character is a go-getter and she isn’t afraid of anything. There are hilarious situations when she is scared of making herself embarrassed in front of her fancy man, those things that women are usually worried at their old age. Not to forget that in the background is the Taliban and war also.
Q) When you say you have a ‘go getter’ for a heroine and unlike the other popular novels, the hero of your plot is not exactly macho or a typical Mills and Boons character…
A) Oh, he isn’t. He is mysterious. He is a secret agent and working for the British government. He may not be the typical Mills and Boons hero but he has thighs of steel; he is a demon and loves lechery. We want these kinds of men, with thighs of steel and brown eyes. At the same time he is sympathetic. Initially, he is seen as base, but when Anna finds more about the man, she finds that he is on the right track and falls for him.
Q) You bring in the skills of fiction writing and a journalist’s talent for recording hard facts…
A) There are a couple of things for you there. I spent nearly a few years in Afghanistan, after my stint in the Middle East. I was a single lady then. You are calling it a fantasy, it isn’t a fantasy. How much of it is fantasy? I will leave it to you to guess. It is partially my own experience, but how much of it is mine? I will not tell you. I am a married woman and I should keep you guessing.
Q) How long have you been in Afghanistan and what is your impression of the Taliban? Who were these people? What are they pedalling and what is your sense of who they are? What is it that they represent?
A) I was in Afghanistan for a few years. The term ‘Taliban’ is pigeonholed by journalists to make it easier for the reader. But actually it’s not the Taliban. There are many anti-government forces and anti-oppositional forces. It is a diverse group. There are many forces at play.
Q) There is a whole body of literature around the Taliban who are fundamentally anti-women in the sense they want the Afghan women to be in purdah and all those regressive practices. You are writing a love story in a country which is in danger of being hijacked by a radical group which is in a sense anti love. We don’t know that the Taliban loves something. We know what they hate….
A) I think love is universal and the Taliban can be very romantic. They have written poetry and they have a tradition of expressing them in a very romantic way. Fundamentally yes, the position of women in Afghanistan is terrible and needs improvement. But ultimately, the book is not about that. It is about one woman’s search for love. And you know, when you are there as a western journalist in Afghanistan you live a very different existence from the local women. I was fortunate. I come from a liberal country. My view of the country is very different from local Afghanistan woman’s point of view. She has to dress up in a burqa(veil) and cannot go out freely. She has none of the experiences that I have. But working as a woman in Afghanistan gave me very good access to women as opposed to men as male journalists can’t go near women. They will not take the burqa out in front of you. They will not talk to you.
Q) So your novel is chicklit with a difference, a sort of parody of the genre
A) We are prisoners of genres. In order to sell book you have to put something forward. The way the book was pitched, it is for female readers, it pitches as a chicklet for young urban women who are middle-aged; people who like to read and be entertained. It is not necessarily a parody, but what it is – it is meant to entertain women. It’s meant to make them laugh just the way they are thinking. My protagonist has very embarrassing moments with men. And she thinks she is lousy in saying why did I do that. Why did I make him do that and have sex with men? That is what you do when you get drunk. She is remorseful about it. One finds the identifiable traits of woman and at the same time it has the ability to laugh at others. It is not a parody per say, but it gives us a chance to laugh at one’s own self.
Q) What’s your next novel about?
A) I have already started my second book. It is chicklit married with a spy novel set in in Pakistan and India. It is the same character- Anna Sanderson. She is on another adventure and she goes to the tribal areas. I won’t tell you more than this right now.
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