Capturing the moment when love happens

Author Sheheryar B. Sheikh, recently released his first novel titled The Still Point Of Turning World —  revolving around Sara Shahjahan and Omar Kayani’s romance. The book set in Lahore with a backdrop of the violence and heartache disintegrating Pakistan.

The author, who is a pursuing his Ph.D in classical and contemporary apocalyptic narratives at University of Saskatchewan, Canada, feels that the novel is about love in difficult times. “The story started off with the moment a girl sees a boy across a college campus. I wanted to write out that moment, and examine its meaning from both perspectives. I allowed the moment to generate further entanglements, but did not pressure the thing into becoming a novel. It took two years for that one moment to concatenate with others and become one long narrative about their complicated romance in a disintegrating, politically charged environment,” says Sheheryar, adding, “While the novel is focused on the characters, the college campus is also an important space, and its story also needed telling.”

Talking about his inspiration for the character, Sheheryar says, “Sara is an amalgam of various girls and women I’ve met. She is made of stronger elements than Omar. He is the weaker character, who is always seeking validation.”

Sharing the moment in which Sheheryar was introduced to the charming world of books and words, he says, “I was at a friend’s place with a group. Everybody was hanging out in the living room, and I wandered into the library and grabbed a random book off the shelf. It turned out to be The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. The movie had been all right, so I thought I would browse through the book. After reading the first few pages of the book, my world was never the same. If words could do this, I needed to work with words for the rest of my life. I decided then and there to drop my pursuit of economics, biology, accounting or even acting, and to focus my all on English literature and language.”

Apart from writing, the author is also into running and feels that running long distances and writing longer works are very similar. “Running is the best activity I started after college. Many writers tend to be runners, and I think it makes complete sense. A process and rhythm-oriented sport like running can induce thinking in a certain kind of cadence,” he says.