THE departure of an Abdul Qadir or Abid Ali can divert you from a pragmatic, matter-of-fact world and let you revisit one where style once mattered — but only if you are fully familiar with the Pakistani connotations of the word ‘style’, which is much larger than the term as it is usually understood. Warning: in case you are already sold to the advice of your early days’ editor who frowned at the mere mention of the word ‘style’ and deemed it irrelevant to newspaper parlance, you are unlikely to enjoy this trip.

I tried watching an episode or two of the famous television play Waris as a little personal tribute to Abid Ali, who passed away recently and whose personality had once held us youngsters in great awe. Before the story made an impression, long before the ‘content’ or the substance of it sank in, it was the style that took over this second-time viewer once again.

Acting? Who was thinking about it as Abid Ali in his role as Dilawar slowly and quietly carved a place for himself in the dramatic rural setting crowded by people blessed with peculiar and pronounced mannerisms — including a deliberate and stylised body language — of their own. It is indeed a mela or little fair of various styles competing with one another, each vying for the loudest applause from the audiences. ‘Style’ is used here once again in its varied meanings as learnt in a cricket ground or a Lahore bazaar or at school where we discussed everything from handwritings to how someone we admired held his cigarette.

Waris is a melting pot of personalities with loud, competing gestures and manners of speech. There’s Shujaat Hashmi as Maula Dad with his queer little hiccup.

We live in a country that has a record of assigning bigger tasks and according greater status to cricket captains who once won us matches.

There’s Firdaus Jamal in the mould of your conventional young landlord who indulges in vice to the point where he can easily be placed in the company of the wayward. There’s Niaz Ali (Aurangzeb Leghari) who is apparently so much in love with the cuffs of his shirt that he is busy adjusting them obsessively. There’s Uzma Gilani with her saris and low-tone presence that threatens to douse all the thunder around her, and then, ultimately, there’s Mahboob Alam in the once-in-a-lifetime role of Chaudhry Hashmat who no one comes even close to dominating.

Waris is a most populated play — making a viewer wonder if its directors and the writer had got all the names and their little stories always right. The stock characters are in time challenged for moments of fame by a variety of supporting cast, each having grown in the particular PTV tradition — ie style.

If lending the characters life and distinction by assigning them particular on-screen habits and refrains was a favourite PTV method from among the reality-school versions at its disposal, Abid Ali, with his natural personal charm, and his co-stars in Waris are a perfect example of how effective the technique turned out to be.

And since the play came not too long after the overthrow of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, it was bound to get its share of romantic mentions — like this one here — about an age (and a style) that was to be gradually, but surely, replaced with more matter-of-fact means and offerings.

To someone jealous about old-world charms and fads, things have generally come a long distance from that moment in time when Abdul Qadir — again someone whose arrival on stage coincided with the coming of Gen Ziaul Haq — danced his way to the crease.

When people today present someone like Steve Smith as a model of excellence in the modern world, they are furnishing a very successful, though unattractive, example of the progress supposedly made. The Aussie has been likened to Donald Bradman, which is OK since, despite his permanent place in the hall of fame, the great Sir Don had seldom made it to the favourites list on the basis of the way he scored his runs, as opposed to how many he scored.

Smith has been dubbed a run machine, as had been other celebrated batsmen before him. This would have been quite alright if stylists or stylish practitioners had also been around in good numbers to compensate for this stress on the scoreboards.

The truth is that space for the so-called artists is shrinking, unless you are a genius named Steve Smith and can perform the incredible feats of pulling the world’s fastest bowlers to the square leg boundary from a yard outside the off stump.

There have certainly been improvements in the scorecard since Abdul Qadir made his debut in that dull, starless and result-less three-Test series against England in 1977.

An effort to somehow retain the interest of the audience is at its peak and it is getting good results. So forget the lessons about playing in the ‘V’. Forget the one-eyed stance that was quite the rule at the nets in the pre-Javed Miandad era. Focus on results. Have the great Misbah-ul-Haq play doggedly for you once again, as your coach, as your chief national selector as well.

Shoaib Akhtar may have had his share of the no balls during his career as a cricketer and then as a frank commentator on the games but here he is only guilty of raising a valid question: why not give the more successful Pakistan captain in recent years the charge of the whole Pakistan Cricket Board? Indeed, given the urge to concentrate powers in the hands of one person — a saviour — why not make the able cricketer the chairman of the PCB? After all, we live in a country that has a record of assigning bigger tasks and according greater status to cricket captains who once won us matches.

Shoaib Akhtar may not always be right in his understanding of things. But he is candid and elaborate like Abdul Qadir. He is an old-style practitioner betraying the message by his mannerisms long before the actual delivery.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2019