There is a certain charisma about Shaista Lodhi: as she arrived at the Hum TV studios, where we were supposed to meet, walking past the reception in a cloud of Elie Saab, she looked every bit the star she is — hair cascading down her ivory shirt in soft waves, her shades setting off her cherry lipstick.

When we see showbiz people on the sets, preened and polished to perfection, we often forget that behind the veneer are real people with lives not much different than those of ordinary people. Perhaps the glam and gloss masks a complex web of emotional trauma.

“I will never forget the moments at the Karachi airport when a channel ran the news ‘Shaista Wahidi ki farar hone ki koshish nakam banadi gayee.’ They were calling me ‘mulzima’. We were off-loaded but got on another flight later,” says Lodhi.


In the calm of a tempest that has passed, Shaista Lodhi spills the beans on being the victim of a media frenzy and witch hunt, and how it feels to be at the receiving end of a hate campaign


“I was broken when I saw people making videos of my children or taking pictures. My kids were so hurt that they started saying, ‘We don’t want to return here. Amma, you will not come back here. What have you done, a robbery or not paid your taxes or murdered someone? Aap ne kya kia hai jo yeh ho raha hai’? I was heartbroken at that point. All my life I had inculcated patriotism in them.”

She paused and then spoke about the crises she went through.

“It was a very torturous time for me — the time span of 14 months when I was made the scapegoat for a war between two channels. My children lost a school year, I had financial difficulties. My mum was in and out of ICU until they decided to completely turn the television off in their home. Her legs stopped functioning and she was reduced to a wheelchair. My parents emotionally blackmailed me into leaving Pakistan, as I wasn’t going to budge,” her voice trembled a little and her eyes watered.

“My children could not meet their father for a long time. Can you imagine how crushing that must have been for them and how it must have affected their personalities? My children knew that I was putting on a brave front. My son put his arms around me and said, ‘Koi massala nahin hai, hum nahin rahenge yahan, jahan ap rahengi, wahin rahenge. If we won’t have our home and stuff around us, never mind, we’ll be good.’ They packed me off to stay with my aunt in South Africa.”

Lodhi has returned to television after a gap of almost a year and half. As a trend-setter for morning shows on two premiere entertainment channels, her show consistently bagged the highest ratings yet people loved to criticise her for the banal and the bizarre — while she was on a roll — live exorcism, kissing a snake, performing a dangerous lion stunt, or marrying off real-life couples as well as celebrities in extravagant and elaborate wedding ceremonies. When she tripped and fell during a song and dance sequence, the clip on Daily Motion has over 80,000 hits alone to date.

But her return to the morning show on Hum Sitaray shows a changed demeanour. Gone are the gaudy colours, elaborate dresses, extravagant jewellery and the spontaneity that bordered on recklessness. As she sat down to talk, she removed her glasses to reveal eyes that used to be earnest, excitable, somewhat eager but were now a little wary, vulnerable and perhaps had a hint of sadness.


“The media becomes so cruel that they do not realise that they destroy people’s lives because of their insensitivity. I was at home in Karachi when I saw the news on TV that I had fled to Qatar. That too, declared by a credible journalist on a credible current affairs show!”


Was it her glamorous career for which she wanted to come back?

“My biggest problem is that I cannot survive outside Pakistan. I love being here. This is where I belong, the people are mine. The girls who stand at the bus stops, the vendor on the street — mujhe pyar aata hai in logon par … apnaiyat aati hai inn ki shaklain dekh kar …. I can only live here the way I want to, why should I go and live somewhere else. Yeh mera mulk hai! I am a Pakistani. Mein kyun kahin aur rahoon?”

Then there is a grouse with the media.

“The media becomes so cruel that they do not realise that they destroy people’s lives because of their insensitivity. I was sitting on my bed at home in Karachi when I saw the news on TV that I had fled to Qatar. That too, declared by a credible journalist on a credible current affairs show!”

Bad times have taught her to extract the positive elements out of anything negative. “The lodhi, lodhi, crises actually bonded my children. Same goes for my parents, brothers, chacha and phuphi.”

But time away was also a time for reflection for Lodhi.

“We grow older and become mature, changes happen and your appearance and style changes,” she explains. “I feel it is important to dress closer to the style of the ordinary women out there so I opted for a more casual look. But if and when there is a show that demands an elaborate, festive look, I will wear what it takes for that theme just like ordinary people do. I am being a little conscious about gestures and words and little nuances also, although my default personality still remains the same.”

This time round, Shaista is treading more carefully, she says. “But there will be times when people will criticise certain things. Sometimes you need to add a little fantasy, a little glamour, because it is a requirement for television. I have control on content and had it previously too but sometimes when a big team is involved and things are happening on a larger scale, things get out of your control. You tend to delegate things and that is when things get overlooked. This time I am working with a small team. Weddings in morning shows have actually reached a saturation point. Producers all over are thinking of new ideas and themes. Programming is now moving towards the host not talking too much but letting the guest talk a bit more, discussions on social issues and profiling people. The idea being that shows should not take a form of theatre.”

How will morning shows fall victim to the ratings circus when it starts again? “Believe me, I heaved a sigh of relief when the producers told me not worry about ratings this time round, despite the fact that all channels are a part of the rat race. They told me that we want you on the screen just doing the show the way you do it. Of course, the ratings pressure trickles down to the host and I have experienced that in the channels that I worked for previously.”

She admitted making mistakes in the past. “I was doing my morning shows like routine until the rat race between channels began for rating. Then I did some trashy shows that I shouldn’t have. A year later, my views about a lot of things has changed. After what I have been through, I have found that I have great faith in God and myself. These hard times now make daily life problems seem very small.”

The weddings got out of control, didn’t they? I asked her. “People love to watch weddings and bash them at the same time. And they will continue to see weddings for even 10 days in a row but keep criticising expensive clothes, ceremonies, songs and just about everything because that is what they love to do. These shows get the highest ratings so what does that mean? When we say one thing but do another, who are we? Just hypocrites!”

Ever thought about acting? “I don’t have the temperament for acting, it is a very time consuming field. I am fine being an anchor but may go into production later on.”

Shaista is inspired by Oprah Winfrey yet Naeem Bokhari remains a huge favourite. “I can watch his show continuously for two hours. His style of blending English, Punjabi and Urdu is inimitable. When you watch his show, you want to hear the guest speak but you also want to hear Naeem Saheb’s question because that is the real work of art.”

Talking about Mubashir Luqman’s recent apology for earlier spearheading the life-endangering campaign against her, she said, “A human being is not created for taking revenge from another. Those are matters God deals with himself. Mubashir called me to apologise. I agree that people feel that he ran a campaign against me and said things that put mine and my family’s lives in danger and that he should have made a public apology. But I discouraged him from doing so because I did not want to drag the whole story out again. We have been through severe trauma not that long ago. If a person realises that he has made a terrible mistake and he actually decides to apologise, then that is fine with me. Not many of us have the courage to accept our mistakes and actually apologise to people whom we have harmed.”

But there is anger and perhaps even resentment at being ‘punished unjustly’.

“I have never believed in negative programming, or getting into other people’s space, or indulging in personal probing or bashing some guest on the show. Whether you are Sahiba, or Meera, or Shahrukh Khan, you are that person in your life, but in my show you will get respect which is a prerequisite of my show. How people are projected on media is their outlook.”

She rejected the advice of near and dear ones to continue living abroad. “People would tell me to cash in on the opportunity for taking asylum or to apply for another nationality. I could get asylum like that,” she said giving me her mobile phone. “Foreign media could have used me to create another victim of social injustice. But that was not what I wanted. I just wanted to come back home to Pakistan. I needed stuff, I would look at how things had disturbed my children’s lives but I could never have taken a step that would give people a reason to create negative publicity for my country. I want my kids to grow up and study here and I want to serve Pakistan.”

Does she enjoy being a celebrity, at the cost of her life being ripped apart by the media? “Being a celebrity is fun but sometimes one’s privacy is really compromised. For instance you are out at a restaurant with family. My kids and I want to spend some quality time and we decide to put away our mobile phones to avoid distractions but then some people want to come and ask some unpleasant questions and that gets a bit annoying.”

Looking back on her first marriage, she said, “I try to look at my split from my first husband positively. I spent 13 years in the relationship and he is the father of my children. Why should it be necessary for people to malign each other just because they don’t have the same outlook or choices in life? Sometimes it is just not possible to continue living together. He is a good father and I want my children to learn some very positive qualities from him. I don’t believe in creating complications by hating people and creating enmities. What is the point of doing that and dragging kids into it as well?”

Her children are her biggest strength. “I prayed for things to get better and to return to Pakistan and I had faith that things would turn around because I had no evil intentions. I was just doing my job according to the given guideline.”

She has recently married her cousin Adnan. “Both my marriages were arranged. I spent a year to get to know my second husband who is wonderful, a true family man. My kids were not only supportive but encouraged me to think about settling down and when they met him and we were all comfortable with each other, I decided to get married.”

Her life is an open book. But was there a little secret somewhere? “I’m a very bad driver, no one knows that about me.” Well, not any more.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 6th, 2015

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