THE GRAPEVINE

Published August 19, 2018

MUSIC SANS BORDERS

Some of us need to take a chill pill. On Aug 9, Atif Aslam was performing in New York at Pakistan’s Independence Day Parade. In between the songs that he chose to sing on the occasion, he also crooned a track Tera Honay Laga Hoon from the Indian film Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani. This did not go down well with quite a few of his Pakistani fans who trolled him on Twitter for singing an Indian song while celebrating Pakistan’s national day.

Atif A responded gracefully by saying that the sabz jhanda (green flag) is his identity. I mean, come on. It’s music, guys, and he is after all the original singer of the song and a Pakistani. Are we going to pretend he hasn’t ever sung outside of Pakistan?


DIPLOSPEAK

Make no mistake: Kangana Ranaut has evolved into one intelligent gal. Unlike her salad days (though she might argue that they haven’t gone anywhere), the actress now weighs her words before uttering them.

When asked by a media man about the current disturbing political goings-on in India (read lynchings) and her ambitions as a politician, she replied, “Politics shouldn’t be a career. I feel if someone like me wants to join politics, then first of all they have to achieve detachment … and give up one’s home, family and children to serve the country … Right now, I’m so successful that I don’t want to make a career elsewhere.”

Kangana dear, there’s enough politics in Bollywood, anyway. In case, you do decide to join the tricky field, you’ll be well-trained for it. Just sayin’…


J-LO SPECIAL

Now that’s what you call a real superstar! These days Jennifer Lopez and her beau Alex Rodriguez are vacationing in Italy. While at a restaurant in Capri, J-Lo was listening to the live band there. Suddenly she got up, stood on a table with the microphone in her hand and started singing Let’s Get Loud.

It had all those who were at the restaurant gather around the artist and clap or dance to the song. She herself danced a bit. The impromptu concert was a priceless moment for her surprised fans. You could call it J-Lo’s J-High moment.


CS SE SHIKWAH

So, the first episode of the much-awaited Season 11 of Coke Studio has been aired. It has to be said that, while the rap song performed by Lyari Underground and Young Desi was a nice little departure from the usual CS offerings, the effort to musically present Allama Iqbal’s masterpiece Shikwah left much to be desired.

For starters, the inimitable Farid Ayaz got one refrain (radeef) from the poem wrong in the recording: instead of saying kis ne, he sang tum ne. Not on. The producers should have stopped the recording then and there, which shows laxity on their part in dealing with great works of art. Then the composition was so loud and linear in terms of progression that it failed to capture the nuances of the different stanzas written in different tones.

Perhaps the metre in which the poem is written confused the composers into thinking that it should be sung without variation. This makes one wonder why the Studio finds itself compelled to compose works of difficult Urdu shayeri when it seems not to have an understanding of the finer points of poetry.


CANINE LOVE

Varun Dhawan comes across as a carefree young man who likes to have fun both off and on screen. Well, a few months back his insightful acting in an offbeat film October changed serious cine-goers’ views about him, and now something involving a dog has further endeared him to his fans.

Here’s the story: Varun D found a dog outside the building compound where he lives. He took the dog, sheltered her and fed her for three days. In the meantime he posted a message with a picture of the animal on his Instagram page requesting his fans to help him reunite the ‘lost or abandoned’ dog with her family. We don’t know whether he succeeded in doing that, but what we do know is that he has earned himself many more admirers than he previously had.


CRYBABIES

It made all the Beliebers in the world terribly worried when they saw a picture of Justin Bieber holding his head and crying, sitting next to his fiancée Haley Baldwin, who too was seen holding her head in the photo.

Well, folks, the pop star has cleared the air about the disturbing image.

In a video message to his fans he has said, “You’ve got good days and you’ve got bad days … It’s not real if it doesn’t have bad days.” You betcha, Justin B! No matter how rich and famous you become, and how dogged you may be by paparazzi, everyone deserves some privacy and everyone is human after all.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 19th, 2018

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