Smash hit: Gullu Butt, now on a phone screen near you

Android application pays tribute to vandal.

KARACHI:

Good news for all the Gullu Butt fans out there: you can now ‘unleash the Gullu within you’ through an Android application released on Wednesday, called ‘Gullu’. The app invites users to ‘smash the living headlights out of a car’ pictured onscreen; a swipe lands a wooden stick on a small animated car, the smashed glass from the car’s windows bouncing to a side of the screen. Users get their score after collecting the broken pieces of glass.

Developed by the firm ‘Weird Science’, the app features a row of police officials and a lion standing by as Gullu wrecks the car onscreen. As the car is totaled, the game ends with a line in Punjabi, “Nay aa gaya, tay chaa gaya ha thaa karke” (He came, and he conquered).

The vandal with a handlebar moustache swung his way onto television screens as police officials launched a crackdown on the Pakistan Awami Tehreek’s secretariat in Lahore’s Model Town on June 19. Butt was captured on camera wrecking vehicles parked outside the secretariat as police officials idled nearby. Butt and his lathi have fed the nation’s imagination - ‘Gullu Butt for Pakistan T20 Team Captain!’ and ‘Gullu Butt for Toyota Brand Ambassador!’ have joined a slew of social media pages, memes and a fake Twitter account.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2014.