Gulbadan

I’ve become such a bitter, jealous old hag, reduced to staying at home on weekends watching MTV Pakistan.

Ah, yes, MTV Pakistan, another welcome addition to an array of repetitive, mind-numbingly mundane, unproductive and hollow entertainment outlets for our overly-westernized, urbanized, elitist youth living in a self-contained bubble and spoiled by a steady diet of excessive carbohydrates and Friends. Criticism aside, the arrival of MTV is a welcome addition to the Pakistani landscape by all means. It creates jobs (where else will those video jockeys take their baggy pants and blow-dried hair), it stimulates the economy (the more Josh you play on MTV, the more their CDs will sell, hence making sure that those poor souls who live off piracy continue to feed their seven children with halal ki rozi), it boosts our exports (how else will Ali Zafar, our most exportable commodity – besides, of course, footballs stitched by the delicate fingers of a twelve-year-old Sialkoti - being all chikna and dashing, be able to lip-sync at the MTV Asia Awards with his gelled hair and white top) and it promotes the emancipation of women (after all, women are free in a society where they can take live calls on television from obsessive callers and not have bhaijaan beat them up). Plus, who cares about the one-dollar poverty line and most of the nation being below it when you can get a fancy billboard on Liberty Roundabout smack in the middle of Lahore announcing your arrival and preparation to conquer the market that has produced some of the greatest and most formulaic pop singers in all of Asia!

Yep, MTV Pakistan sure is a blessing. Now I have yet another channel catering to my boundless need to listen to quality Pakistani pop music twenty four-seven, and can view Ali Azmat’s latest video on five distinct channels, each with a funkier looking VJ giving valuable insights into its making. Spoiled for choice, I truly am. Next thing you know, we’ll have IMAX theatres being built in place of children’s playgrounds! Oops, now that’s an obscure reference if there ever was one!

// posted by Sohaib @ Wednesday, May 02, 2007 0 comments

Ah yes, the pictures. Like all hot-blooded, immature, freshly-out-of-their-teens boys, the only reason I used to regularly view the magazine was because of the fashion column and its nice, funky pictures of pretty models looking, well, very pretty. Actually, ignore the past tense in the previous sentence…it’s still the only reason. Being a massive fan of Pakistani models like Tooba Siddiqui has its disadvantages. There aren’t enough websites out there where pretty pictures of them are uploaded for the general entertainment of tharki men across the urban landscape of our pure country, which is why the Sunday magazine website is a rare treasure (and which is also why whenever there is a male model featured in the fashion segment people like me always, always, let out a disgruntled groan, simply heartbroken at the great travesty of having to wait another week for someone like Tooba to grace these pages. (Or Neha, as is now the trend.)

Of course, then there are those society pages, where pretty people pose wearing pretty dresses and holding prettier drinks. I normally browse through them in a bored manner, commenting on how it’s the same people week in and week out (so much so that I’ve even begun to memorize their names as a pastime - Aamir Mazhar, you are one busy social kitten, whoever the fuck you are!) and bemoaning how I, despite having a personality that oozes eloquence, pure charm and quick wit beyond measure, am never invited to these get-togethers at all, hence depriving me of my God-given right to enjoy a feeling of sheer liberation and abandon dancing the night away completely inebriated.

So there I was one fine day clicking away looking at those pictures and wallowing in my usual self-pity feeling discontent at not being invited to the big Halloween bash that I suddenly came across a picture with a lady in black. Whoa! Why is she familiar? Holy mother of all things good and pure, she’s in my university! And that too a sophomore. Now it’s not that I don’t expect freshmen girls from my university to be more socially acceptable than I am, or look exceedingly hot in a slinky black outfit. But it’s quite disconcerting when a person you watch on a daily basis in her pajama pants and sweats speaking in class in that horribly pretentious and accented angrezi that she has become notorious for suddenly appear in front of you, in the society page of a leading magazine, looking like a million dollars canoodling with charming and eloquent men and engaging in stimulating conversation (I’m sure) while you sit here sulking at how mommy doesn’t let you get out of the house after midnight.

// posted by Sohaib @ Wednesday, May 02, 2007 2 comments