Rabba sachiya, tu tay akhia see
Ja oye bandiya jug da shah ain tu
Saadian naimataan terian daulataan nenh
Saada naib the alijah ain tu
Ais laaray teh torr kudh puchia eh
Kee ais nimanay teh beetiyaan nenh
Kaddi saar we layee o rab saiyaan
Terey shah naal jugh kee kitiyan nenh
The poetry is by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
I don’t care if its the middle of the week. All my diction is dripping with disdain today anyway.
First up, check out the sister and Sepoy’s brilliant summary of the FIA Red Book. Why hasn’t this book been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, hainjee?
The strangest music video I have seen in a very, very long time.
The greatest film of all time (/end sarcasm) is sparking a strange political wave in Bahrain. (Via Fahad)
Screw nuclear weapons. Pakistan has a FACE READER on its side.
From Qifa Nabki: the iPhone app store comes to Lebanon.
And now, a special mention for the New York Times, which has a truly ridiculous article about sidewalks and benches in Amman. I kid you not. The streets in question are Wakalat Street (an ode to consumerism, if there was ever one) and Rainbow Street (where Brangelina bought ice cream) and marvels at how ‘benches’ seem to have changed this city.
It also features a quote that I personally found quite hilarious:
If you’re a girl and you’re just hanging out on a regular street or sitting on a sidewalk, it’s considered inappropriate,” said Reem al-Hambali, 20, as she sat in the bright winter sun along the first pedestrian plaza built here. “Everyone will look at you and ask, ‘Why is this girl sitting there?’ But here it’s O.K. We can sit here and it’s normal.
What Amman is this?! Its definitely not the Amman I lived in, where sitting on the street – any street – was perfectly fine. The only time I had a ‘strange’ experience trying to hail a cab in Jordan while sitting on the side of the road was, err, this.
I am speechless.
The Last Word blog on the adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which is being directed by Mira Nair:
Day Two of the auditions for The Reluctant Fundamentalist continue in Lahore. So far Samina Peerzada, Ali Zafar, Adnan Malik, Ayesha Khan, Khalid Malik, Adeel Hussain and Fawad khan have been seen heading in the direction of Gulberg….. enough said.
But then, someone else had the best idea of all time.
Remember the ’90s? Remember Spiceworld? Remember the return of platform shoes? Oh, say it isn’t so…
The creator of global hit Mamma Mia! is teaming up with media tycoon Simon Fuller to bring a Spice Girls musical to life, she announced today.
Judy Craymer, who is reckoned to be worth £75 million from her film and stage hit based on Abba songs, will bring her magic touch to the show, which is tentatively titled Viva Forever.
A Spice Girls musical has been rumoured for a number of months after the band met up to discuss the project, but has only now finally been confirmed.…The musical is being billed as a production which will “harness the distinct personality of The Spice Girls to create a musical that celebrates the energy and excitement of the biggest girl-band of all time”.
With apologies to Stevie Wonder.
No New Year’s Day to celebrate
No Baitullah Mehsud to scare, he’s been droned away
No end to stereotyping
No songs for Musharraf to sing
In fact here’s just another ordinary day
No one is sane
No peace looms
No weddings can run till the next day’s noon
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you
I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
I know you’ll retweet that too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart
No summer’s high
No electricity in July
No NRO left on which to write
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for drones to fly in Quetta’s skies
No Younis Khan
No sanity
No giving thanks to all the rants Blackwater brings
But what it is, though old so new
That TTP scares you like no three letters could ever do
I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart
If you’d like to sing along, here’s the original, saccharine Stevie Wonder song:
Inspired by Asif Akhtar’s comment on the previous post, last night was all about rocking on!! (credit: rocking on – Guardian/The National, !! – from the film Rock On!!) with the #SummerofTaliban posts on Twitter. I had originally planned to dig out some of the best ones but it would take me hours, so you should just go ahead and read the whole thing. It was more New York than Pakistan really.
In the spirit of cliches and stereotypes, it would have also totally qualified to be picked up as a “soft story” with the headline ‘Twitter Pakistanis turn to humour to defy the Taliban” (There, I’ve even written the headline! I should be PAID to do this) but sadly no foreign publication has been in touch yet.
Once again, can’t thank Asif enough for the idea. Everyone else, did you have nothing better to do? In a #SummerofTaliban violence, I’m glad to know your lives are as sad as mine.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time of ridiculous conspiracies and pesky shadows of the Taliban. And in this time, there existed a magical book. It contained within it powerful words. Words, that would inspire several 140 character messages, cause much rubbing of the eyes and wondering if the words had been correctly; words that would make careers. It was the Book of Pakistan Stereotypes, and every journalist of the land had one.
——
Now I don’t know if this magical book actually exists or not. But I’m being forced to believe it does. After all, there has to be a logical reason as to why I have read the most ridiculous sentence ever drafted in two different publications about the same topic. Without further ado:
From The National (Nov 17):
A career in rock ’n’ roll might not be a conventional – or easy – choice for young Pakistanis, but despite the militant insurgency and social difficulties, aspiring musicians are finding ways to keep an alternative music scene alive.
Even with accelerating Taliban violence, Pakistan’s underground music-makers are rocking on.
From the Guardian (Sept 1):
Even in a summer of Taliban violence young Pakistanis are rocking on. An underground music scene is quietly thriving in the country’s major cities, nourished by the internet and the passion of mostly amateur bands.
As a young Pakistani, I sadly cannot explain to you what this sentence means. I wish I could. Meanwhile, I really must get my hands on this magical book that has brought to the limelight phrases like ‘under the shadow of the Taliban‘, ‘educated elite’,’Facebook Pakistanis unite against terror’ and my personal favourite, ‘in their jeans, T-shirts and sunglasses, looked more New York than Lahore’.
I’d write more but I’m going to defy the Taliban by drinking imported coffee instead. After all, in a winter of Taliban violence, us young Pakistanis must do something, right?
For everyone brought up on a steady diet of Abba, the musical and film Mamma Mia! came as a welcome refresher course on the Swedish quartet’s music. Even if the acting in the 2008 film was nauseating at best and mind-blowingly atrocious at worst. But as Hugh Jackman triumphantly announced while hosting this year’s Academy Awards – “the musical is back!” – apparently, so is the film’s sequel.
Mamma Mia! – a musical based on Abba songs – became the highest-grossing film ever at the UK box office, and made a staggering 609 million dollars worldwide. And now a sequel is underway: Mamma Mia! 2
One of the film’s stars, Amanda Seyfried, told BBC News, “I’ve been talking to some insiders and it’s not something that they haven’t been working on. I don’t actually know anything other than that.” She also says Meryl Streep is set to sign on for the sequel, “I will do it. And I know Meryl’s game as well, so bring it on. It will be so cool. I think we all had the best time and we all got along so well. It was like some days it felt like we were just people on vacation.”
But as the Guardian (in a bitingly sarcastic piece) pointed out, what music will they use? The original film already featured all of Abba’s most popular hits, including ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Mamma Mia’ and ‘Take a Chance on Me’. Unless the filmmakers decide to recycle their more well-known songs for the sequel, there isn’t a chance of the film being as successful.
And while the musical format – seen in recent years via films like Dreamgirls, Chicago and High School Musical – seems to have returned to Hollywood, it doesn’t always bode well. Even though the High School Musical franchise is a worldwide hit, the acting in the films hasn’t improved a notch, and the amount of bad singing that these films have featured would make anyone’s ears bleed.
Mamma Mia! may have been a hit, but for a far better glimpse into the band’s music (and a better nostalgia trip), watch the 1977 promotional film, Abba: The Movie (see point above about being raised on a steady diet of Abba). The film, which traces a radio jockey desperately trying to get an interview with the band at the height of their success, sees him get in a ridiculous chase all over Australia to find them. The music selection, the concert footage and the fact that Abba: The Movie stars all of the Abba members, is far more delightful than Meryl Streep wasting her talents to moan and cry about previous loves and Pierce Brosnan’s lack of singing ability.
Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-1997)
Twelve years, and it still seems like yesterday, and it still seems as unimaginable that he isn’t alive anymore. How do you remember the legend who – still – makes you believe in the power of love and devotional music?
In a few hours, it will have been a week since I was rudely awakened up by KESC to find out – via Twitter – that Michael Jackson had died. Its been seven days and I have felt a disproportionate amount of grief at his death. I’d like to call it a collective delayed reaction to all the other crap in my life, but I really feel like I’ve been knocked off my feet.
So seven days later, I am still wallowing away in pain, trying to reconcile my childhood memories with Michael Jackson’s music as the soundtrack and the fact that he’s dead. If anyone has been able to recover* please let me know. I really have no idea whats happening in the world. Articles like this one have pissed me off and I’ve been able to muster a reaction for a fleeting moment. Then I start feeling miserable again. There goes my belief that I’d learned to deal with death but apparently I didn’t really factor in Michael Jackson dying.
*Do not recommend illegal substances. Its too hot in Karachi to consume anything but water. Or poison, if you haven’t had electricity for over 10 hours or so.
The King of Pop (1958-2009)
You may think there is nothing worse than being woken up at 4 AM because of a power cut. There is: waking up at 4 AM and going online only to discover the King of Pop is dead.
Michael Jackson – the man who gave us pop music, videos that qualify as works of art, the moonwalk and a whole new meaning to celebrity culture – died on Friday in a LA hospital, having suffered cardiac arrest. Even as I write these words, they seem incomprehensible. This is the man whose music has resounded for decades, who generations of musicians and legions of his fans idolized, aped and emulated. From his single white glove to his dance moves to his influence on music that still emanates from records released today, Michael Jackson was the biggest icon music has ever had and I doubt anyone will ever come close to him.
He was larger than life: a figure created and revered by the MTV generation, and then hated and despised by a generation addicted to tabloids and paparazzi images. The allegations of child sexual abuse against him spawned into one of the most-followed media circus trials the world will ever see. While Michael was indicted on allegations of sexual abuse, he was also acquitted in 2005 of all the charges made against him by a court in the US. I remember staying up till 5 AM to watch the court’s decision on CNN, and they had a live audio stream from the courtroom. As the head juror said ‘We find Michael Jackson not guilty’ on all fourteen charges, I really did think the King of Pop would make a comeback and reign again.
That never happened.
The allegations of paedophilia were widely believed to be true – despite what the US legal system and the celebrities who had worked with him including Macaulay Culkin and Elizabeth Taylor had to say – and cast a dark shadow on a man who had deity like status in the world of music. His bizarre and eccentric behaviour defined him. From his pop marriage of the highest order when he wedded Elvis Presley’s daughter, his addiction to painkillers, having several children via artificial insemination and then keeping them cloistered, dangling one of them off a balcony in full public view and his strange home called Neverland to his constant air of one that had been victimized and one who was very, very sad at why the world had forsaken him. Michael constantly had fall-outs with his even stranger family and his musical peers – including Sir Paul McCartney, who was incredibly upset when Jackson bought the rights to the Beatles catalogue. It was a major revenue earner for Michael Jackson till the end.
But ultimately, it was his musical legacy that has and will continue to reign supreme. That, the world will not forsake. Where does one start with remembering Michael Jackson’s music? The disco-infused Off the Wall, the brilliant ‘Thriller’ – which still has one of the best music videos ever made in pop history – and the album by the same name that contained some of Michael’s best work, including ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ or Dangerous, the album that spawned one of the biggest concert tours and featured the platinum hits ‘Black or White’ and ‘Heal the World’. Michael’s music ushered in a completely new era of pop and dance, of song writing that spoke volumes not just about Michael’s tortured state of mind, but also of celebrity status, of racism and reality, of poverty and desperation, of dance and disco and of the phantoms that really do sprout up in the dead of the night.
His death seems incomprehensible because after years of only being a shadowy figure in the public consciousness, laughed at and mocked by everyone, he had re-emerged to announce a series of comeback concerts in the UK. The tickets were sold out instantly – and just a few days ago, concert promoters had announced new dates, there were daily news stories about how he was holed up rehearsing for a tour that he had called his “final curtain call.” Reports of Michael being near death were so common, including one incident in the ’90s where his hair caught on fire and he suffered severe burns. There were so many rumours – even in his last days – that he was suffering from cancer. One never imagined the impact news of his actual death would have. Word of his demise has come as a shock, leaving behind the same unprepared feeling as I imagine the world felt when this gawky teenager from Indiana became the world’s biggest cultural icon.
It is truly tragic that Michael left the world without delivering his final curtain call and doing the moonwalk one last time, without leaving us in awe all over again of the man who really did seem invincible, the one who made us feel absolutely convinced of his genius.
Rest in peace, Michael Jackson, rest in peace. There’ll never be another you.
