Giving Kids a Chance

Whoever has seen the viral video of children singing their hearts out, and beautifully at that, at Lahore’s Surtaal Music Academy, must have felt really happy about it. It was a heartening sight. That’s exactly what our children need. In a warm gesture, vocalist Asim Azhar visited the academy, met with the sureelay [sweet-sounding] kids and offered them something really nice — he requested them to open for him at his recent gigs in Faisalabad, Lahore and Islamabad, which were held between November 6 and 8! Well done, Asim A. Your contemporaries should follow suit.

Ali’s Dare

A web-series titled Gangs of Khorasan, helmed by Hamza Ansari, is on the anvil. It has a pretty decent cast, including Ali Zafar, Humaima Malick, Feroze Khan and Sonya Hussyn. These days, Ali Z is seen focusing more on his singing career, so this is a bit of a pleasant change for his admirers. Talking to a journo, the singer-cum-actor said he’d been waiting for a character that would take him out of his comfort zone. “Out of all the scripts I read, Bostan Khan was the one that dared me. And I don’t walk away from a dare.” Well, we’ve known that for the last eight years.

Smelling the Coffee

Pop star Harry Styles now knows New York better, and he ain’t completely cool with it. He has recently finished his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden. During Halloween, as he told his audience in the penultimate show of the residency, he went out and got spooked not by anyone’s costume, but by the price of coffee. “It is a cappuccino. It can’t be $10, it can’t be. The scariest thing about this Halloween is the price of caffeinated beverages in this city. Astronomical. It’s out of control.” Well, coming from a super-rich guy like you, Harry S, it sounds strange… like watermelon sugar.

Baby Philosophy

Andrew Garfield and Monica Barbaro have been seeing each other for a couple of years. Those who know the pair say they’re going stronger and stronger with every passing day. It is in this connection that, when the former Spider-Man sat down for an interview for GQ, he was asked about whether he wanted to have children. His answer? “I look at my friends who do have kids and the beauty of it obviously, but also the struggle of it and the inescapable agony of young people’s longing to belong to the screen, rather than longing to belong to the real world. That being said, there is that kind of biological imperative, and there is that just kind of instinct, and there’s an image that you live with for so long — I have, anyway — of the concept of being a dad and going on that adventure.” Phew! That’s more tangled and sticky than Spidey’s web!

Brand Recall

On November 5, Southwark Crown Court in London found actor and comedian Russell Brand guilty of rape and sexual assault. The Arthur actor was convicted on one count of rape and three sexual assaults. As expected, he denied all of that, arguing that the referenced incidents were either consensual or that they had been reinvented or re-imagined. However, on November 9, he was sentenced to 10 years and six months in jail. In his sentencing statement, the judge called Russell B a “sexual predator” who allowed himself to think that he would not face any consequences for his actions thanks to his fame and that he had displayed “staggering arrogance.” Russell B, tell you what… Rest assured, your stint in the slammer will neither be imagined nor invented.

Munna Bhai Again!

All Munna Bhai MBBS fans, if you wanted to see Munna Bhai and Circuit together one more time, well, your wish is about to come true. The third instalment of the Munna Bhai series, directed by Rajkumar Hirani, is expected to go on sets next year. Although no fixed dates have been announced for the filming of the Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi starrer, news is that the filmmaker has come up with a subject and roped in writer Farhad Samji to work on the script. The last Munna Bhai film — Lagey Raho Munna Bhai — was released in 2006, so if the third part hits cinema screens, it will be after two long decades. All we can say is: phir se lag jao [go for it, again], Munna Bhai!

Published in Dawn, ICON, November 15th, 2026