lmost every week since the early 2000s, Suhail Warraich has been taking us through a day in the life of individuals who have made their mark in life. Each episode of his Aik Din Geo Kay Saath gives us a close-up of what has made these people tick, their likes and dislikes. But, his signature soft style of interviewing does help us know if there is any khula tazaad [discernible contradiction] in whatever they say and do or if there is any crack they have papered over. So popular has this weekend show been it has earned Warraich, a veteran of about 600 television interviews, a star status. At least in Pakistan, he is the most sought-after, most mimicked, most envied TV personality.

Warraich’s graduation from the Urdu-language Jang and English-language The News dailies to the glam world, courtesy of Geo News, often masks the print journalism assets he has had, some of which show up only when he publishes a collection such as the latest one: Personal File: The hard and soft of Pakistani politics. In its two volumes, this coffee-table book dishes out literary briefs of known, many of them rather intrinsic to the country’s politics, and not-so-well-known people of Pakistan’s political history. The anthology goes beyond the usual biographical sketches to provide an insight into their lives, roles, motivations, strengths and weaknesses, and doughtiness and vulnerabilities through anecdotes and observations. With malice towards none, Warraich helps us see the positives and negatives in a political personality, family and party. However, he does not skip whatever has marred Pakistan’s political culture – toadyism and change of loyalties included – when he takes us on the history walk.

Politicians are understood and liked or disliked not only through their policies and political competence but also their personal characteristics and lives. Drawing on history and the interviews he has done from time to time during his journalistic career of more than three and a half decades, Warraich offers us images of political heavyweights and lightweights [read minions] who have weighed heavily in on the country’s politics to the extent of damaging it. Some with no spine have been talked about in a lowercase font.

This entertainingly written and lavishly illustrated scrapbook offers a look at politics and politicians that is both personal and thoroughly researched. Engaging and often illuminating, it is an amazing historical document on the tempestuous history of politics from a political journalist with an indefatigable curiosity. It exposes lies, hypocrisies, stupidity and corruption in the public arena. Warraich’s sense of humour provides the canvas and the frame for the book, a wittily alarming polemic that tracks the evolution of Pakistan’s political culture.

Warraich is rarely savage, mostly ironic but without cheap sarcasm. Even so, we get to learn about incidents illustrating someone or the other being thin-skinned to his witty takes. The articles aim to make us both laugh at the idiotic tricks of these public figures and cry at the disasters they have caused. A wonderful storyteller, Warraich has exciting stories to tell. Through this skill of his, he has made us understand politics. Our slide into the abyss we find ourselves in, and our embrace of anti-intellectualism are all diagnostically chronicled in the takedown of incompetents. An equal-opportunity analyst, Warraich uses his skills to skewer and expose all hues of politicians and other individuals who have impacted the polity. In pulling back the curtain, he spares none.

A witty yet well-researched and original look at the political, religio-political and apolitically political characters and families, Warraich’s book informs, enrages, provokes and amuses. In being predictive, these write-ups and analyses can shock, gall and inspire long after their creation. Although to the writer, the coffee-table book is his ‘lifetime dream’ and a ‘celebration of lifelong English-language writings’, for us mortals, it’s a must-read round-up and foundational reading of Pakistan’s politics. Besides appealing to Warraich’s many followers who still miss his debate-generating political interviews for his newspaper and magazine, this book will deservedly earn him new readers among the young people who now get to see him only on their television sets and mobile screens.

The reviewer is a print, broadcast and online journalist associated with Jang Group of  Newspapers as Editor, Special Assignments