SARA Chaudhry
When Will She Play Sania Mirza?
IT’S MIGHTY SURPRISING why nobody thought of it earlier. Lovely Sara Chaudhry has a strong resemblance with the Indian tennis star, Sania Mirza? The delectable controversial celebrity is known for her gossip column news. But, as a tennis player of good repute for India, she has a bunch of good trophies for a 22-year old. Known for her liberal views, her reported affair with Shahid Kapoor, and her recent near career-ending accident, from which Sania recovered, according to her, with the help of the handsome cricketer, Yuvraj Singh, one feels Sania is a character very playable. And when it comes to that aspect, I think there is nobody as competent, and beautiful to play Sania as Sara Chaudhry!
The only trouble here is, does Sara play tennis?
Well, if she doesn’t, then she could be taught tennis by some ace player of Pakistan, or a good coach. That’s not such a difficult thing. In fact, today camera can do anything, with the special effects pretty much the best thing on the screen.
Sara is playing an aspirant for film star status these days, on a channel, with Babar Ali. The serial is about the Lollywood credibility crisis, and Sara, with her new-look tomboy hair cut, looks quite nice in it. I think this is just the right look for her to play Sania Mirza.
Just think about it!
LOLLYWOOD HEROES-1
The Early Bunch Had Ethics As Priority
THE OLD SCHOOL ETHICS had their merits and demerits, both. But, when it comes to media, specially cinema, the men and women of the Thirties and Forties had something that was nobility and grace. Not in the sense that they were washed with milk (Doodh ke dhulay thay), but on the issues of vision, punctuality, manners, rapport, unity, sincerity, civil sense etc, they were truly very upright and disciplined compared to the artistes, who are working in our industry. Generally, that is! I am not talking about exceptions. When Pakistan was formed, our artistes of the Fifties were also armed with ethics. Their basics were good, and that’s why most of them looked good on the silver screen. The roles they portrayed, their style, their mannerism, all had a sense of realism. At the moment, I am talking about the heroes and male character actors only. Whether it was Santosh Kumar, Darpan, Sudhir, Alauddin, Aslam Parvez, Himalyawala, Habib, M. Ismail, Shahnawaz, Yusuf Khan, Asif Jah, Azad, Ilyas Kashmiri et al, they all worked close to realism. Once again, controversy and scandals are a part and parcel of the cinema, but their working was based on the old school values. That’s what endears them to us.
Similar, of course, was the case with the directors of those days, most of whom were respected men like Anwar Kamal Pasha, Luqman, Nazir, Khwaja Khurshid Anwar, S. M. Yusuf, Saifuddin Saif, Qadeer Ghauri (who died recently), A. J. Kardar, Zia Sarhady, W. Z. Ahmed and others. Aside from a few, like Najam Naqvi and Ataullah Shah Hashmi, who had vested interests or a more condescending attitude, mostly the auteurs were all credible personalities.
I don’t know if you see things the way I do, but in my opinion, our screen idols in those days, portrayed the sort of roles that inculcated the right vision into the minds of the people, and gave them a sense of self-respect. That’s one of the reasons that despite a great degree of chaos after Partition, people settled down to love and work for Pakistan. The cinema truly educated them, and presented the truthful picture. Alauddin became the Awami Adakar due to his realistic portrayal of the people, like in Hasan Tariq’s Neend, where he works against the aristocratic attitude of the Seth, or his role of a thelewala in Mehtab, or the critic of the society in Farishta (adaptation of Crime and Punishment), or for that matter, the role of a tangeywala in Manto’s Badnam. Similarly, Habib and Alauddin played the coal-miners in Aadmi, which was a beautiful movie. Ejaz played the poor student, who is helped by a group of intellectuals in Farishta pay the fee, Sudhir portrayed the rebel in Baghi, Santosh proved to be a sterling artiste in Qadeer Ghauri’s Museeqar, as a classical singer, who is superseded by his student, Sabiha. Darpan’s work as a street urchin in Baalam, along with his sidekick, Lehri, is remembered by those, who saw it, as it was very close to the dock-workers at Keamari. The popular pair of Aslam Parvez and Alauddin in Aas Paas, the combo of a rich man and a poor man, also was the first such film in Pakistan, though inspired by a foreign movie. These are all proofs of why the common man held them so close to their hearts.
Sadly, today, neither such roles are written for our artistes, nor do they present such people’s roles, when they make their own films. Thus, the respect of the people for our artistes has declined on all levels.
SULTAN RAHI
Tragic Consequences of His Demise
AFTER 16 YEARS of Sultan Rahi’s death, what we see today are the ruins of the film industry, which used to deliver over 150 films per years by the Seventies. Rahi was, both, the deliverer of the industry in difficult times, namely the Zia Era, and also a part of the crisis that has literally paralysed the industry today!
When the industry was in good hands, back in the Seventies, people were stunned by the Debacle of Dhaka, and there were chances that some unforeseen limbo would ensue in the industry too. Many films flopped in 1971. Meanwhile, Aslam Dar, now a seasoned director, but those days he was a b-movie director, introduced a small-role character artiste, Sultan Rahi in a title role, in Bashira. Though Rahi had worked in an important role in Janj before this, Bashira was his vital role. With the jagirdari system now understood to be the biggest enemy of the commonfolks, and worker being empowered out of the Parliament, though not legally, the farmers and workers were looking for a deliverer, who would hit the feudal lord black and blue. Just at that moment, Rahi took charge!
All this has been written before. The thing that should be highlighted was that Rahi had much potential, and he wasn’t just a slam-blam screen hero. Unfortunately, this world loves to half-discover an artiste, and then throws him or her headlong into a monotonous and clichéd world. That’s what happened to Rahi, with his own faults as well. Rahi showed his class in films like Dil aur Dunya, Thah, An-Data, Shaheen etc, where he did not do such clichéd roles, and proved that he was much different when he did such roles. But, the producers and directors didn’t think so. They had their own vested interests to make films on family feuds, with the Jutt, Nat, Gujjar, Dogar and others being shown taking their personal vengeance to the screen. In the Eighties, this kind of cinema thrived over the Urdu films, and at some juncture, this provincial cinema did save the industry from braking down during the crucial Zia Era. But, during the late Eighties, when democracy returned to some extent, Rahi could have made an attempt to disengage himself from this violent genre, which he didn’t. Thus, he was also responsible for the corruption of his image, and later the worth of the industry as well. It’s unfortunate that Muhammad Ali, Sultan Rahi and Mustafa Qureishi, great artiste that they were, did not make an effort, in their days of seniority to break the mould, which had become their biggest nemesis on the silver screen.
Finally, then, there was a chance for the feudal lords, always at the end of the stick from Rahi, to take their own vengeance from him in 1993!
As Rahi departed, the violent and reactionary hero of the Punjabi screen did not die. The ultra-life-sized character was ready to take on the best of the lot. Now, the role was bigger than the actor. And since the vacuum had to be filled, finally the new, and young version of the Jutt, and Gujjar took over. Now, the casualty of that role were new and promising actors like Shaan, Babar Ali and Momy Rana. This was, in the mid-Nineties, the right time to bury the hatchet, in the jargon of Maula Jutt. But, the uneducated and uncouth producers of Lollywood were not ready to do so. Now, demand had nothing to do with it. Films like Bulandi, Jeeva, Chore Machaey Shore, Hathi Mere Sathi, Mr 420, Sangam, Sargam, Munda Bigra Jaey, Ghunghat, Beta, Hawain, Love ’95, Dil Kisi ka Dost Naheen, Nikah, Chooriyan etc were making good business. There was no need to harp the same tune. But, the black-marketers continued the trend, and thus we are facing the consequences of letting Maula Jutt dominate the proceedings.
