'Mein', Meesha and the motivation to move on

Beyond picture-perfect cheek bones and a game-changing call-out, lies a woman pushing the boundaries of life and art

KARACHI: How she sees the world and how the world looks at her has both changed in the past one year. For some she has become the goddess of the new and evolved world, and for others, a feminine devil who knows how to play her cards right.

What remains unchanged however is that very few (men and women) have the range that she has as a vocalist and even fewer can articulate the gist of their baggage and creative process as eloquently as her. Beyond those picture-perfect cheek bones and a call-out that changed the course of the industry lies a woman who is shamelessly trying to move on in life and art. Meesha Shafi is on the go.

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With her hair falling down over her ears, she turns back from her make-up chair and offers me a cuppa. And before the moment of indecision between the kettle and the door is over, we were knee-deep into the next season of Battle of the Bands why her last song ‘Mein’ wasn’t really about Ali Zafar.

"Mein was completely different," she tells while sipping on a freshly brewed cup of Americano. "Someone recently asked me how it was different from the rest of my compositions and I started thinking about it. What I've come to realise is that Mein was about finding myself. It came at a particularly difficult time of my life where I thought about what I wanted to explore next as an artist."

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Mein not only managed to top most of the best songs lists of the year but it also made aficionados take her work seriously, as if the likes of Bholay Bhalay Saiyyan weren’t enough of a statement already.

"Mein came at a point in my career where I thought, 'Okay, I've done all of the songs I've wanted to do, I've gotten all of that yearning as an artist out of my system and now I'm back to zero. Now, what do I want to do?'” says Meesha, “Then I started exploring as an artist from point blank. I taught myself a lot. I tried different ranges of my voice; I experimented so much with this song."


The singer's power-packed vocals have always left a lasting impression and Mein was just another starting point for Meesha. "After working with so many different people, life just came full circle, where I found myself asking, 'What do you want to give and what do you want to leave behind?' The answer to this was Mein," she says.

Being the lead vocalist of an all-male band and then making a mark on Coke Studio as a solo artist is not an easy task, but Meesha seems to have done it all effortlessly.

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"I've frequently re-examined and re-done my look, my voice, my persona, my tone and my voice," the Aaya Lariye singer continues. "In retrospect, I realised that I was only switching avatars - one after another. It wasn't intentional at all, it was all organic. I've been at the judges table for quite some time now and that actually teaches one a lot. So, it has been learning on the job kind of a thing."

We were meeting on the sets of the fourth season of the Battle of the Bands. There were young bands ready to rock the show, there was Fawad Khan and Strings so the vibe was ideal to try new things and make music that stays with the audience.

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Hopefully the new song that she is working will not be such a self-portrait and that people start connecting the dots even when there is no line. Perhaps something unique is cooking this time around; even if it isn’t titled ‘Tum’.

"We'll just create another benchmark," the 37-year-old says with a mix of pride and excitement on her face. Her coffee finishes and so does our conversation.

Produced by Xulfi, co-composed by Sheheryar Khattak and Shafi herself, Mein was nominated for Best Song this year at the 18th Lux Style Awards (LSA). However, the Dhol Bajay Ga singer asked the LSA to remove her from the nominations in support of model Eman Suleman and others who took a stand for victims of sexual harassment.

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