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An awards night at the Indus
The Indus TV Network’s first awards show was a good effort. It was also perhaps the first programme by any private television channel to recognize acting, technical, artistic and creative talent in the country.
However, that doesn’t mean that the Indus awards did not have their fair share of organizational problems. The awards ceremony, held at a Karachi hotel on January 22, awarded nominees selected from the network’s music and news channel, as well as its flagship Indus Vision and Indus Plus channels. The show began two hours late, which is probably not something all that unexpected for this kind of event in Pakistan. There was the usual chaos initially, especially around the main entrance to the hall where the ceremony was being held.
While walking in, one could see the place brimming with several young, waif-like girls — a dead giveaway that this was a programme which couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the official TV channels. The awards began after a woman made at least three or four announcements asking the guests — most of whom were sitting by then anyway — to take their seats so that the ceremony could begin.
The head of the network, Ghazanfar Ali, got the ball rolling by coming on stage, which had a giant silver replica of the ‘I’ which Indus has adopted as its logo, and a couple of reproductions of figurines from the Indus Valley civilization. After his brief speech, the awards distribution began. Some of the categories, such as best cooking show, sounded quite limited as it seemed as if there were probably not enough programmes in that particular category. Naheed Ansari was nominated along with Marina Khan and Urooj Nasir with Marina Khan winning.
The other thing to note was that almost all the winners personally thanked Indus’s head honcho, Ghazanfar Ali. Now, though this seemed all right at first, especially when it came to the technical awards for which there was no pool of nominees, after a while it appeared as if everyone was out to butter up their boss. Besides, not a single person thanked the jury — and no wonder really because the audience was never told that the awards had been selected by a jury of five people (for the record, their names are Jamiluddin Aali, Kamal Ahmed Rizvi, Talat Husain, Iqbal Ansari and Khursheed Hyder).
One saw Tauqir Nasir coming in slightly late and standing around looking for a seat. There was also a problem with the seating, although the idea behind the format was a good one. Instead of the usual rows of chairs facing the stage, the organizers had opted for tables of ten. The only problem with this was that half the chairs had their backs to the stage and for those who were sitting on the outer edges of the table, this was a problem. A better option would have been to have fewer chairs per table so that everybody could get a proper view, without risking whiplash.
The awards distribution had breaks with musical performances marking each division. Hence, there were several musical performances, including a very good one by Fuzon at the end. Others who sang included Najam Sheraz, Hadiqa Kiani, Waqar Ali (Sajjad Ali’s younger brother) and classical singer Hamid Ali Khan. Hamid Ali sang a badly re-mixed version of a well-known song of his, with a group of boys dancing to the tune in the background. Apparently, having a bunch of young, scrawny men prancing on stage, usually without the slightest hint of rhythm, is the fad these days. First of all, there is no reason for them to be there, and even less so when they do not happen to be either good dancers or good looking women. Unfortunately, the group chosen to dance at the awards went a step further and thought that they were the Whirling Dervishes. This, one says, because earlier in the show, when Fiza came out to perform, the same group of young men came on stage, wearing the same kind of clothes as the dervishes and trying to whirl round in a similar way.
Some guests were heard saying that it seemed Indus wanted to give just about everyone an award. It did seem like that because there were a lot of categories and just about every face one sees on the network’s channels was in line to receive an award. However, the one person one would have expected to definitely bag an award — Mani (best known for his in-your-face shows where he goes out on the streets and talks to all kinds of people, notably sheepish looking traffic cops) — narrowly missed out. The fact that there were far more award categories than award presenters (some did not turn up and the organizers did not know this beforehand, leading to some awkward pauses) meant that one presenter was asked to stay on stage to give half a dozen awards, examples Mushtaq Yousufi and Haseena Moin. At times, the organizers also placed some unknown young women along with the presenters to hand out the awards. They were probably there to play an ornamental role, breaking a smile or two — as would the tall models dressed in flowing gowns at the Oscars or the recent Golden Globes. It would have been a better idea to keep them anonymous instead of announcing their names (a certain ‘Maiya’ seemed a particular favourite of the organizers).
The rest of the awards went something like this: The best talk show host was Angeline Malik for Black and White who beat out Atiqa Odho and Mohsin Khan. The best fashion magazine host was Iffat Omar beating out Aisha Toor and Frieha Altaf. The best fashion magazine director was Farhan Nadeem; the best music programme host Sofia Ahmed; the award for shows and events director went to Fariha Chapra and the award for best shows and events host to Adnan Siddiqui. Wajahat Malik bagged an award in the infotainment category as director of his travel show, a very good one actually, a must-see for trekking enthusiasts and something that should be publicized by our embassies abroad to would-be foreign tourists. He came on stage and dedicated his awards to the people of the areas of Pakistan where his programme took him to, saying that they were by far the most hospitable in the world. Wajahat also made a point of sarcastically taking a
(completely justified) dig at the bureaucracy, which he said had made life extremely difficult for his programme. Bunny won for best host in the infotainment category.
Several awards for technical excellence were also given and these included Shahab Noorani and Irfan Ahsan, graphic designer Aqeel, set designer Irfan Ahmed, best cameraman Sajjidul Islam, for make-up Sofia Khan and best editor Fida Husain. Najm-uz-Zaman received an award for presenting the Indus Tributes programmes. The best sitcom director award went to Samina Ahmed; best sitcom writer to the brilliant Farooq Qaiser (of Uncle Sargam fame); best sitcom actor to Ahmed Butt (who made a moving acceptance speech affectionately calling Samina Ahmed ‘aunty’); best sitcom actress to Nadia Afghan (one nominee, Shehnaz Pervez, was sitting next to this writer and said that she didn’t need such awards to validate her acting talent and that it was unfair to group her — a comedienne — with young heroines); best female supporting artist to Nadia Hussain; best male supporting artist to Khayyam Sarhadi; best female artist to Atiqa Odho and best male artist to Faisal Qureshi.
Zafar Meraj got the award for best writer of a single play. His play’s protagonists were actors posing as eunuchs and his speech was worth listening to because he spoke passionately about the plight of eunuchs saying that a society like ours left them no choice but to act the way they do, for which they are ridiculed. At least, he said, his play did not ridicule or judge them. Achievement awards were also given to Nadeem, Uzma Gilani, Talat Hussain, Bushra Ansari (she really needs to do something about her hair), Shafi Mohammad and Nasir Tehrani, leading a couple of people to comment that most of these great artists had done their best work not on Indus but on PTV.
Best individual play director went to Sarmad Khoosat; best serial writer Naila Ansari and the best serial director award was given to Mehreen Jabbar.
Overall, one can say the ceremony was a good one, setting a precedent for the other channels to have their own awards shows in the future. The Indus Network awards show will be aired on Eid day at 9:30pm. The programmes’s executive producer was Zaheer Khan, who also handled other production duties along with Iqbal Ansari and Ghazanfar Ali.
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