Exploring Life across Border

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.