UthRecords Songs as Pakistani Fast Bowlers

"Where does Pakistan keep finding these amazing fast bowlers from? Probably the same place they find great musicians from"
- Ancient Chinese Proverb

Somewhere beneath the madness of the world cup, one of pakistan's most significant cultural moments was gleefully occurring. I am referring to what is currently the second most important TV show in Pakistan - uth records.

Now i realise that some of you might have missed it (catch all of the first season here) And I also know that many of you are still trying to adjust your mind's bleary eyes from the crushing hangover of the world cup. so, in an extravagant display of my magnanimity and confused mindset, i am going to put indulge in some intellectual crossing of these two perennial nashay - music and cricket.

presenting - UthRecords Songs As Pakistani Fast Bowlers.

(please note that the analogies are for the songs, not the artists. thanks.)

Jumbo Jatt - Jahiliya

In the recent past, Sheikhupura has beget two fast men to make it into the national side. A few years ago, during a vist there, i met three men whose primary pursuits involved getting drunk and betting on cricket. they had been avid followers of the domestic circuit for reasons of both passion and money, and they were extremely confused by something. of the two bowlers i speak of, one had been a waif like no-hope who had nothing special about him. a waste of space, they condemned him. the other, had it all.

and yet, mohammad asif was making mark nicholson cream his pants, while rana naved-ul-hasan was getting the thanks-for-coming notes.

it makes sense. rana's seam when he releases the ball is truer than a biblical prophet. he bowls at real pace, yet his slower deliveries are as deceptive as an akmal brother. he ticks every check box a premier fast bowler needs to. and yet.

something isn't there - the sum is not greater, even lesser than the parts.

that's the feeling i get with this song. i can't quite see what's wrong with it. the lyrics are contemporary, the sound is great, the length is just right, and faraz anwar provides some fascinating virtuousity right at the end. and yet.

perhaps it just sounds too much like a lot of other things.

the vocalist is good, but not distinctive. the guitars are awesome, but in an adequate way, if that makes any sense. perhaps the song suffers from hitting the right areas too much, and not providing a moment that surprises you.

don't get me wrong - its not in any way a bad song. it's rather tasty, but in a aalo-gobi kind of way, where you know its filled your stomach, but you're not going to spend the next day dreaming about  it.

Jahiliya - Rana Naved

Usman Riaz - Hum Tum

If you ever talk to any Pakistani fan about fast bowling, particularly those from the 90s, they'll tell you a legend. a legend of a bowler so fast, he made shoaib look pedestrian. a bowler so demonic that lara himself bowed to his greatness. the bowler in question was mohammad zahid, and we'll forever associate him with the refrain - what if? what if his action hadn't caused his spine to shatter, curtailing his career? what if we had speed guns then to measure him, or what if we hadn't spent all our energies taking care of the other express man of that time - shoaib akhtar? what if?

and "what if" is the question that keeps coming back to you in this song.

let's face it - Usman Riaz is a talent of a phenomenal level. its kind of apt that he is such a fragile looking person, because that's the feeling you get from listening to him - someone so precocious and odiously talented feels too good to be true, you fear that this ugly world will devour him.

and perhaps recognizing that, Gumby and Omran were extremely careful with his song. they got the help of the supremely creative Sir Ahmed, they drafted in one of Pakistani pop's best vocalists. they did everything possible to make this work.

but when you listen to the song, you wonder - what if the vocals didn't come in to drown out the gorgeous guitar and piano solos? what if they had gone with a different feel, which wasn't so eager to be catchy? what if usman had just been left to his own devices? what if the collaborator was someone unassuming and unknown, instead of a colossal ego with a beard?

i honestly wanted to refrain from being bitchy in this review, but ali noor's attitude kinda pissed me off. with the utmost respect, the man deserves his ego. but like those tales of senior cricketers snubbing the youngersters in the team they feared would take their places, ali noor doesn't really go out to embrace the wunderkid, instead admonisihing him that the only way to do the song would be his way.

the silver lining of course is that the show has put usman riaz on the map. we all know him now, and perhaps a lot of us would be hungering for something more sublime from him. perhaps we will be more willing to treat him and accept him for the virtuouso he obviously is, and we will make peace that he won't give us catchy songs. i sure as hell hope so, because i don't want to be asking 'what if' with this guy any longer.

Hum Tum - Mohammad Zahid

Athar Sani - Jaane Kyun

"Sometimes in the heart, yes I do wish that I have the same kind of fans that Afridi and Shoaib have, the same fan following. But even then, I am satisfied with the following I have but I am never satisfied with my performance."

Umar Gul is quite an enigma for a Pakistani fast bowler. he has no airs, no tantrums, no controversies. he's a guy who went from here,

to here,

and he still comes across as the most honest, down to earth, sincere person to ever play for our ever-mercurial, self-destructive, attention-whore of a team.

in fact, in many ways he's like an anonymous fast bowler from another country - a bresnan, or an elworthy or a bichel. men who bowl honestly, who always try hard, who hit the right spots, and who you can always depend on. but what makes gul stand out is the fact that he has those amazing yorkers. you might go for a whole spell and spend half of it without seeing anything approaching brilliance, but when he comes good, he reminds you why exactly he deserves many more accolades than he ever gets. he reminds you why he's no forgotten fast men, but rather a proud addition to pakistan's pantheon of pacers.

this song is exactly like that. when you hear it for the first time, or perhaps when you are in a hurry, it sounds like a great song from an indian movie or pop album (which isn't saying much) yet, if you delve a little deeper, its beauty starts to come through. you realise that athar isn't just a good singer, he's a damn good one. you start hearing those subtle strums on the guitar, you feel the synth slowly enveloping you. you realise that the lyrics aren't as obvious as the chorus might have made you think. and you start realising that this song is something special. it won't get the headlines, and it won't make it into the greatest ever lists. yet it will be more than something dependable, something that would require patience. like gul, this song doesn't contract genital warts or smoke pot to get attention. it remains true to itself, and that's a quality that will endear this song to you quite unlike anything else.

Jaane Kyun - Umar Gul

Natasha Ejaz - The Right Way to Fall

I have to admit, i don't have a good analogy for this one. allow me to explain why. the first reaction i get when i listen to this song is how gorgeously smooth it is. there isn't quite another word that explains it as well - this song is like silk-made sharks in an ocean of cream. although i suppose if i am delving into culinary analogies, i should choose something which also reflects how light this song feels. not in a way that is vaccuous, but rather its lightness comes from a sort of whimsical joy it exhibits.

keeping that in mind, the best bowler-fit would be michael holding. if you haven't seen holding in action, click here and understand why umpires would claim they couldn't hear him approach when he bowled because his action was so rythimical it was virtually silent.

but holding's a jamaican. wasim bhai's action was beautifully efficient, but his action was not really the definig feature about him, so that's another analogy that tanks. the closest one that comes to mind is aqib javed.

aqib was a lot better bowler than history allows us to remember, mainly because he was drowned out by the two Ws. but aqib was also all about grace and guile, his approach was simple and yet it masked a ferocity.

in the same way, this song is deceptively simple because it masks an immediate ferocity of talent beneath. along with usman, natasha ejaz stood out as someone voraciously talented in this show. and its quite amazing that she didn't choose to have all of that in display in one go. instead, we got a song which is understated, yet of the kind which justifies why music players have the Repeat One option.

the real beauty of this song is natasha's voice, but you also have to acknowledge the 'techno-hip-hop' bits the producers provided. they complement the song beautifully, and never overstep the mark. trust me on this, you might not immediately shout and scream about this, but this song is something special.

Right Way to Fall - Aqib Javed

RamLal - Naughty Boy

Its almost too easy to find a Pakistani fast bowler who is analogous with a song called Naughty Boy, but let's not rush ourselves.

The bowler in question needs to be a druggie, a rogue, a subversive fellow who hits it with the ladies but isn't quite sure why. A guy who doesn't obviously come across as a problem, yet he is. more importantly, he needs to be a bowler who appears unassuming, and yet has the ability to make you start jumping with joy. someone who has the skills to seduce you without really looking like it.

step forward, Mohammad Asif.

the defining feature (rather memory) of asif's bowling was how the ball would wobble like a nautch-girl delivering thumkas in an item number. you could never tell from the seam which way an asif delivery would go, but it would perform all sorts of sorcery. in another culture, asif would have been a mcgrath - hugely succesful yet no more than a bland metronome. but because asif was pakistani, his bowling would have the same staid pace, but the wickedness of a saasu maa missing her tajori ki chabiyan.

that's what naughty boy is all about. its not in-your-face-rock. instead it has this jazzy, big band kind of feel, which like asif amongst the speedsters, is wonderfully refreshing. the guitars in this song are also delectable, changing tone and rythm deceptively yet decisevely. and the killer, that asif-esque moment of sublime brilliance, is the trumpet, which suddenly takes this song beyond decades and genres. but perhaps you were too busy laughing/being aghast at the subversive nature of the lyrics. its rare for such an honest and casual approach to 'dating' and 'mazay' being seen in the open in pakistan, but naughty boy does it in a way no one else has managed. Naughty Boy is a song that ambles up to the crease and doesn't exert too much effort, and yet its detached coolness kinda blows you away.

Naughty Boy - Mohammad Asif

Yasir & Jawad - Riedi Gul

My first memory of Mohammad Amir was at the World T20 final. till that moment, i'd known he'd existed because i'd seen him in the previous matches. and i knew that pakpassion had been hyping him up like crazy. but then again, they do that with everyone. i hadn't seen anything extraordinary till then. five deliveries changed my mind forever.

let's get the context in here. this was a world cup final. at fucking lord's, which has more history and tradition than the Jews. and at the crease was the small matter of the man of the tournament, the guy they'd just named a new stroke after. and the bowler was an unknown teenager.

this was a moment so huge physicists had to be called in to measure it.

and what did amir do - he siezed it.

no, he didn't just sieze it, he came up with the most surreal spell of momentum shattering bowling i had ever seen on such a huge stage since those two balls at the MCG. and from that moment, you knew that amir belonged. he was young, and raw, and there was a way to go, but he belonged and what's more, he was a superstar. no question.

i think you get my point here. this song, the moment you hear it, the moment the rubab comes in, the moment the beauty of the vocals hits you, the moment that the meethas of the song, the subtleties giving way to the soaring climax, the whole deal HITS you, you know these guys belong. you know these guys are superstars, not celebrities. its the sort of song, which even when you discount for my fetish for pashto vocals, makes you swell up your chest and feel good about living in a time and place where such beautiful music is made. it makes you feel good about yourself, even when all you've done is listen to it. it's that frickin' good.

now let's just hope that this song never meets anyone named mazhar.

Reidi Gul - Mohammad Amir.

Post-Script: Two shout outs remain here. the first is to zeeshan parwez and the program itself, but i'll save that for another post. the second goes out to Gumby and Omran.

its really difficult to truly see just how amazing these two have been for this show. for starters, they're not two-bit hotel lobby musicians, they're absolutely huge stars in their own right. and yet, not only are their egos safely parked elsewhere, they go out of their way to get the kids to relax, and with each of them, they've been brilliant in getting the best ouf of them. that's no mean feat when you consider the constraints of time and the innate pakistani penchant for marroing.

more importantly, they've led brilliantly with their instincts. other than usman riaz, where perhaps there was some overanalysing to blame, each of the songs have been produced but not overproduced. the collaborations are generally inspired - the biggest hit was the trumpet for Ramlal and the tabla for Athar Sani, but the decision to go rather bare with Reidi Gull was just as impressive. with each song, these guys were genuinely eager to get the best thing out there. and for that, a big sabz salam.

why coke studio matters

no one in pakistan has any convictions, but everyone has an opinion.


the great joy of opinions is that you can change them with the wind. convictions require standing by your faith while others heckle you and throw half empty yogurt packs in your direction. opinions require you to be loud, and have an inflated estimation of your own self.

the kind of opinion pakistanis excel in is the one which finds faults in others. it doesn't matter if the opinion they currently hold completely contradicts everything they said yesterday, or exposes their hypocrisies. as long as it makes someone look bad, everyone's in on it.


all societies create heroes only to rip them apart. i know that. look at the brits and jordan.  but in pakistan, we skip the hero part, and start directly from the ripping apart business.


and i know that coke studio is already facing all this. everyone's got a million fucking gripes with the whole show.


this is where i answer them. because pakistan can't afford to have assholes with opinions destroy everything we have worth believing in .


(i) How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Cola


Before we had the Islamic Republic of Blogistan, desi opinions were voiced at a place called chowk.com. In 2004, someone named asif memon wrote a seminal piece with the same title as above, detailing the exploitation and destruction of pakistan's greatest ever rock band, Junoon. those of us who went along till the horrible ride knew the story well - a band that had defied governments and invented its own genres was eventually reduced to dishing out half-assed 'Best of' albums, and shitting out what was easily their worst album ever - Dewaar; an album which graced a large coke logo on its front.

but if Coke only epitomized the sloth that accompanied the once-glorious junoon, Pepsi's channeling of a bloke named Machiavelli throughout the entirety of the Vital Signs career was an even greater sin.


before he became a paranoid politico harping endlessly about military governments from a generation ago, NFP was the authority on music in pakistan. he had an even greater article, also in chowk.com, which traced the whole history of the Signs, including the role of Pepsi. NFP tells of how Pepsi tried to influence the kind of songs the band made, how they forced them to tour endlessly and release albums faster, of how they tried to leverage their position by siding with a band named Awaz instead, and how they eventually led to the destruction of the legendary band.

those of you too young to have spent broken-hearted summers listening to "Chalay thay Saath Saath" may not realise this, but at their peak, Junoon and Vital Signs represented the last line of the kalima. to fuck with that was a sin far greater than blasphemy, and both the cola giants had blood on their hands.


there will be idealistic numbnuts who will exhale whatever their smoking, clear their throats, and wheeze out that "that's what  you get when you sell out maaaan..." such assholes have no idea what it means to be a musician, or an artist in pakistan. when the people refer to you as kanjars, they plan to treat you like them too. take a look at the last days of mehdi hasan to get a feel of what i mean. 

this is a land without record deals, without agents or record labels, without royalties, without any way of making any living off your work. work which the whole fucking country would love to pieces, listen to and gain inspiration from, and use for their own commercial purposes, without ever bothering to treat you anything better than a kanjar. so if some young kids decide to make some money off the back of releasing a debut song which would win a shady BBC prize as the greatest song EVER, can you blame them? if an aging band decides that they have nothing to show for their years of building up a fucking industry on their own, so they might as well take the money and run, can you blame them? 


any true fan couldn't. they had to accept the demise of both these monoliths. but they all could, and did, begin to despise the cola kings. them they could hate with all their might. capitalism had destroyed art. end of.


but this is pakistan. where the greatest socialists are feudal lords, where the greatest writers are penniless drunkards, where the greatest sportsmen are chinese coaches and tory cheerleaders. where the maulvis sell heroin and the kuffar save lives. pakistan is that point where the past and the future collide, and you're never quite sure which one you're living in. so it makes sense that the most seismic event in this era's music has a cola sugar daddy which has radically changed the whole rules of the game. as we say, only in pakistan.

what coke has done is not what people think it's done. the whole concept, its equipment, its vision, its outlook, its feel, its music had been planned up, conceived by a man who is the Godfather of Pakistani pop - rohail hyatt. 


what coke did was find an (almost definitely temporary) solution to a problem that the industry has faced for a long fucking time now. you see, music, like much else in this country, survives on patronage. people are loath to pay for music, and as such musicians have very few options. in the past, the national TV and radio would prove to be a modest source for most. but post-80s, the problem has exacerbated. during the 90s, amazing bands would put together the money for a video, then hope to get enough support to put out an album. but it would rarely be enough. which is why any act which manages to put out a second album in pakistan with the original line up automatically enters the hall of fame. 


as time passed, the profligacy of piracy and the rampant spread of downloading meant that money had to be made through endorsements (see Strings, Haroon et al) through sub-standard indian film songs (see Atif Aslam, Jal, Strings) through dubious charitable and religious causes (see Strings, Najam et al) or by pimping out your music fame for any and everything you can (see JJ, Nadeem Jafri)


in recent times, a strange 'improvement' has come about. a record label owned by a media house which loves to get down and dirty has taken on piracy, and started giving out proper deals. only, the kinds of bonded labor shit that the artists are being put through under their watch means that signing up with them is probably akin to artistic and financial suicide.


so when coke came up with the brilliant idea of giving out, handing out, fucking rewarding the whole country with awesome fucking music for free - nay, paying them to run it - it marked a radical departure from what the whole country or even the whole world had so far come up with. 


and then coke did something even better. they decided not to fuck with the sound, or make it commercial. they let it be, or even if they did meddle, they didn't do it enough to ruin the music.


capitalism and art in a win-win situation. only in pakistan.

(post script: in case some of you decide the pepsi is still evil, think of this. the current wave of music, of which coke studio either represents the peak of, or the final hurrah of, began when bands like Aaroh, eP, Mekaal Hasan, Messiah, Schehzad Hameed etc suddenly hit the scene. the reason they all came to the forefront at the same time was because of an event known as Pepsi Battle of the Bands.)


(ii) "Man, this year's Coke Studio has been a huge downer compared to last year..."


after the first episode this season, safieh came up with the golden rule of Coke Studio. sure it's nice to watch it, but you really need to listen to it to get it. the first time is like many other first times - a disappointing preview of whats to come. now you may think this is obvious, but she was speaking to a group which thought that the Arif Lohar song they'd just heard was too long, and Meesha was underused and off-beat. the song you now know as the official song of the summer. 


which is the whole point. most people who were excited about the show this year weren't even bothered with last year's season. in fact, most of the people who did watch last season never got past the blockbuster first episode, which had atif and ali zafar, and noori collaborating with some faqeer dude. so when season three rolled around, there was a lot of hype because of a particular breed of pakistani - the bandwagoner.

bandwagoners are a dime a dozen in this land. whenever they realise something is obviously cool, they jump on and pretend they were always there to begin with. in order to hide their pagan pasts, they become over-zealous about their bandwagon, eventually turning everyone else off. at which point they disembark and bitch to their heart's content. those are the people who were so fucking excited about coke studio because they knew it was cool. and those are the people who fill blog spaces and twitter spaces and youtube spaces with lamentations that the episode sucks.


well fuck you.


to begin with, the songs are being produced by a guy whose last band came out while most of you were still sperms and eggs, and still rumors of its comeback mark a frenzy. rohail hyatt KNOWS how to make timeless music. so if you think that you're the prick who's figured out his music a few minutes after hearing it, you deserve to die.


if anything, the whole program has taken on an even riskier route this season, and a far more nuanced one. gone are the superstars of pop. their place has been taken by people on the verge of breaking out, people who are already massive on another musical plane, and a couple of true blue legends. there is more genre hopping, and a lot, lot less virtuosity, especially for vocalists. this season has been about moods and spaces a lot more than the last one. and the music continues to get denser and richer.


this is not stuff you can digest overnight. its the kind of music you can walk away from and forget for a decade, until one day it suddenly comes rushing back through the smell of a biscuit soaked in brandy.


mark my words - as the time passes, this season will follow its predecessor in continuing to rise in people's estimation. and by the next season (if there is one) the same people who were bitching now would be harping on about how season three was the one that changed their lives and prompted them to create greater space for spirituality in their drawing room paint color choices.


(iii) "Abida doesn't sound so good - how could Coke Studio fuck that up?"


i realise that most of this can be answered by the rant above. but since this is abida we're talking about, i also realise that she deserves a whole section to herself. i concede that the two abida parveen songs weren't quite what i had hoped for, and in the case of the first, the situation has so far not improved with time. i realise that this is still too early, but there is another explanation.


you see, abida parveen is far bigger than the whole sum of coke studio - all the artists and people behind the scene and all the buzz and everything. she's been a global legend for some time now, she's worked with everyone, she's been covered in every genre, she's been produced a million different ways. while the level of technical and aesthetic production at CS has been unprecedented for most musicians, AP has already had that and more. that's why her songs have not been obvious so far, rather layered around her. 

moreover, sometimes the greatest things coming together doesn't work. there is a bootlegged mp3 of jim morrison singing while jimi hendrix plays guitar. its pretty shitty. 


(iv) "Why I'm proud to be a Burger"


one of this year's participants, Omer Bilal Akhtar had recently published an op-ed in the  Dr. NewsPaper/Mr Blog Aggregator Express Tribune recently by this name. it was pretty shit, and was absolutely crucified by commenters. the ADP frontman eventually wrote a hilarious and heroic defence of his piece, but it was too little, too late.


he had a point though - if burgers keep feeling ashamed and aloof, they'd keep being called out for living in a bubble. and since its assumed that those living in a bubble can't communicate with their society, they should and would be ridiculed.

but if anyone sits through the behind the scenes clips on the show, they'd see long haired, american accented, weirdly dressed, farangi influenced, clueless burgers talking very intelligently about music. and they'd see those same burgers being accorded tremendous respect and love by musicians from the other side of the bridge, the other side of the divide, from the 'real' part of pakistan. all goes to show that if you embrace your talent AND your identity, being a burger is no impediment, and even an advantage for creating something remarkable. 


and the ADP song had one of the most vintage pakistani freak out leads in recent history. so stop bitching on them.


(v) "Fuck yaar, they're just ripping off the originals..."


i could spend a long time on this, but a few lines should do. 'copying' someone's music and lyrics and calling them your own, ala Anu Malik, is cheating. paying homage to greats while composing something original is not cheating of ripping off.


there were a lot of people who did, and continue to, hate Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. these were qawwali connoisseurs who hated his cheap remixes, and resented the fact this his fame was not anywhere in proportion to his ability or talent when compared to his peers and predecessors. and i'll be the first to say it - there are some truly terrible nusrat remixes out there. but the whole point is, if it wasn't for those dishkum-dishkum songs, an entire  generation would have been alienated from one of their most significant art forms. because without nusrat, there was no one who was able to make the conditions which allowed pop-music and casual listeners into the world of qawwali. who allowed us to discover his influences, and love it so much that we began to listen to the unremixed, unedited versions of his own qawwalis, and those of others. the man, on his own, resuscitated the entire goddam form.


that's what coke studio is doing now. sure, you have these snobby friends who will show you the original version of "Chori Chori" or "Chambey di Booti" and piss all over the covers. but what these music puritans and fundamentalists don't realise is that without these cover songs, this conversation about which Reshma version of Chori Chori is the best would have probably never happened. these songs are allowing us a way back into our own pasts, our own identities and selfs, which we would have otherwise lost in the morass of unseen youtube videos. 


(vi) "Oooohhhh, so they're not ALL reactionary, jaahil, media-obsessed, heads-in-the-sand, clueless, greedy, selfish miserable chootias..."


the greatest thing about coke studio is that it proves that if you do something with the best people, with the best intentions and the best efforts to create something according to an aesthetic ideal, it can be popular and widely accepted in pakistan. 


this is no small thing.


there is such little hope for people trying to not dumb themselves down, trying to avoid being popular for popularity's sake, for people interested in saying something meaningful, for people who lack the energy and bitchiness to find a savage way to the top. 


so when you see something that brings together the best people and works brilliantly, you know that its possible. if we put aside our bullshit, if we lay down our ideologies, if we shed our inhibitions and our insecurities, we can do something that stands the test of time.


and that is why coke studio matters.

How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Mullah

(NOTE: There are some truly historical pictures here, and I don't just mean the old Dawn images. I would highly recommend right-clicking and viewing them in full. i lack the tech know how to get them to fit within the margins.)

a pakistani born in the 1980s, and beyond, lives with an acute delusion.

it is not his fault. the country he grew up in had a monolithic response to his questions about history.

we are muslims.
we have always been muslims.
muslims are the best.
we hate india.
indians=hindus=non-muslims=evil bastards.
we are muslims.

this ethos made it the gospel truth that our entire culture, language, history, experience, knowledge has always been proudly muslim, proudly pious and proudly righteous, and nothing else.

thus when the average pakistani confronts questions about his past that seem to make no sense with the monolithic view - such as why was bangladesh created, or why ghalib was an alcoholic - his brain is confronted with nothingness.

nothing that he has been taught accounts for such questions. so he is left with a blank, inoperative mind which he inevitably fills up with delusions.

i used to blame this phenomenon on having just one tv channel, lack of education, lack of access to alternate opinions and a reactionary megalomanic dictator poisoning the country. but the advent of a smorgasbord of news channels, liberal and illiberal politicos, democrats and dictators and even the fucking internet has done jack all in countering these delusions. in fact, it has made monolithic view even stronger, thanks to constant repetition, and shame.

salman rushdie had it right - we are a nation built out of, on, around, within and comprised of shame. i guess the terror we feel of a vengeful god ready to obliterate our sinful asses makes us so ashamed of any action we commit that even if we felt it was ok, we repent it anyways.

one of the joys of being young of course, is that you can get away with not giving a fuck about doing things which you might feel ashamed of later. one of the sorrows of being old is that you often have to face up to the actions of your youth, and try and deal with them.

if you are equipped with a sound knowledge of yourself, of what you believe and your place in the world, you can perhaps deal with such things. if you are someone who has no tangible idea of their identity, and suffers from shame, guilt and amnesia, you become...

a middle aged former pakistani rock star.

exhibit A, of course, is JJ aka Junaid Jamshed. Tazeen has done a great job of ripping into him of late, and as such there is little need to do so here. but JJ, for those of you not in the know, was pakistan's first pop music superstar.

i mean the chicks loved him like he was paul AND john rolled into one. he sang songs about how it was an era for white chicks, how dark chicks were hotter, how his name was written with yours in some random jungle on a tree. he had his hair long, his eyes wide, and fame all around.

then he became fundo. but not just any fundo. he arrived as the messiah of the "Ashamed" - those who live immorally, have acquired wealth immorally, treat their daughters and their wives and their servants immorally yet want to feel like they're good people.

anyone in pakistan who has money, and access to the internet, has immoral stuff going on. like me - my household practices child labor. my ability to speak english gives me access to opportunities others with the same skills minus english speaking ability are barred from. the AC i run, the car i drive, the text messages i send are a massive waste and misallocation of resources, as the inequities in my country are so vast.

the Ashamed are just like me. we suffer from massive delusions. we wish to have something to make sense of their lives, to have an identity. unlike me, the Ashamed find this identity most conveniently in what passes off as religion in this country.

now the prophet, whose ankle lengths, mustache designs, ittar brands and holding-hands-during-prayer examples you all love to mimc was also a dude who roamed around in tattered clothes and lived in a hovel. which can be a bit problematic because we love our AC and our cars and our big house and our servants and our designer clothes and our imported accents.

so what do you do?

you turn to your Messiah. you say, look at him, he is rich, he runs his own boutique of overpriced, ugly clothing. he rakes in the cash for trumpeting potato chips as holy. and yet, he lives the life of the pious. i mean, he must be pious - fucking look at him. he has a beard and he sings naats right before iftar time on geo. that's proper pious. and if he says that being wealthy, and not giving a fuck about the poor, and using charity drives to cleanse your guilt is ok, then it's fucking ok, ok?

ironically, JJ himself turned to this life when confronted with nothingness in his mind. according to NFP, once the signs had become massive, JJ started getting lonely, confused and directionless. it didn't stop him from milking his fame for all it was worth, but you know, he was lost.

He went about as a man tormented by a sense of burdensome guilt; a guilt about something no-one, not even himself was able to define

and perhaps when he grew older, and felt ashamed at his sexual liaisons, his youthful abandon, his lack of responsibilities, he felt the need to make up for it. if he was normal, he might have done something worthwhile. instead he became who he is.

and he's not alone.

exhibit B, najam shiraz is a proper skitzo - at one time he was making videos showing severed penises, then he became a spokesperson for the vaguely cultish Ar-Rehman-Ar-Rahim. then he became a musician again. then a mullah. then sang a shit song whose melodramatic video tamely discussed rape and incest.

then there's Ali Haider, whose entire career was based on songs which had the gravitas of a sugar-free souffle. all his songs had him doing vaguely suggestive dance moves and singing about vaguely suggestive romantic dalliances. it was enough to get him laid, and little else.

when he grew up, he felt ashamed of the absolute shit he had put out in the world. had he been from somewhere else, he would have sought to redress it with better artistic output. in the land of shame, he came on alim-online to announce he was now a mullah.

so what does it mean? all pakistani rock stars, and all pakistanis, are doomed to being born again muslims who are at the cutting edge of hypocrisy.

NO.

there has been one badass mothafucker who has been rocking out ever since this whole shit began. he fronted the greatest paki band ever. and then when it became shit, he reinvented himself as a solo artist who actually put out music that was good.

ali azmat fucked them models, snorted that coke, spewed the bullshit, acted like a dick, took the money and ran - but he always kept rocking, and he never sold out.

wait a minute.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!