I’d rather beg on the streets than get help from Punjab govt: Veteran actor Majid Jahangir

With govt-provided aid money drying up, veteran comedian Majid Jahangir on the breadline, again

LAHORE:

While they both fight their battles for as long as they live, there are certain dilemmas that both the soldier and the artist have in common. Both toil all their lives, praying for an honourable end to their story; both fear one thing the most – misery.

There are many amongst us who are today struggling to remain afloat in the very no — man’s — land between these two conditions. Sometimes their plight makes it to the headlines, other times it doesn’t. A few murmurs here and there and occasionally a minister or two announce some money for them. Fewer times still, the funds actually trickle down to their hands and when their medical needs eat up that cash, they are back to square one. How long can someone continue to beg for help, one wonders.



Majid Jahangir the cricketer may be leading a peaceful life in retirement but Majid Jahangir the comedian is unwilling to budge from the fact that his “life has become a joke”. Last year, he lost a functioning body to paralysis. The news was reported and his miserable state attracted both sympathy and offers for help. Advisor to Sindh CM on Culture and Tourism Sharmila Farooqi handed him a cheque of Rs400,000 and even President Mamnoon Hussain approved Rs300,000 in his name. As Majid’s limbs started to recover, the funds began to dry up.

Majid is in Lahore these days but not for the reason you would think. In hope of a permanent solution to his misery, he had arrived in the city and has been staying at a relative’s place in Iqbal Town. He claims to have knocked, more than once, Shahbaz Sharif administration’s door. “They disappointed me. I made this country laugh for 45 years and today when I cannot even stand up straight, I stand alone,” he tells The Express Tribune. “I’d now rather beg on the streets than get help from Punjab government.”





The Pride of Performance winner says he even met actor and MPA Kanwal Nauman who assured him help would arrive. “I am yet to fully recover from the paralysis attack that incapacitated the right side of my body. The treatment was expensive and all the money got used up.” He had been living in a dilapidated two-room house in Karachi until the idea of asking CM Punjab for help struck him. “I had heard he cares about artists like us,” he adds.

Majid was a vivid part of Pakistan’s first crop of TV comedians and stage actors. He rose to fame through Shoaib Mansoor and Anwar Maqsood’s hit TV show from the early 80s, Fifty Fifty, performing short satirical skits alongside arguably the country’s most talented bunch of their time. He continued to participate in stage shows and different TV programmes and later moved to the US, only to return once again to serve his motherland. “Those were good times, I tell you. I made good money there and they even offered me citizenship which I turned down. Today my pockets are empty. It’s quite frustrating that I have been running from pillar to post for help. I entertained three generations.”

And it’s not that the 64-year-old is asking for someone to provide for him while he sits in whatever comfort his house can give him. “I want to start working again. I know things have changed quite a bit. A lot of money is now involved, new writers and new technology is here. But have they been able to create something like Fifty Fifty?” he asks.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2016.

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