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The Hindu : Sufi fables, childhood memories, love story, history, politics, dialogues, monologues and a short film script which the reader “may choose to read, or not to read”. Saeed Mirza’s “Ammi, Letter to a Democratic Mother” packs in all this and more. The publisher chooses to call it a novel, but categories don’t matter to Mirza. He would rather describe it as “miniatures set in a mural” where Samuel Huntington and Mullah Nasiruddin reside on neighbouring pages.With this book, the maker of the memorable serial “Nukkad” in the early days of television and path-breaking films such as “Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai” and “Saleem Langde Pe Mat Ro” makes a shift in medium. He will not make any more films after finishing the one he is currently working on for Rajat Kapoor. He has abandoned his plans of making a film on Kashmir because “too much blood has been spilt there from all sides and it is impossible to enter that space without feeling like a vulture.”Even as he has moved from visual images to the written word, Mirza remains as deeply political as ever in his concerns. The book comes as a response to the events after 9/11 when people began to use words like “democracy” and “terrorism” without knowing what they mean. He shows how people like his mother lived by the values of liberal democracy without using catchphrases as crutches. But interestingly, much like in his later film “Naseem”, the tone of the book is not of fiery anger but of quiet indignation.MetroPlus spoke to Mirza on his recent visit to the city to launch his book:Why this choice of form that seems beyond categorisation?Is it a novel, an anti-novel, a memoir, a scrap book? I don’t know. But to be able to construct something like this is incredibly satisfying because it’s free. You can meander, take off on journeys, play with…More