ANWAR MAQSOOD’s taste concerning movies, music and books is as varied and diverse as his own personality and professional commitments. The playwright par excellence says that he has a long list of favourites when it comes to movies, so long that it cannot be jotted down on a piece of paper.
He doesn’t draw any distinction between the movies of his choice, whether it is one of his Bengali favourites or a Hollywood blockbuster, all the movies that he has liked at some point in his time have been close to his heart ever since.
Among the Hollywood flicks, he recalls that movies by Ingmark Berg Bin, Roman Polanski and Francis Ford Coppola have been his most favourite ones. He likes every bit of them. According to him, these were the movies that inspired him a great deal. Though he could not shortlist any particular movie from the Hollywood that he liked the most, he did name Dr Zhivago and Last Tango in Paris as being the closest to get that title.
Among the Pakistani movies, he liked Punjabi film Karthar Singh a lot, and Heer Ranjha is also one of the local productions that he has greatly admired.
From across the border, he has always been fascinated by the movies made by Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt. Kaagaz Kay Phool is one such movie. He has watched a lot of Bengali movies, too, and says that he is an ardent fan of Bengali cinema. However, he didn’t tell the name of those movies because, according to him, an average reader will not understand the title, “so it is useless to name them”.
When it comes to music, Anwar Maqsood derives pleasure from listening to almost every genre of songs, and has a very varied taste — music from Elvis Presley to Noor Jehan. But it is the music of The Beatles that inspired him the most, and still does. Among all the foreign musicians, he ranks them at the top.
On the local scene, among the female singers he prefers listening to Noor Jehan and Zubaida Khanum, while Mehdi Hasan and Ahmad Rushdi are his favourites among the male singers. However his all time favourite song is Piya Nahee Aaye, from the film Darwaaza, that was sung by the legendary Noor Jehan.
Coming to books, Anwar Maqsood revealed his immense interest in poetry and fiction, which is not much of a surprise considering the fact that he himself is a prolific writer. He is greatly moved by the work of D.H. Lawrence and Saadat Hasan Manto. “Manto’s short stories are among some of the best literary pieces I have ever come across,” said the seasoned writer.
But the book that he has gone through over and over again over the years and has still not had enough of it, is Diwan-e-Ghalib. In his words, this is one book that can be read again and again, and yet the words do not lose their lustre, the influence of those words do not weaken, and the work does not get insipid by repetitive reading. “The reason is very simple. Ghalib’s work is still very close to the realities of everyday life,” he says, and rightly so.
Other than Ghalib, the “timeless poetry” of Faiz Ahmed Faiz also provides Anwar Maqsood with quality reading time. Not much into books based on general or social themes, fiction and poetry remain the only words that summarize his taste in books.
ANWAR MAQSOOD’s taste concerning movies, music and books is as varied and diverse as his own personality and professional commitments. The playwright par excellence says that he has a long list of favourites when it comes to movies, so long that it cannot be jotted down on a piece of paper.
