Misinterpreting the problem

Last week a video went viral in which Shahid Afridi suggested (with churlish seriousness) that Pakistani women ought to cook instead of playing sports. Another young Pakistani man related to cricket only in so far as being Imran Khan’s nephew, hurled the term ‘faggot’ at Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. A holistic health and yoga centre, ‘The Art of Living’, was attacked and destroyed by unknown men possibly incited by a television program that equated the practice of yoga with being a RAW agent. An Ahmadi acquaintance on my Facebook revealed his office no longer allows him to drink water from the same glass as the rest of his colleagues. A 16-year-old ex-student of mine got married. I was still trying to process this information when the Council for Islamic Ideology declared there ought to be no minimum age of marriage in Pakistan, nor should men be legally prevailed upon to seek their wives’ permission to marry another time.
This smorgasbord of regressive social behavior has its roots in a lack of discourse in the Pakistani mainstream on universally accepted norms of social justice. In my experience as a former school teacher there is criminal neglect surrounding the teaching of new (and not so new) concepts widely accepted in the world today as fairly centrist. Misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, racism and even underage marriage cannot necessarily be done away with strict laws. What needs to change is the conversation around these ideas, but for that to happen there needs to be a conversation to begin with.
At a boys school that I taught at for two years – famous for its grand buildings, lush grounds and colonial history – few students and even fewer teachers were familiar with terms like sexism or xenophobia. To pass any value judgment on these concepts is a later stage of mental evolution, the first is a familiarity with the lexicon that can allow the building of more complex thought. You cannot go on to grasp crucial scientific concepts without first learning basic definitions, and while all children get to learn what a cell looks like, the ways in which we digest food and the first law of motion, none are ever taught why calling someone a faggot is bad form and could be detrimental to their long term goals in a world where political correctness (or just simply not being a jerk) might turn out to be crucial.
I believe Imran Khan’s nephew Hassan Niazi when he says, ‘I would never say anything to hurt someone’ even as proof of his intentionally trying to hurt someone is published in a Guardian article; for to him casually throwing about the word faggot is not his idea of hurting anyone, since the school he comes from the less macho kids invariably have to grin and bear the jokes of the macho (or pretending to be macho) majority. What is most telling in his statement is: “I am not used to these terms”. I think what he means to say is he is not used to these terms being deemed offensive or leading to any social ostracizing.
Then there is Arshed Sharif who not only egregiously baited the odious Ansar Abbasi/Orea Maqbool Jan duo (to the latter’s credit he at least had the decency to look somewhat embarrassed with Sharif’s vulgar inquisition of the gentlemanly Naeem Zamindar, Pakistan director of The Art of Living) but in his ‘defence’ later on retweeted the following tweet addressed to writer Nadeem Farooq Paracha:
“Parachay! Arshad theek kr ra hay na aur kia wo teri trah kaalay amreeki obaamay ko “hqeeqi baap” bna lay?”
I am assuming Arshed Sharif also went to a private school and considers himself educated.
The way things stand our education emergency, the desire to educate more and more Pakistanis will push the country further into delusions of grandeur and a sense of inflated greatness. If even our best education fails to humanize or at least equip our youth with the tools to sound civilized, expecting anything sensible from Shahid Afridi is to close our eyes to the basics. 

Defeated mindsets

At my school the identical writing we were all taught was a matter of deadly seriousness. The nuns could compromise on anything (though they didn’t on most things), but handwriting was a non-negotiable. As a result I spent whole summers neatly copying out page after page of idioms with perfectly loopy Ls and impeccably crossed out Ts to arrive at a handwriting indistinguishable from the rest of my peers’. Such diligent practice means I have never since been able to unlearn the clichés that are stored in my mental hard drive. A rolling stone gathers no moss, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, empty vessels make the most noise. This last one I always had a particularly uneasy relationship with. It’s moral like a personal admonition of my high-strung, chatty disposition. Over time though, I have begun to find out, ‘empty vessels make the most noise’ is less a rebuke to the gregarious and more a warning to the conceited.
And it never feels more relevant than during crucial Pakistani matches. In a powerless country with little to celebrate, cricket is the last bastion of Pakistani pride. A win assures us we aren’t the failed state the rest of the world is determined to make us out to be. For after all, here we are competing against India, taking them on blow for blow. On the cricket field. Apparently a lot of people are still sold on the idea that winning in cricket has a deeper significance than just a win in a sport. And while in 1986 it may have roused a feeling of patriotic fervour in me, today Afridi’s heroics seem nothing more than what they are, an exciting innings in a match on a given day. Pleasant enough but nothing that will change the fundamental state of my existence. My twitter timeline begs to differ. Apparently people’s entire weeks, even lifetimes have been impacted by this ‘historic’ win. The morning after the victory a bomb blast took 10 lives in Islamabad. Some hungover from the cricket still went on celebrating in a parallel universe, their wild merriment barely managing to mask the desperation in their desire to see something positive coming out of the state of Pakistan. And who but the worst curmudgeon could begrudge such a blighted people their small happinesses.
And nobody would if these celebrations didn’t all too quickly devolve into the kind of delusion and xenophobia that say much more about our defeated mindsets than a loss against India ever could. It isn’t the victory of the confident who can afford to be gracious once assured the upper hand, it is the win of the bully with insecurities writ large all over his desire to annihilate others. Not the happiness of your own win but a perverse pleasure in somebody else’s loss. How else can one describe the need to pass around and laugh over pictures of wailing women, or crowing over the protruding teeth of a young child supporting his team? In using rape and war analogies that reveal your nationalistic chauvinism rather than your patriotism? In no other way but in the emptiness (and the utter sense of defeat in the larger arena) of the vessels making all this noise.

Pop goes the Festival

Just as faithfully as Westerners rely on the weather as a conversational crutch, for most urban Punjabi families a good bashing of the PPP is the go-to conversation filler during family dinners, assuring that everyone will be animated and on the same page for the next hour or so. The eruption of the Mohenjodaro controversy during the Sindh Festival was thus a God-sent – a grave-sounding reason to denounce the festival as a Nero-like exercise in flute-playing while Rome burnt in the background. Those with greater intellectual pretensions went further by decrying the wastage of taxpayers’ money on something essentially frivolous, an idea that is hard to contest in a country with issues as numerous as ours. Terrorism, hospitals, education, even malnutrition were cited, in front of which the shallow celebration of ‘culture’ does indeed seem like a puny and facile aim.
The line between bomb blasts and the receding space for culture may seem tenuous but it is hard to deny that Pakistan’s slide into extremism is being ratified by the silent majority. Song, dance and the arts are allowed to go on in the background as one of the many sins that we have not yet got rid of as ‘imperfect Muslims’ but the guilty feeling that none of that arts stuff is really Islamic, really Pakistani, is what has allowed us as a nation to keep ceding intellectual and cultural space to extremist mindsets. In the ideological zone that the ‘Pakistani identity’ has been framed thus far (despite valiant attempts by academics like Ayesha Jalal et al) the zenith of being a Pakistani is to be a true Muslim, and that trueness can only be realized in defining ourselves as non-Hindu and non-Indian – divorced from the Indian soil we live on, constantly pulled instead toward our ideological epicenter in Mecca.
The most crucial thing the Sindh Festival has achieved by putting the spotlight on Sindh is to shift the focus of the Pakistani identity away from religion and back on to our ancestral land. This distancing from Pakistan’s central narrative of forced unity – one dependent on Urdu and Islam as the defining forces of Pakistaniyat – is essential to moving forward with a new definition of what it means to be Pakistani, something shaped out of its own 65 years of political history and with a clear-headed acceptance of its diversity, a diversity as great as India, contained within a geography half its size. What a nation imagines itself to be is crucial, for that is what decides what it chooses to fight and what it accepts as its own, and the arts and pop culture play a great role in creating and cementing this self-image.
Academic work theorizing that Pakistan was created as an independent economic and political entity, not a religious one, is important, but holds little meaning unless it becomes a popular concept amongst the masses, something only popular culture can help achieve. To that end, thousands of images of the dramatically lit Mohenjodaro as backdrop to a celebratory concert beamed all over Pakistan, is a good start. Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari singing a rap song a cultural subversion the likes of which it is hard to find a parallel; an art exhibition of international standard at the Frere Hall a worthwhile pursuit; holding a Basant festival on the beach a (nearly amusing) snub to the PML-N.
But if the money spent were personal, like Bilawal Bhutto Zardari claimed in the beginning, the spending of it on whatever he chose would be no-one’s business. However, as it turns out, seed money has been borrowed from the Sindh government which the festival claims it will return fully – a claim tad tough to swallow in light of the PPP’s image and track record. While the beaming of a concert at Mohenjodaro sounds like a good idea in the face of the shariah being demanded by the Taliban, 800 VIP guests and cultural satirists like Ali Gul Pir and Ali Aftab Saeed reduced to mere cheerleaders of a man who has essentially bought their goodwill doesn’t do a great deal to inspire confidence in this spectacle of culture. Add to this a fashion show spearheaded by the Taseers who have become uncriticizable since the tragic assassination of Salmaan Taseer, but who need to be roundly taken to task for not paying writers and employees at a newspaper they continue to run yet purporting to be the flag bearers of culture elsewhere. For these reasons and more the Sindh Festival has to do a lot of soul searching if it wants to avoid being seen as yet another party thrown by and for the country’s out of touch elite.

Culture of Confusion

 

The singular thread that runs through every genre of creativity in today’s Pakistan is derivation. Coke Studio and Nescafe Basement are the epitome of this culture of derivative creativity. Repackage an old song with a saxophone solo here, a taan there – and voila, you have something ‘new’! This is the well-worn formula for all forms of mainstream art in Pakistan. Our drama is an unceasing parade of social melodrama so similar in form and content that cutting whole scenes from one play and pasting onto the other would leave its anesthetized audiences none the wiser. Even our theatrical productions are lifted straight from Broadway and planted in Karachi without so much as a cosmetic attempt at adapting for local sensibilities.
It might be argued that a country clawing for its very survival does not have the luxury to produce art, let alone original one. Confronted with a 24/7 cycle of bomb blasts and target killings just the fact that artists still exist here is an achievement of sorts. In a social setup where arguments can still be had on whether music is haram or halaal, perhaps expectations of originality aren’t just fanciful, they’re unfair.
Under such circumstances Amir Liaquat Husain’s rise to the mantle of Pakistan’s biggest star is not a coincidence but an inevitability. Liaquat is as much a deliberate construct, put together piece by piece for maximum effect and impact, as say, Lady Gaga. Designing herself with equal parts shock value and infectious pop hooks, Gaga upped the ante on her lukewarm career with an algorithm for super stardom pieced together with nudity, raw meat dresses and plumage that would dazzle a male peacock into submission. If that is the blueprint for breakaway success in the West, then a mixed-plate of quranic recitations, Raakhi ka Swayamwar; religious stories of dubious origin, Masterchef, Kaun Banega Crorepati and The Crystal Maze with a thick topping of Neelam Ghar shot through with sleaze borrowed from 80s Hindi cinema is the baara masala formula for success in Pakistan. Amir Liaquat has cracked the code, and judging by the wild applause and the cash rolling in, Pakistan is lapping it up.
Tariq Aziz’s wide repertoire of couplets, Naeem Bukhari’s spontaneity and Moin Akhtar’s sense of humour seem archaic in the face of the one quality more Pakistani than Nihari – the projection of piety.
Starting off as an impassioned host of a religious call-in show, Husain first cornered the religious market in the country through a groundbreaking attempt at putting a Shia and a Sunni aalim together on stage. When that became too passé, he soon flexed his muscles through passing fatwas on Ahmedis, a sect so hapless and beleaguered, only the suicidal would choose to defend its followers in public. When his repertoire of colourful abuses was leaked online, the resourceful Amir decided to leverage this notoriety to break out of his ishq-e-rasool mould, switching seamlessly between his faux-sincere Ramzan transmission face, flirtatious frolickings with women and a thick layer of Jazakallahs, to finally emerge as the host of Pakistan’s most watched game show-cum-iftaari langar, Aman Ramzan, the apotheosis of which was handing over a new born as a jackpot prize. Islam, babies, hijabs and cooking; could there be a mix more Pakistani? During Ramzan, maybe, but the rest of the year the awaam is amenable to added dozes of sexual titillation, children’s birthdays and wedding celebrations as well as the replacement of bearded clerics with celebrities. Enter Inaam Ghar! Whatever else you may say about it, you cannot fault the honesty of its title that doesn’t even make an attempt at originality.
If popular culture is the most honest representation of a society’s desires and aspirations, then there is nothing more reflective of the mass confusion in Pakistan – as witnessed in overt religious posturings and its status as the leading consumer of porn in the world – than Inaam Ghar and Amir Liaqat Husain.

Where have all the witty women gone?

January 17, 2014SABAHAT ZAKARIYA

 

 

The other night while watching Amy Poehler and Tina Fey conduct the Golden Globe Awards ceremony, I sat in my living room in flannel pyjamas nursing a cold, yet tittering with barely containable schadenfreude at the way single men in Hollywood were played for laughs by two strong, middle-aged women, whose credentials for hosting the awards was not their ability to bare their silky midriffs but their razor sharp wits. In another era the only reaction to George Clooney dating women much younger and Leonardo Dicaprio consistently accessorizing himself with supermodels would have been envious looks and a nudge nudge, wink wink camaraderie among all men concerned (or unconcerned). But there I sat, observing an alternate being thrown up– a reverse ‘slut shaming’, if you will. Even in the west, this irreverent commentary on long established mores of sexual behavior and the subversion that accompanies it has not been easy to come by, nor has it been quick. Having laws that do not discriminate (the right to vote, equal wages etc.) can sometimes be the easier part to negotiate, fundamentally changing the nature of a gendered society’s thoughts and behavior is much harder. Pop culture can often be both a gauge for observing and a tool for bringing about this change.
Who are Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, you might wonder, and why do they matter to an average Pakistani weighed down by too many pressing problems to care about celebrating some abstract feminist victory thousands of miles away in a culture that has nothing in common with us? Well, they matter in exactly the same way as the Suffragette Movement or Marie Curie or The Second Sex matter to me – as markers of important milestones in the history of women.
Even then the disturbing question remains: where are our Poehlers and Feys? In a globalized world I can revel in the jabs these powerful white women make at powerful white men in an industry defined by power and the perception of it, but what about closer to home? As new channels pop up every day in Pakistan’s rapidly expanding media climate, where are our female role models? – The fun, the smart and the witty with a voice unmistakably their own; changing perceptions and creating new norms while still being able to deliver the common touch. What country is riper than Pakistan for such a figure, or two or three?
There was Bushra Ansari once upon a time who gave MoinAkhtar a run for his money and received equal billing, but Bushra was always Anwar Maqsood’s mouthpiece – a perfect receptacle for the parodies, the mimicry and the political satire that Maqsood poured into her, but never a creator. She only brought his vision to life. In fact, going by Maqsood’s recent spate of stage dramas, his representation of women is just a refined version of the Umar Shareef/Hanif Raja brand of comedy – thinly disguised misogyny in the name of humour.
Social comedy, especially of the irreverent and subversive brand, doesn’t seem to have reached Pakistan yet, if one were to go by a cursory surfing of our interminable television channels. One will chance upon plenty of political irreverence but social life is served solely with a heavy dose of melodrama or an occasional side of slapstick. In a rapidly urbanizing country where divorces and single women are aplenty, not a single television show addresses the pleasures and pitfalls of an independent life.
Granted comedy is a difficult genre; what about news channels? Is it too much to ask for a cerebral, rational, erudite woman on television, funny or not? We have Meher Bukhari who mistakes loud decibel levels for a brain. Ayesha Tammy Haq who has a hard time stringing together two sentences of Urdu without stumbling (a matter of importance in a country where to only be conversant in English is to be limited to a very small circle of people). Huma Amir Shah and Sidra Iqbal on PTV World (again in English) have decent shows, but in the stifling confines of Pakistan’s state run media there is hardly any room for cerebral provocation and refreshing new content. Then there are the inane morning show hosts whose sole aim is to outdo each other in their vapidity. There is also the moral brigade ala Maya Khan and the Samaa TV anchor who barges into people’s houses to expose their private lives. This is the extent of our creative bankruptcy. ’57 channels and nothing on’ said Bruce Springsteen. I feel the same sentiment as I flip through Pakistani channels, almost laughing at my expectation of coming across a Fey or a Poehler.

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Published in The Nation

Culture of Confusion

January 31, 2014SABAHAT ZAKARIYA

The singular thread that runs through every genre of creativity in today’s Pakistan is derivation. Coke Studio and Nescafe Basement are the epitome of this culture of derivative creativity. Repackage an old song with a saxophone solo here, a taan there – and voila, you have something ‘new’! This is the well-worn formula for all forms of mainstream art in Pakistan. Our drama is an unceasing parade of social melodrama so similar in form and content that cutting whole scenes from one play and pasting onto the other would leave its anesthetized audiences none the wiser. Even our theatrical productions are lifted straight from Broadway and planted in Karachi without so much as a cosmetic attempt at adapting for local sensibilities.
It might be argued that a country clawing for its very survival does not have the luxury to produce art, let alone original one. Confronted with a 24/7 cycle of bomb blasts and target killings just the fact that artists still exist here is an achievement of sorts. In a social setup where arguments can still be had on whether music is haram or halaal, perhaps expectations of originality aren’t just fanciful, they’re unfair.
Under such circumstances Amir Liaquat Husain’s rise to the mantle of Pakistan’s biggest star is not a coincidence but an inevitability. Liaquat is as much a deliberate construct, put together piece by piece for maximum effect and impact, as say, Lady Gaga. Designing herself with equal parts shock value and infectious pop hooks, Gaga upped the ante on her lukewarm career with an algorithm for super stardom pieced together with nudity, raw meat dresses and plumage that would dazzle a male peacock into submission. If that is the blueprint for breakaway success in the West, then a mixed-plate of quranic recitations, Raakhi ka Swayamwar; religious stories of dubious origin, Masterchef, Kaun Banega Crorepati and The Crystal Maze with a thick topping of Neelam Ghar shot through with sleaze borrowed from 80s Hindi cinema is the baara masala formula for success in Pakistan. Amir Liaquat has cracked the code, and judging by the wild applause and the cash rolling in, Pakistan is lapping it up.
Tariq Aziz’s wide repertoire of couplets, Naeem Bukhari’s spontaneity and Moin Akhtar’s sense of humour seem archaic in the face of the one quality more Pakistani than Nihari – the projection of piety.
Starting off as an impassioned host of a religious call-in show, Husain first cornered the religious market in the country through a groundbreaking attempt at putting a Shia and a Sunni aalim together on stage. When that became too passé, he soon flexed his muscles through passing fatwas on Ahmedis, a sect so hapless and beleaguered, only the suicidal would choose to defend its followers in public. When his repertoire of colourful abuses was leaked online, the resourceful Amir decided to leverage this notoriety to break out of his ishq-e-rasool mould, switching seamlessly between his faux-sincere Ramzan transmission face, flirtatious frolickings with women and a thick layer of Jazakallahs, to finally emerge as the host of Pakistan’s most watched game show-cum-iftaari langar, Aman Ramzan, the apotheosis of which was handing over a new born as a jackpot prize. Islam, babies, hijabs and cooking; could there be a mix more Pakistani? During Ramzan, maybe, but the rest of the year the awaam is amenable to added dozes of sexual titillation, children’s birthdays and wedding celebrations as well as the replacement of bearded clerics with celebrities. Enter Inaam Ghar! Whatever else you may say about it, you cannot fault the honesty of its title that doesn’t even make an attempt at originality.
If popular culture is the most honest representation of a society’s desires and aspirations, then there is nothing more reflective of the mass confusion in Pakistan – as witnessed in overt religious posturings and its status as the leading consumer of porn in the world – than Inaam Ghar and Amir Liaqat Husain.

--

Published in The Nation

Festival redux

Khyaal Festival attendees enjoy the pleasant November air

One would have thought the Lahori literary pie too small to be sliced two ways, and one would have thought right judging from the turnout at last weekend’s Khyaal Festival of Arts and Literature. Marketed less aggressively than the LLF eight months ago and sprung without warning upon a city yet to wake up to its annual winter quarter of cultural activity, the festival had little time to announce itself before it had come and gone, resulting in what appeared like lifest fatigue.

First I heard of the festival was from a writer friend invited to conduct a session. Second and third I heard of it was also from writer friends invited to conduct sessions; that is how small the world of English fiction writers and readers in Lahore is. In this scenario sustaining two large-scale events of a similar nature doesn’t seem feasible, unless the smaller one distinguishes itself in ways the one with greater money and support cannot perceive.

Mohsin Hamid and Mira Sethi:

Despite all efforts to wake up early on a Saturday the first session I managed to attend started at 2PM on day 1. Conducted by Mira Sethi, this well-attended session was surprisingly enlivened by Mohsin Hamid’s wit and persistent refusal to answer anything straightforwardly. Surprising, because I had never quite imagined Hamid as a wit, having read Moth Smoke a decade or so ago; a book I don’t particularly recall for its humour. Mohsin met the articulate and well prepared Mira’s desire to dabble in political commentary with disarmingly amorphous yet well thought out positions on a variety of issues. A good hour for Mohsin fans and non-fans alike.

Manto and Faiz’s grandson:

Readings from Manto turned out to be Salman Shahid sitting in a weak pool of light on a darkened stage reading a Manto short story off a page, accompanied by a sitar-player arbitrarily weaving in and out of the narrative. Considering last year’s stellar performances by Naseeruddin Shah’s theatrical troupe that brought Ismat Chughtai’s stories to life in the same hall, this unrehearsed fumbling was rather a sorry affair. English literary festivals insistent on inserting token Manto, Faiz and Intizar Husain sessions in the name of Urdu representation need to put more thought into making them more engaging.

Slipping out of Hall 1, I went into the concurrent session between Musharraf Ali Farooqui and Ali Madeeh Hashmi called ‘Micro Narratives’. Ali Madeeh, grandson of Faiz Ahmed Faiz is a psychiatrist and writer with a debonair air, the sartorial elegance of an 18^th Century English nobleman and Punjabi-inflectioned Urdu curiously dissonant with the rest of his demeanour – the very embodiment of the Faiz-Alys legacy. One would have liked to hear more of him; as it was, Farooqui’s talk of micro-narratives goaded my Twitter-shaped attention span to quit the hall for the open air.

Outdoor stalls sold Lahori doodad: kettles and mugs painted with truck art; hand-knotted carpets, paintings, and some of the few books I saw at the venue (at education NGO Simorgh’s booth) – all looking a bit wistful despite the loud music’s attempts at masking the forlorn air of a festival lacking attendees. Sunday, though, saw a lot more milling about this area when young intellectual aspirants inadvertently walked abreast placard carrying participants of a ‘Dengue mukaao’ campaign sponsored by the Punjab government and spearheaded by Zakoota from Ainak Waala Jin.

Feryal Gauhar and Intizar Husain

‘Since I have worked in the Shahi Mohalla…which is not to say I operate from there…’ studded with such self-deprecating witticisms, Feryal Gauhar’s was a delightful session that Raza Rumi was wise and experienced enough to allow Gauher to take charge of. Never having heard her speak before, nor having seen ‘Tibbi Gali’, clips from which she showed during the session, I particularly enjoyed this one.

Raza Rumi talks to fans before the launch of his book ‘Delhi by Heart’

By the end though I did slip out to attend the last fifteen minutes of Khaled Ahmed and Intizar Husain in Hall 1. Expecting neither to be particularly stimulating, a notion based on my aversion to dry prose and abstract symbolism in short stories, I was taken aback by my own ignorance. In an intellectually sophisticated exchange Intizar discussed the artificial divide between Hindi and Urdu, questioned whether the term ‘saqaafti yalghaar’ (cultural invasion) has any meaning and insisted that if it does then Pakistan’s cultural invasion of India is as impactful as India’s cultural invasion of Pakistan (albeit committing the crucial fallacy along the way of equating Urdu only with Pakistan). Discussing Iqbal’s misra, ‘shamsheer-o-sanaa avval, taaoos-o-rubaab aakhir’ (sword and hymn first, zither and lute last) he said the West had proven this notion wrong by making concurrent cultural and military progress. This segued into Khalid Ahmed’s musings on what shape our culture would take in the wake of a countrywide consensus in favour of the Taliban, a doomsday scenario Intizar didn’t yet find credible.

Pakistani film and television:

Irritants like moderator Shehnaz Sheikh’s cluelessness about the debate surrounding Waar aside, Bilal Lashari’s presence and the audience’s ability to question him directly made the ‘Waar and Main Hoon Shahid Afridi’ session a compelling one, though organizers need to take active control when audience members’ ‘questions’ turn into lengthy, self-serving monologues, the bane of all such events.

Amir Munawar, Vassay Chaudhry, Shehnaz Sheikh, Kamran Lashari and Bilal Lashari taking audience questions

Vassay Chaudhry, script writer of Main Hoon Shahid Afridi, rued not being able to turn the film into a sentimental India vs. Pakistan match for lack of a bigger budget. Lashari said his success confirmed that a majority of Pakistanis agreed with Waar’s world view. While both these gentlemen have the right to pander to public tastes and exploit them for commercial gain it was hard not to be disappointed by the hardboiled cynicism of artists so young.

Sarmad Khoosat in next day’s session on Pakistani drama was more willing to self-analyse, defending himself not by pointing to commercial imperatives but by talking of small acts of defiance such as the refusal to include dialogues against certain forms of art in his commercially successful play Shehr-e-Zaat.

Sarmad Khoosat, Asghar Nadeem Syed, Haseena Moin and Sarmad Sehbai at the Pakistani Television Drama session

Farida Khanum:

Farida Khanum and Ali Sethi ended the festival with a session that was undoubtedly its highlight. Hall 1 finally filled up to full capacity where a resplendent Farida Khanum sang many of her best-loved ghazals A cappella. Ghulam Ali who had come as an audience member was called on to the stage by the moderator as a mark of respect This made for a slightly too-many-singers-spoil-the-concert scenario but Farida Khanum’s bursts of singing made all other facts dwindle into insignificance. Spontaneous applause from the audience, talk of Radio Pakistan, Z A Bokhari, the evolution of ghazal singing in Pakistan, anecdotes about the recently deceased Reshma and Sethi’s tracing of both Ghulam Ali and Farida Khanum’s musical histories to the eight hundred year old tradition of Hazrat Amir Khusro turned this session into a truemehfil.

Farida Khanum delights the audience

The Khyaal Festival produced value by bringing the debates surrounding Pakistani literature and performing arts to a platform other than English newspapers, though the real task for any such festival is to take these voices to a truly diverse set of audiences. Neither the LLF nor the Khyaal Festival have yet shown much interest in tapping public school and university students to come and participate; to listen to concepts and ideas they would be hard pressed to access in the mainstream television and Urdu press. The real challenge for both festivals lies in that direction.

Published in The Friday Times on 8th November, 2013

Main Hoon Shahid Afridi

Pakistan's most popular sporting hero, its most sighed over actress, Islamic sentimentalism and spades of melodrama. Can you think of a more potent mix for a commercial Pakistani film? Neither could Vasay Choudry, the writer of Pakistani cinema's latest offering, Main Hoon Shahid Afridi.

Pakistani cinema, I love how the phrase feels on my tongue. I want to roll it around in my mouth to savour its newness; to enjoy the liberty of using it in casual conversation without people inching away from me like I'd suddenly declared I'm a feminist. Does anyone remember Shaan, Syed Noor and Saba Hameed ringing in the demise of Pakistani film (whatever existed of it previously) if Indian movies were allowed to be screened here? Well, I wouldn't want to be those guys right now, forced to munch on humble-popcorn while hordes of people queue up outside cinema houses, ushering in what looks very much like a re-emergence of Pakistani film.

When I was young, cinemas only closed down in Lahore, or existed within the dreamlike confines of my Archie comic collection; now new ones open up in upscale localities, complete with options for salty or caramel popcorn and seats that aren't tattooed with paan and chewing gum. Old establishments around Laxmi Chowk offer the same films at cheaper fares instead of barely disguised porn to stay alive.

In this context commercial viability is a crucial factor, so it is hard to blame the creators of Main Hoon Shahid Afridi for a film that often comes across as a cynically assembled formula for commercial success. What Bollywood actors are to India, cricketers (and cricketers alone) are to Pakistan, so if you are going to take the risk of financing a Pakistani film, you could do worse than have Shahid Afridi, Pakistan's biggest and most instantly recognizable star, in your title. I must confess I was expecting some kind of biopic, but if the story could be confused for somebody's life it would have to be Mohammad Asif's, not Shahid Afridi's.

Pakistani cinema, I love how the phrase feels on my tongue

Akbar Deen, played by an aging Humayun Saeed (can somebody please stop him from starring in every single project he finances?) is deeply in love with his wife (a heavily botoxed Mahnoor Baloch) and son. These minor matters, however, are not allowed to stand in the way of some Middle-Eastern nightclub prancing with a semi-clad Mathira, who, in a forgettable item number lays on the sultry like a 70s Helen on steroids. Deen's shenanigans are meant to be seen through a quaisi-kosher, boys will be boys lens in the light of his declaration that he sees his wife's image in all women he is tempted by. This is the line upon which our forgiveness for his transgression is meant to hinge; and one that nicely sets up a dream sequence within the item song for some little-black-dress action from Mahnoor Baloch. Never having met any blue-blooded male who is impervious to her appeal, casting her is another commercial coup, one that was well exploited in the movie's posters, despite Baloch being nothing more than a pretty prop (one who can't dance at that) throughout.

Why has Aitchison College, Lahore given only three players to the national team in the 66 years since Pakistan's creation?

From there onwards, the film becomes an almost direct rip-off of Chak De India with bits of Lagaan thrown in for good measure, its seeming purpose the fulfillment of Hamayun Saeed's (self-financed) dream of playing (a poor man's) Shahrukh Khan. Where Chak De India relied on the unity in diversity trope to rouse patriotic sentiment, Main Hoon Shahid Afridi seems confused about which particular aspect ofPakistaniat to exploit for maximum emotional appeal. It starts off with a lesson on religious tolerance by pitting a Talibanesque pathaan fast bowler against a church-going Christian wicket keeper, but then constantly vacillates between xenophobia and strident religiosity on one hand, and tolerance and brotherhood of all mankind, on the other.

Its strengths lie in an exploration of Pakistani class differences and cricket's ability to be the great leveler; the last grounds upon which a young Pakistani boy from a small town can still dream big dreams. While watching I was reminded of something I have often wondered: considering its state-of-the-art sporting facilities, why has Aitchison College, Lahore given only three players to the national team in the 66 years since Pakistan's creation? There is an attempt, however flawed, in Main Hoon Shahid Afridi to ponder this question of Pakistani cricketing talent emerging largely from the lower socio-economic classes. If it had stuck to that, instead of trying to be everything to everybody, it could have been a tighter and more plausible film. As it stands, it is engaging enough, and dare I say, quite decent for a Pakistani movie. That will do. For now.

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Published in The Friday Times (August 30 - September 5th, 2013)

Vege Delight

Bari Eid (Eid-ul-Adha just doesn’t roll down us old timers’ tongues quite as smoothly) cannot hold a candle to the breezy, bangle-full joys of the Chhoti. Less mithaai, no Eidee (that being a good or bad thing depending on whether you are on the giving or receiving end) and an overdose of animals bleating pitiably from all intersections of my otherwise violence-free neighbourhood don’t exactly goad me to go celebrating in the streets.

Plus, I am that rare breed of Lahori – a non-meat eater. Having ‘converted’ just 6 months ago though, I doubt I have yet been officially anointed to the smug upper crust of humanitarian do-gooders to make a self-righteous lecture on the benefits of not killing animals permissible. So I’ll lure you with food instead.

The author at a vegetarian restaurant in Brighton

Now that you are stuffed up to the tip of your food canals with the brains and guts of a variety of slaughtered animals it might be a good idea to scale back with some healthy vegetarian meals, which contrary to popular belief can be located in Pakistan with a little bit of effort, at least in the bigger cities.

The idea of vegetarianism can come across as a bit self-important

One of the difficulties of choosing a vegetarian meal here is that most times chicken isn’t even considered a form of meat. Try ordering a vegetarian dish and waiters and restaurant managers will attempt to pass off anything with chicken and bits of vegetable thrown in for colour as ‘vegetarian’. Admittedly, in a country where human life is cheaper than poultry the idea of vegetarianism can come across as a bit self-important. Most reactions move somewhat along the lines of George Orwell’s indictment of vegetarians, who in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) called vegetarianism an affront to decent people and the obsession of the ‘food crank… out of touch with common humanity’. It was, he thought, a symptom of the hijacking of the socialist cause by ‘every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, pacifist, and feminist in England’.

Hmm…don’t think Orwell and I would have got along ragingly.

Margherita pizza

Luckily, (for those who rely on famous people quotes for arriving at ideological decisions), George Bernard Shaw made an equally strong statement in favour of vegetarianism a few decades before Orwell, one that sits well with ‘food cranks’ like me. When asked in 1898 why he was a vegetarian, Shaw gave a typically outspoken answer:

“Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that.”

“My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed, not by mourning coaches, but by herds of oxen, sheep, swine, flocks of poultry, and a small travelling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow-creatures. It will be, with the single exception of Noah’s Ark, the most remarkable thing of the kind yet seen.”

Vegetarian version of the Korean Bibimbap can now be enjoyed in Lahore

Even if your wish to engage with non-meat dishes has nothing to do with sparing other living beings from harm, you could choose to spend meat-free days, weeks or even months for a number of good reasons, ranging from the environmental, an attempt to detox your body from hormones and chemicals often found in meats, to simply getting away from the constant heaviness of meat-abundant food.

Eating out:

The roadside dhaaba:

Nihaari, paae, maghaz and takaa tak might be the immediate images the idea of Lahori food conjures up, but there are certain non-meat dishes too that are an intrinsic part of its food culture. No lazy Lahori Sunday is complete without halwa puri or chanay kulchay. Ironically, the best I have ever had outside of the old city are from a place in Cantt called Zakir Tikka.

Since turning vegetarian I have become a troublesome dinner companion; friends have to be mindful of vegetarian options on the menu before choosing a restaurant. Over the course of time, however, I have learnt that one can wangle a vegetarian dish or two out of most establishments, though not all these dishes or restaurants are made equal.

Lahore’s Andaaz restaurant serves some of the best vegetarian dishes in the city

The best daals and sabzis are found at roadside dhaabaas. It’s hard to vouch for the quality of the cooking oil or the hygienic conditions under which they are cooked, but purely in terms of taste, none of the high-end eateries can come close to the daal and karak tandoori roti combination of the local dhaaba, that too at dirt-cheap prices.

Online entrepreneurs:

Ghar ki Murghi:

Interestingly, one of the very few people in the food business in Lahore who provide serious vegetarian options are an up and coming online food service Ghar ki Murghi. Operating largely off their Facebook page, these young entrepreneurs are catering to a niche market most big restaurants don’t really consider worth their while. With a jazzy menu offering ‘Toofani Tamaatar ka Cut’ and ‘Maskhari Mirchi Saalan’ to the newly introduced ‘Lajawaab Lasagne’ with a vegetarian option, Ghar ki Murghi is expanding the Lahori food connoisseur’s taste buds to include a variety of flavours that can be just as satisfying as meat.

Halwa puri – a staple Lahori breakfast

Simple Dimple:

In the same vein, Karachi based food service Simple Dimple offers a tofu option for almost everything on their menu, something sadly missing from even the most high end restaurants in Lahore.

High end restaurants:

Andaaz:

The first time I was introduced to paneer tikka was in a Dubai food court: I returned from the ladies room to find my staunchly vegetarian friend cheerily tucking into what looked very much like a full plate of chicken tikka. The texture and taste was so ‘realistic’ I couldn’t tell for several minutes that it was in fact made of cottage cheese; hence my vexation at never having been able to find an equivalent in Lahore. The only two places in Lahore that serve paneer tikka are Mirchi and Andaaz. The one at Mirchi doesn’t deserve to be called by that name, but like everything else at Andaaz, their paneer tikka is rich and succulent.

Andaaz is the only restaurant in Lahore that has a full menu of vegetarian dishes, possibly because of tourists who can be found more readily around the Badshahi Mosque than anywhere else in the city. Besides the paneer tikaa, their daal makhni is a treat.

BBQ Tonight:

The Gulberg branch of BBQ Tonight serves the best Paalak Paneer this side of the Ravi, and a Hummus of just the right consistency and taste, something that cannot be said for any other I have had outside of the Middle-East.

Here and there:

Several restaurants have one or two vegetarian dishes on the menu that make them worth a visit. The new Korean restaurant in Lahore, Udon House serves a delicious vegetarian Bipimbap and a decent vegetarian soup, though it doesn’t have any equivalent of the fried bean curd served by the Korean in Karachi. You can find fresh vegetarian sushi at Fujiyama and the same at Sakura as well as a great (though small serving) of a tofu appetizer on skewers (with a very difficult name I always fail to recall).

There is Café Upstairs’ mushrooms-in-white-sauce appetizer and stuffed green peppers, margherita and vegetarian pizzas at most pizza joints, Fatburger’s vegetarian burger (the only vegetarian burger in Lahore I know of), Polo Lounge’s divine Summer Salad, Salt ‘n ‘ Pepper’s trusty old assorted salad, Dampukht’s vegetable biryani (with the crunchy goodness of cashew and hints of sweetness from kishmish) and of course desserts anywhere, most of which contain no meat content.

Sabeen Mahmud of T2F

Inspiration:

Oftentimes people give up on vegetarianism as a lifestyle option for the lack of support amongst friends and family. I draw great sustenance from fellow ‘grass-eaters’, one of whom is Sabeen Mahmud, founder of T2F, a space for intellectual discourse in Karachi. Sabeen says:

“I became a committed vegetarian on 6th September 2011 right after burying my kitten, Tetris. I made a decision to choose compassion over killing. I started thinking about my food choices and realized that what I choose to eat is intrinsically linked with my ethics and world view. By not buying meat and chicken, I have also withdrawn financial support from the ecosystem of animal cruelty.

My favorite vegetarian eating out options in Karachi include Mirchi’s chaats, Cool Inn’s dosa, BOT’s aaloo paratha, Tipu Burger’s daal bun kabab, Spicez’s vegetarian Sindhi biryani, and T2F’s vegetable panini.”

So if you’re in either Karachi or Lahore, get out there and try something new.

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Published in The Friday Times (18th to 24th October, 2013)

Karachi - Our Stories in Our Words

When I first received a copy of Karachi - Our Stories in Our Words I was tempted to compare it favorably to another book of a similar nature, the Bapsi Sidhwa-edited Lahore: Beloved City, whose dull, dim cover Karachi's vibrant and abstract counterpart instantly trumped. Unfortunately the most interest I could muster in this book began and ended at its cover.

"Edited" by Maniza Naqvi (a term I assume is used loosely by OUP, since the book is riddled with innumerable typos starting with the Editor's Note itself), Karachi doesn't seem to have benefitted from much editing. The Editor's Note tells us that the stories contained therein were a result of a competition announced in tandem with the Karachi Literature Festival. Hundreds of stories were received out of which the 99 included in this book were deemed printworthy. Giving credit where it's due, if this is the standard of the stories eventually published, going through all of them must have been no mean task. A pat on the back of the editors who read them all! Unfortunately, none of these foot soldiers are credited, and neither are the translators of stories from Sindhi and Urdu. Did Maniza Naqvi do all this by herself? The book doesn't say.

Violent death is persistently used for effect

This book's dearth of big- name contributors had me favorably disposed but my optimism lasted only until the first five stories, which proved that "youth", rather than heralding freshness of vision and inventive zeal had been used here as a cover for amateurish storytelling. All the writers seemed bent on ticking the litany of what they assumed were grave and important Karachi subjects, poverty being the great favourite, unceasingly dealt with in the pious, moralizing tone of those who have never really experienced it firsthand. The poor in these stories struggle on in their righteous, unfailingly moral ways, ceaselessly guilt-tripping all the rest of us for our comfortable, shallow lives that can never soar to the heights of piety that are the sole purview of those at the receiving end of the evil rich. Such black and white depictions are found on almost every page of this book, motivated no doubt by some desire to improve society through moralistic messages better suited to social activism than literature.

The book's dearth of "big" name contributors had me favorably disposed

Another pet theme is bomb blasts and shootings, none of the writers seem to have any nuanced insights into the geneses or outcomes of terrorist acts. The depictions here are the work of febrile imaginations assuming an artificial empathy with subject matter they are no closer to than the average TV viewer halfway across the country. Nary a nuanced character one can relate to or be moved by. Violent death is persistently used for effect or to lend some perceived shock value to a story's conclusion. Within the course of two pages (the average length of most of these stories) we meet a character, get choked by depictions of her absolute goodness, after which she gets shot in a freak accident meant to leave us blubbering in our reading chairs. The only tears they produced in me were at the thought of all these people now being legitimately able to claim they are published writers.

The poor in these stories struggle on in their righteous, unfailingly moral ways

Thank goodness then for Soofia Ishaque's story The Reprieve: No Bikini But Plenty of Attitude, the only standout story in the collection, and one that manages to avoid the ham-handedness and juvenility of the rest. A simple narration of a day out on the beach, it successfully captures the contrasting social and economic currents that make Karachi so complex and dynamic without beating us over the head with those themes. Here gunpoint robbery is treated with none of the melodramatic histrionics of the other stories, but with a quiet nod to the nonchalance engendered by repeated exposure to mugging and theft, and the desperate abandonment in the pursuit of fun only those from a repressed, violent society can truly appreciate. Other half-decent efforts included Rumana Husain's The Victoria Waala, Fiza Hasan's Tea or Coffee? and Asma Siddiqui's Pearl. Certain passages from a few other stories resonated here and there but were often marred by the writer's inability to use them for the larger benefit of the story.

Another strange aspect of this book is that it shifts mid-way from fictional stories to personal narratives without any warning, which leaves the classification of this book as a collection of short stories in doubt. Overall, Karachi: Our Stories in Our Words would have benefitted from cutting its length by half and showcasing a higher standard of writing instead of cramming the book with page after page of mediocrity, the kind my teaching instincts tell me would fail even to score an A in a good high school English class.

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Published in The Friday Times (June 14th - 20th, 2013)