Sultana Apa: The return of the director
Siddiqui, the president of Hum TV, more popularly known as Sultana Apa, is putting on her director’s shoes again. This she confessed at a small press gathering at her private TV station head quarters in Karachi.
“I have re-entered the realm of direction after 11 years,” announced Siddiqui. Her sincerity to her word pushed her to make a comeback and flaunt those direction skills one more time. “It’s just a promise that I have fulfilled to Umera Ahmad. She wanted me to direct one of her plays.”
The play is based on a novel by Ahmad titled “Zindagi Gulzar Hai”, in which Pakistan’s most desirable Fawad Khan is casted in the lead role opposite the rising star Sanam Saeed, recognised for her work in “Daam” and “Mataa-e-Jaan Hai Tu”. The story focuses on an ordinary, middle class girl and her struggle to succeed in life. She fights with her odds and gets educated, only to have her fate bring forth the inevitable truth. Siddiqui reassured, “This is a story that revolves around a fact and a reality that we humans don’t thank God enough for His limitless blessings. We have highlighted this in the play, for this is a reality we need to project.”
Interestingly enough, Hum TV’s current drama serial “Shehr-e-Zaat”— which stars the lovely Mahira Khan of “Humsafar” fame — is also written by Umera Ahmad and touches upon the divine being.
The director par excellence started off her career and gave the audience some of the best directed plays under the stream of PTV, which has been her institution. Siddiqui compared the two channels, PTV and Hum TV, with current times and performances and said, “Eleven years have gone by and times have really changed. Technology wise I have always been on a fast pace route, but today artists are too busy and they don’t have time. No rehearsals can ever take place like they used to in the good old days of PTV. People want to submit their work in one-go. I had never done that before but that’s what I am doing now.”
The play “Zindagi Gulzar Hai” airs on October 19, at Hum TV.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 25th, 2012.
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A director like Sultana Siddiqui is a perfect choice for a play like 'Zindagi Gulzar Hai'. While most of the other dramas are busy in only depicting the sorrows and miseries of a woman and esp a middle class woman, Umera Ahmed's this novel besides portraying the dilemmas of a woman also aims at giving a practical solution to these problems.
Being an avid reader of Umera Ahmed I feel that the writer aims at inculcating, in people's minds, blind and unshakable faith in Allah and she genuinely wants a woman to be strong enough to stand for her rights. For me her request to Sultana SIddiqui speaks for her sincerity towards her aim.