Gender-Neutral View

Director Nadeem Baig is getting accolades for his TV serial Meray Paas Tum Ho. He is also the man behind the mega hit films Jawani Phir Nahin Aani (both the original and the sequel) and Punjab Nahin Jaungi.

As it always happens, with the good comes the bad. His play is being criticised, too, for a line said by the character played by Humayun Saeed, when he calls his wife “do takay ki aurat [a two-bit woman].”

Answering a question about it to Samina Peerzada on her talk show, the director reasoned you cannot judge the dialogue with a gender-biased view. Humayun’s character is a human being and the director feels if the roles were reversed, no one would have an issue. Sure, but it was uttered by a man’s character, Nadeem B. And that’s the issue, apparently.

Qubool Hai

On December 28, the celebrity A-list jorri of the Pakistani acting fraternity, Yasir Hussain and Iqra Aziz, got married in a pretty glitzy but traditional ceremony in Karachi. A decent number of their showbiz friends, including Sajal Aly, Ahad Raza Mir and Hania Amir, attended the wedding (we were expecting a bigger number). Two days prior to it, the couple had their mehndi held with a great deal of festivity, whose video clips went viral in cyberspace. Congratulations to the couple! Suno people, Yasir H has got his chanda.

The (Re)proposal

Strange things happen in our world on a regular basis. One such thing transpired recently. Rock band Imagine Dragons’ frontman Dan Reynolds had announced last year in April that he and his wife Aja Volkman had parted ways seven years after they tied the nuptial knot (they had had three daughters by that time). In January 2019, he said that the two were trying to ‘rebuild’ their relationship, and in October they had their first baby boy (is that what rebuilding meant?). And on December 25, he re-proposed to his wife by going down on his knee, and she accepted in the blink of an eye. So, what if they decide to split one more time? Would that mean another addition to the family?

Sensitive Deepika

All of us are eagerly waiting for the release of Chhapaak, a film in which Deepika Padukone is playing the part of an acid attack victim. Some of us would have thought that it’s just another role that the actress is essaying, and will do wonders with it because she’s good at what she does. Well, playing it has taken a heavy toll on her.

She has said in an interview that, during filming of the story, her depression returned (we all know about the depressive phase in her life that she’s openly talked about in the past). So much so that she needed to have her counsellor on the sets of the movie. Uff! We have nothing but respect for Deepika P.

Wolf of Shahid Kapoor

We can’t decide whether Shahid Kapoor, as he grows older, is getting more and more philosophical or vapid. The actor’s latest assignment is a project called Jersey, for which he is in Chandigarh for the last few weeks, saying his lines and doing action sequences in front of the camera. On Christmas Eve he posted a strange message on social media: “There are two wolves that live within us all. One is kind and full of light. The other dark and negative. The wolf you feed is the wolf that wins.” Well, Shahid K, we guess you fed the latter for your last movie, Kabir Singh. And you can’t help it.

Stolen Del Rey

Pop star Lana Del Rey’s family is in distress. Her sister Chuck Grant is a renowned photographer. On December 27, the singer made the following appeal on her Twitter account: “This week, family mementos including my sister’s entire retrospective was taken. I’d love to encourage whoever took it to please consider sending any of the scans of her previous work back to us for a no-questions-asked reward. The work we lost can’t be reproduced and exists nowhere but where it was.” It’s sad. It has to be mentioned though that the thief is pretty art-savvy. S/he, perhaps, wanted to steal a few of her songs, but that can’t be done, so s/he went for a more tangible option.

Published in Dawn, ICON, January 5th, 2020