No laughing matter: Overwhelmed Pashto comedian slams door on success

Taunted by fans, Murad Ali loses his identity to the characters he has played.

PESHAWAR:

The search for Murad Ali lasted quite a few days. After a dozen unanswered phone and house calls, he finally agreed to an interview – and that too after he was pushed out through the door of his house by his mother.

When the shy man finally came into sigh, the usual crowd around his house gave him a smile of familiarity, as if they knew him for decades.

But the truth is, let alone his name, no one knows Murad for who he is; they only know him by his comedic roles in Pashto comedy.

The senior comedian has been in the business for the last 37 years, and has lost count of the vast number of characters he has played. The most famous characters people remember him by are Latoo, Gulbali, Chamchamar and Tooti.

His characters have been loved, nationally and internationally, and he is recognised everywhere he goes.

However, rather than basking in the glory, the artist hides away in his two-room mud house in Bala Marai, Peshawar.

Murad has managed to capture comedy so brilliantly, that somewhere along the way over the three decades his identity off-screen has been overshadowed.

“Whatever people see on screen becomes our identity; but characters are always different from what we are in our real lives,” he told The Express Tribune.

“I always stay inside my house and cannot step out because of the fear that the youngster s will start taunting me. Some children even run behind, shouting ‘Latoo!’”

Latoo, the name of one of his characters, is Pashto for a stupid person.

Murad has also performed internationally, in Qatar, Dubai, Malaysia and Afghanistan.  He has had a role, big or small, in almost every comedy Pashto drama produced by PTV and is now working on a number of CD drama projects with Ismail Shahid.

“I play these characters for others; to bring a smile on their faces but I do not why the same people have been such a problem in my personal life,” Murad said.

To say that the character s – mostly conceived by Saadullah Jan Burq, Farmanullah Jan, and Khaliq Dad Umeed, among others – were made unforgettable by Murad would be an understatement.

“A few years back when I applied for a visa to Qatar, I was given the visa by the name of Gulbali (one character) instead of Murad Ali,” Murad told The Express Tribune.

There were times when state-run television was the only source of entertainment in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where people would gather around the television to watch Pashto comedy dramas.

The characters they saw on screen have had direct influence on the audience; so much so that they have made the fantasy their reality.

Characters like Janan, Manay and Latoo, Gulbali and Tooti have become stronger than their creators, Alamzeb Mujahid, Ismail Shahid and Murad, respectively.

Ali Ahmad, Murad’s neighbour, told The Express Tribune that people’s admiration for him has become excessive and even intolerable. People expect him to be like he is on screen but they don’t realise that Murad is actually quite different from all the characters he has played, he added.

“In other parts of the country, a famous artist can manage to live their lives separately but the situation here is different. Here, artists are poor; we have to use public transport and always be at close proximity with people,” Murad said, adding that “our people do not realise that artistes have a personal life too.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2012.