I’m in love with Pakistani Television shows…yeah, there is
said it!! Like seriously, I’ve only seen 2 shows and that too only 2 episodes
of these shows and I’m already humming there tunes.
It all started with a song that I heard on Television for the promotion of
a new show on a new channel by Ali Zafar. He is one of my
favorite singers’, actor and director!! J So, initially
it was just his voice that lured me to watch the promo of the show. Every time
the promo would come I’d tune in and watch it very carefully. With time my
curiosity for the show increased since the promos were also quite good. The promotions
were on full swing and the day this channel was supposed to go finally on air,
the front of my newspaper had this beautiful thing written which truly won my
heart.
Visa insanon ko
lagta hai, kahaniyon ko nahin. Dekhiye aaj raat 8 baje se, sarhad paar ki
behtareen kahaniyan, naye channel Zindagi par.
(It means that
visa is just needed by the humans to go to places and different countries but
stories don’t need such things to travel.)
So, leaving everything aside including my computer, mobile phone and of
course the college admission madness which happens to be my constant companion
these days, I switched on my television and frantically searched the channel
because I didn’t want to miss the starting and not the title track of this show
i.e. ZINDAGI GULZAR HAI. I found the channel and as soon as the title
track started, a big smile came on my face and then the show started with these
beautiful lines by the protagonists;
Kashaf: Zindagi
ek bahut bada masla hai, itna bada masla ke isko hal karte karte insaan khatam
ho jaata hai…
( Kashaf: Life
is a big and difficult mystery and a person dies trying to deciphering this
mystery during his/her life.)
Zaroon: Zindagi
kya khoobsurat cheez hai, har din naya, surprises, achievements, ups and downs…
(Zaroon: Life
is a beautiful thing where every day is new, full of surprises, achievements,
ups and downs…)
With these lines of the two protagonists I understood the characters have
poles apart views about life. But the surprising thing was their language;
apart from a few Urdu and English words they spoke Hindi. I thought that I’d
not understand a single word but I understood what they were saying and first
time in my life I found out that Hindi, though, a beautiful language in itself
sounds even more beautiful and elegant when spoken with Urdu. It just felt
really good listening to the characters talk!!
From the beginning only the differences between the leading characters were
obvious, where Kashaf was shown writing her diary in a small house with electricity
bill, water problems and house repair worries, Zaroon was writing on his Apple Mac
book in his very comfortable, luxurious house.
Kashaf’s take on life is cynical, bitter and pessimistic, Zaroon is shown
somewhere bored with his life and in search of new challenges. This typical difference
between characters’ social, economical status and lifestyle is not what
fascinated me. This story, where the guy is very rich and girl is poor is not
something very unique. He’s a rock star; ridiculously confident, pampered by
his parents and outgoing whereas, the girl is very bitter, angry at life. Today
if I switch on my Television I can see numerous stories with the same plot but,
as I said earlier it’s not the plot that I find amusing, it’s the similarities
between the cultures that I’m able to draw that have a spell binding effect on
me.
So now after watching two episodes of this show I’ve come to a decision of
writing about the similarities that I’m going to find on my journey of
exploring the life of people in Pakistan, their religion, festivals, marriages,
views, love stories and college life through this wonderful show Zindagi Gulzar
Hai. I’m hoping to find a lot of similarities and actually have found a lot in
the span of just two episodes. The few that I’ve found are:
Bijli ka Bill (electricity bill)
Hahahaha…well it’s 45 degree Celsius and above in New Delhi and the power
cuts and huge electricity bill is normal due to AC’s switched on 24 hours and
my parents are one of them who keeps on reminding us to save electricity and
switch off useless lights and me being just me…well I’m one those people who
are very careless when it comes to switching off lights and fans. On the
contrary, I’ve this Home Alone Syndrome, when no one is home I switch on all
the lights and fans of my house. I guess electricity bill talks are quite
common in India too.
College admissions
Again a big laugh because I’m right now going through the anxiety and confusion
of getting admission into a good college just like the leading lady of this
show Kashaf. So the children in Pakistan have the same doubts and problems that
we across the border have?? Very interesting!!
Easy life
The other day only I was hanging out with one of my very good friend and
she said “we don’t work very hard because we’ve got everything very
easily in life. We didn’t have to struggle for the luxuries. We’ve taken them
for granted” and as soon as she said these lines I realized that
her thoughts were in perfect sync with Zaroon’s thoughts about his life which
made me reach the conclusion that children and people are almost same across
the border with the same anxieties and views on life.
For today I’m going to finish my post with these three similarities. In my
further posts I’ll be talking about the stereotypes that are shown in this show
and compare them to the ones in India.
Since, my school has ended I’d felt that life had come to an unending stand
still and everything is set in the shades of grey. I was fed up with the same
old shows with the same themes and wondered how could people watch these shows
and follow them so fanatically and realized that in my 14 years by not watching
TV shows I didn’t miss anything.
But, now that my college is going to start next month, I think I can
indulge myself in exploring this beautiful and rich culture which is so similar
to mine but still different through this beautiful show Zindagi Gulzar Hai.
PS: I’m absolutely terrible at Urdu and to be honest I even googled the
meaning of “Gulzar” which means “Garden”, so I’m hoping that in the end of
these 26 episodes I learn a little Urdu.
