KARACHI:
I am Mr X but do not confuse me with the upcoming eponymous film in which Emraan Hashmi looks like my bff Naeem Abbas Rufi. Rufi often reminds me of a drug of the same name, which is used to make your date pass out so she won’t leave you. This is the same kind of desperation many Pakistani artistes have for fame.
One day, to get away from Rufi’s Candy Crush requests and the countless ‘offers’ that keep my studio phone ringing, I went to a shopping mall. I had to wear my sunglasses at night, so that no one could recognise me because that just makes my fans go hysterical, you know. But it became too dark, so I took them off. After that, I wandered where the mall was most crowded, but no one noticed me.
Right then, I saw a kid playing with a toy helicopter in a shop. I was instantly taken back to the time when I used to fly down on the stage in a helicopter amid 35,000 people cheering for me. Today, I have to buy a ticket to walk on the red carpet of a premiere of a new Pakistani film and photo bomb other celebrities, so my pictures are printed in magazines. Look how the tables have turned.
The future of pop stars in Pakistan is not as bright as the kurtas they wear for Eid transmissions. Now that I look around at my contemporaries, I see them loitering around like the dejected andhi and boorhi maa in a 1960s Indian film. While some ‘stars’ embrace the fact that their time to shine is over, others just don’t give up. Here’s why some of Pakistan’s ‘former’ pop musicians need to let it go.
• ‘You can keep rocking till you die’ sounds great in theory, but when you make the kind of music that you did when you were a ‘hit’, it just becomes worse. A 50-year-old man singing about first love is just as absurd as us thinking that The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a comedy. There is a reason why when you tell kids about a jadoo ka chiragh, the first thing that comes to their mind is Aladdin and not Awaz.
• You will eventually acknowledge that your days of music are behind you and that you should gracefully bow out, but only to ungracefully become a politician in a budding political party. In your new designation, will be promised that you will deliver a speech in front of a massive crowd, but that day will never come. The speech is pointless nonetheless because it will be just as insignificant as the invitation to go to Billo’s house. Who is Billo? Why are we going to her house? Will she serve us food?
As I get ready to perform at a wedding in Gulshan-e-Maymar, where the audience comprises nine people, of which four will be busy eating korma and sheermal, I still rock it like it’s my memorable gig at the National Stadium. Except, now when I get off the stage, I’m not stormed by a group of young girls with paper and body parts to give autographs on, but hear, “Abbay, do naan tou pakra bhai ko!”
Published in The Express Tribune, October 12th, 2014.
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