Pakistani TV Plays
By Khalid R. Siddiqui, MD, FACRO
Ohio, USA
I have been watching Pakistani TV plays for almost five decades. Although not many were produced in the 1970s and 1980s but, nevertheless, they were very good. During the 1990s and the first decade of 2000, the number of the plays increased because of the proliferation of the private TV channels. The quality, however, continued to deteriorate. In the past decade or so, there has been a healthy revival with numerous innovative and bold productions. This, most probably, is due to the emergence of new writers with creative thinking, and also of the young, educated and hard-working artists. Based on my observations I have a few comments to make on these plays:
1. In the plays whenever a conspiracy is being hatched in a room (closed or open), someone always happens to pass by the room at that precise moment and get the hint of the plot. The doors and the walls, however thick they may be, always appear permeable to the sound. This shows a real weakness in the playwright’s script. With the help of eavesdropping, the writer takes a shortcut rather than coming up with an innovative plan to have the conspiracy exposed later. Eavesdropping has been overplayed in the dramas and needs to be discarded now.
2. In the plays the intruder (usually with a gun) is always able to get inside the house without any resistance and reaches the bed room, and then threatens the family or starts shooting. In ‘Khani’ the spoiled brat son of the politician gets into Khani’s living room TWICE without any resistance – once with a gun and the again with gifts. This practice, however, has recently changed for the better. The intruder now has to negotiate the heavy doors at the main gate of the house. He bangs on the gate. Amazingly, the host or chowkidar always opens the door without confirming first who is behind the door. So, the intruder gets inside the house anyway, producing the same disastrous results. I hope, in real life, the gatekeepers check out first before opening the door.
3. In the plays the girl, with little persuasion, always gets a ride from the stranger which, sometimes, results in a disaster. In the play ‘Yaqeen ka Safar’, Sajal Aly takes a ride from a stranger (a student), and after a few twists and turns, eventually ends up in his apartment. She, miraculously, escapes from there and runs down to the street. And guess what? She takes a ride from another stranger! Either it is a fad in the cities of Pakistan for the girls to take a ride from e strangers, or the playwright is bereft of ideas to get the boy and the girl together for the first time. During my college days in Pakistan, it was almost impossible to expect a girl to hitch a ride even from a known student, let alone a stranger!
4. In every episode someone loses his or her appetite after encountering an emotional situation – anger, grief or insult, etc. Either that person locks himself/herself in the room or leaves the dining table without eating despite the pleas of family members, especially the mother. Considering the Pakistanis’ love for food, this behavior is quite unrealistic.
5. Whenever there is a child star in the play, he/she always turns out to be the smartest person in the family. It is encouraging to know that the Pakistanis are producing such precocious children. In the play ‘Mere Pass Tum Ho’, Humayun Saeed’s six-year old son makes all the important decisions for the family. He even makes the decision for his father whether he should marry the school teacher or go back to his ex-wife.
6. Whenever a bespectacled actor gets an unexpected news (grief, joy, accident etc.) he immediately takes off his glasses! This practice was started by the actor Ashok Kumar in the Indian movies of the 1950s, and the trend continues to this day. As a physician I get good, bad and very bad news all the time. Taking off the glasses is not my first reaction. I don’t think anyone in real life does it either. I take off my glasses only when either I have to take a nap or I have to clean my glasses.
7. Taking ‘qasam’ and giving or taking ‘maafi’ are on the rise in the newer plays. In ‘Sadqay Tumhare’ this practice has reached a peak. Every single one of its 27 episodes has at least one scene of taking qasam and/or asking/accepting maafi. There have been many innovations in taking qasam – over Qur’an, over one’s head, over the threat of one’s own death or children’s death, etc.
8. I wish they make more entertaining plays like ‘Suno Chanda’ rather than the serious ones all the time.
9. The Pakistani TV plays are very popular among the Indians in India as well as in the USA. Most of the Indian viewers, however, can’t read Urdu. Sometimes in the play a caption like ‘Two months later’ or ‘Five years later,’ etc. appears in Urdu only. It would be nice if the same caption appears in English also for the benefit of the non-Urdu knowing viewers.
Despite all these comments, I am very fond of Pakistani TV plays. The quality has definitely improved. I watch them regularly. They keep me connected with Pakistan and its culture. - dr.krs1228@gmail.com
