Saba Ahmed talks to the queen of Pakistani comedyÂ
Of late, there has been a rush of new blood in the entertainment industry: pretty young things, male and female, exploding on the screen on the most-watched channels in the country. But how many of them can we truly call artists? Production houses enlist whole teams of specialists to primp and prep their stars in order to make them appealing public figures. Hina Dilpazeer, however, is in a fierce league of her own, a beloved television star who has earned every drop of the respect she is accorded.
Hina ji is probably best known for her role as Momo, Ayesha Omar’s absent-minded saas in the megahit TV comedy, Bulbulay. She is equally famous for having played multiple characters in Quddusi Sahib Ki Bewa (QSKB) and as Saeeda in Burns Road ki Neelofar. These have been critically acclaimed dramas that I have particularly enjoyed. This multi-talented star is so incredibly versatile that she has been able to pull off everything from dark to laugh-out-loud comedy.
With her latest drama now on HUM TV, “Mithu Aur Appa,” I called up Hina to ask the many questions on my mind since I first saw her act. Her process is fascinating. Being a painter, poet, and musician — all in addition to being an actress — allows her to glide across various artistic disciplines. Her interplay of characters in QSKB is incredible to watch: she performs seven completely different characters in one episode. Not only that, she also does the clothes and makeup for each of these characters, some that are much older and some that are even transgender. She tells me, “It’s important for characters that are related to look like one another. So, for example, Rooh Afza’s mother should look like her.” With QSKB, reading the script made Hina laugh, not an easy thing, she says, for a script to do on its own. She loved the fun lines and all the old Pakistani songs in the drama. “When I was younger,” she told me, “I would watch films in the cinema, I didn’t really even understand at that age, but Shabnam’s close-up always remained in my mind and once I remember asking my mother why this lady was doing all these antics on screen and everyone quickly shushed me up to let them watch the film. But the image stayed with me.”
Bulbulay was a riot, not just for us, the audience, but also, Hina tells me, for those making it. “There is one sitcom which we produce and show to the public and there is another one going on behind the scenes!” says Hina of the hilarity that ensued behind the camera. For comedy, it is very important for the comedian to not be laughing themselves, she says. “When there is something really funny, I have to request the team to let me laugh first, to let out all the giggles, or else I am unable to perform!”
She does all the clothes and makeup for each of her characters, some that are much older and some that are even transgender
The delightfulness started with the script she was given by director Mazhar Moin and writer Fasih Bari to whom she credits the success of QSKB. “It’s totally a writer’s effort,” she says. Given the deeply intelligent nature of the dialogue, at once dark and humorous, I would have to agree with her. As Hina read the script for QSKB, she began developing a series of sketches. As she drew the sketches of each of her characters, she began enacting their respective dialogues. In a field where actors are given lines to rehearse minutes before the camera rolls, Hina’s meticulousness stands out. She is lucky, she says, to have such a melodious syncing of frequencies with her friends and creative collaborators Fasih and Mazhar.
“I think Fasih Bari is the one writer from the whole subcontinent whose writing I like to work with,” said Hina. His stories, his characters and their back-stories are all cohesively linked, she says. Then Hina Dilpazeer comes along and possesses these characters to their fullest, I say, to which she laughs.
‘When there is something really funny, I have to request the team to let me laugh first, to let out all the giggles, or else I am unable to perform!’
Having got her start writing for a newspaper, Hina was immersed in literature and the arts while growing up. After coming to Karachi, she went first to Radio Pakistan. She acted as a program director for a special transmission where she wrote and conducted shows.
Eventually, she was accosted by Fasih and Mazhar, and magic began to happen. But it wasn’t as effortless for Hina as it seems to us on screen. “Initially, it was difficult for me to face the camera,” she says. “I wasn’t used to it, and when I was in front of so many big names, it gave me fever. It was difficult to remember one’s lines.” She debuted with Burns Road Ki Neelofar, a charming yet sad take on the trials and times of young girls living on Burns Road in Karachi. Since then, there has been no looking back for her.
Hina performs seven completely different characters
in one episode
The key to success is enjoying what one does, she says. Whether it’s painting or acting, Hina throws herself into her work. Lucky for her, she gets paid to do what she loves. She is currently working on a book about the various experiences she has had playing a host of roles on QSKB. As our conversation was winding down, she told me, “Love is the greatest energy in the universe. If you don’t love what you do, you can’t pursue anything creative.” Wise words from a real artiste.
Shafaq Imtiazi on why Chicago and Lahore are sister cities
One of the biggest decisions I’ve made in the last five years was to leave Lahore and move to America with my parents. One of the best decisions I’ve made in the same five years has been to move into my own apartment in Lahore’s official U.S. ‘Sister City,’ Chicago.
Leaving Lahore — my friends, my family, Defence Market, shaadi season, Hot Spot, load-shedding, rickshaws, ghar ka khana — was daunting because I was moving post-college-graduation to a new country without the kind of pre-constructed social framework and safety net provided by school, college, or khaandaan. “Where will I meet people?!” I remember asking a close friend as my departure date approached. “Relax,” she said, “one day you’ll strike up a conversation with someone in a grocery checkout line or something, totally hit it off and bam — new friend.”
I never did make a random grocery checkout line friend, but it wasn’t the social tundra I had dramatically envisioned. Forty minutes from the quiet little suburb we settled in was the bright, bustling, colorful city of Chicago. Ethnically diverse, culturally explosive, climactically completely unpredictable, Chicago was exciting. After a couple of years in the suburbs, I moved into a cozy little studio in the trending, café-filled, farmer’s-market-having, music-festival-hosting Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square. It’s accented with little bits of Pakistan — Kashmiri embroidered pillow covers, a coffee table book of recipes from along the Grand Trunk Road, a lamp from Bajwa’s in Liberty, a very touristy toyrickshaw I bought once in Islamabad (and probably paid way too much for because I never was able to haggle like a proper Pakistani). All definitely worth the now hour-long daily commute to my design engineering job in the suburbs. And with rush hour traffic, that is saying something.
How to describe the Midwestern metropolis that is Chicago? The city has acquired a slew of monikers throughout history. The Windy City, the City of Big Shoulders, that Toddlin’ Town, and more recently the Chi, Chitown, Chi city… but when it comes down to it, most Chicagoans will settle on the sentiment that Chicago is just its own kind of beast. The phrase “Lahore Lahore hai” comes to mind. And that sentiment is not the only thing that truly makes Chicago and Lahore ‘sister cities.’ Both revel in vibrant cultural expression through art, architecture, music and cuisine.
A ten minute walk down my quiet Latin-American street brings me to my neighborhood Sunday Farmer’s Market (Itvaar Bazaar and then some!)
The architecture is the most visual representation of the love affair between the old and the new that pervades most aspects of the city’s culture. A large number of buildings were destroyed in ‘The Great Chicago Fire’ in 1871, so there was a huge architectural push driven by necessity. The city had the opportunity to actually rebuild instead of revamping and retrofitting itself as architectural technology progressed. The first modern skyscrapers were born. Architects philosophized, discarding precedent and embracing verticality and steel reinforcement while still celebrating intricate exteriors of heavy brick and stone. The diverse signature styles of the likes of American Frank Lloyd Wright, the German Mies Van der Rohe and the Bangladeshi-American Fazlur Khan pepper the city in the old Rookery Building, apartments along the scenic Lake Shore Drive, and of course the Willis and John Hancock towers. The result today is that one routinely sees ultra-modern steel and glass skyscrapers alongside stone-pillared brick-and-mortar structures sometimes that still have gargoyles on them.
The exciting and sometimes provocative nature of the architecture is immersive in nature. I see it everywhere I go. A great example is Millennium Park by the lake, one of my favorite summertime haunts. I sit at the center of the acoustically innovative Pritzker Pavilion watching the tourists taking pictures of themselves in the reflective surface of the giant bean (officially: the Cloud Gate), behind which rise the buildings of Chicago’s skyline. An ant’s-eye view.
A stroll away from the pavilion is yet another set of my personal Chicago favorites — the museums. The Museum of Contemporary Art, the Adler Planetarium, the Field Museum of Natural history and the Shedd Aquarium. But I don’t experience these in the usual 6-hour-walk-from-one-exhibit-to-the-next kind of way. These museums are their own social scene. When I want to check out the planetarium, I go to “Adler After Dark,” an after-hours event open to the public and full of special interactive exhibits, themed drinks and hors d’oeuvres and a killer view of the skyline from the observatory on the lake. Who said museums have to be boring? The art museums host similar events regularly, and it is the most fun way of taking in the art and/or science.
I walked into a restaurant to have dinner with some friends. There was a hardcore punk concert in full swing in the back room
While I love downtown Chicago, it’s the surrounding neighborhoods that tourists never make it to that harbor the real charms of the city. And one of the biggest of those charms: the food. Chicago is home to some really exciting chefs and restaurants that create unique gourmet burgers, innovative tapas, classic deep-dish pizza — but you don’t have to go to them to engage in fine foodie activity. A ten minute walk down my quiet Latin-American street brings me to my neighborhood Sunday Farmer’s Market (Itvaar Bazaar and then some!). Here I can buy fresh ingredients for my own cooking endeavors, and I can also get favorites from local restaurants. Local bakeries showcase fresh bread baked in the myriad ways of the baker — baguettes, croissants, regular loaves, pastries, donuts (actually fried, not baked), cream puffs. The (arguably) best vegan restaurant in the city is selling vegan-ized burger patties. There is cheese. There are home-made salsas. Kitchen experiments are inevitable. My Sundays belong to this market for the rest of the summer.
There is a whole lot more to Chicago than I can fit in just this article, but I can’t not mention the really vibrant music scene. Punk, rock, jazz, hip-hop, soul, classical – hundreds of local and not so local acts every single night. Choosing where to go and what to see probably takes up a too-big-chunk of my Fridays at work (however, who’s to say that a healthy obsession with live music doesn’t make me a better engineer, right?). Historically, Chicago is where distinctive styles of Blues and house music were developed. That means Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, but also DJ Funk and Ten City. While most people know famous Chicago jazz artists and venues like the Green Mill and House of Blues, few know that house music actually originated in a Chicago nightclub called The Warehouse. With this extremely eclectic musical history and tendency to go ahead and create a sound if it doesn’t already exist, it’s not unusual to walk into places and find live music of all kinds. In fact, that’s exactly what my last Saturday night was like. I walked into a restaurant to have dinner with some friends. There was a hardcore punk concert in full swing in the back room. The walls were covered in Abraham Lincoln art. A typical Saturday night — almost as fun as sitting on a friend’s veranda after a gorgeous rain has swept Lahore.
Abbas Carpets is changing tastes in Pakistan
What started as a small business in a tight-knit family has recently become a household name in Pakistan. Abbas Carpets is one of the largest and most successful carpet businesses in the country. Their newest chapter started with Haider and Ahmed Abbas — sons of the brother owners — joining the team, adding a new dimension of finesse and funk to an already impressive portfolio of quality products. I met with them to get the latest on carpets, family love, and how they’ve managed to make carpets as hot and glamorous as fashion.
With the help of his sons Ali and Tahir, Muhammad Abbas Mirza started Abbas Carpets in the 70s as an organized manufacturer. At the time, there were a limited number of designs — the ubiquitous bukhara being a dominant classical Persian motif. The Abbas brothers created a design archive to chip away at the shackling dullness of the existing woven-rug variety. “We’ve broken the monotony of classical woven intricate designs,” Haider tells me, “And developed that into the colour reform movement.” What Haider refers to as ‘the colour reform movement’ is the technique of making new carpets look like vintage ones. In other words, they are today’s version of vintage carpets. After collaborating with US-based ABC Carpet and Home, Abbas Carpets began fusing eastern dyes and motifs with western contemporary designs. (ABC had previously collaborated with carpet weavers in Turkey). “The collaboration has brought a new explosion of color and vibrancy to the industry,” says Haider. It’s true: looking at the stunning variety of their rugs, one is struck by the seamlessness with which new is made to look wonderfully, richly old.
Unsurprisingly, the carpet industry develops in rhythm with the home and textile industry; what has been fashionable in the textile industry has led to the proliferation of two very prominent Uzbek designs: Suzani and Ikat, notable for their bright floral patterns.
Their speciality is making new rugs look wonderfully,
richly old
With nine gorgeous collections — from modern, traditional and post-modern — Abbas Carpets is changing tastes in a country where people love sticking to what they’re used to. With dying, however, not much has changed and they still continue to use natural dyes as they always have. The list of vegetable-based dyes is fascinating: indigo, cinnamon, madder, walnuts, and even little baby pomegranates.
Carpet manufacturers are notorious for using child labor, so I went ahead and asked Haider about it. Haider told me this view no longer holds true. Children aren’t typically well suited for carpet weaving, I was told. It is older women who have the perfect combination of soft and malleable fingers which make for ideal carpet weaving. Haider laughs and reassures me that Abbas Carpets has been certified by two American companies, Good Weave and Rugmark, for complying with their international labor requirements for rug weaving.
A typical day at work for Ahmed and Haider varies, but if there aren’t any clients visiting from overseas, it’s mostly work all day. “We start the day with inspecting the raw goods we have received that day. We go through them all one by one to check if they’re up to our standards and if not, we return them,” says Haider. A wrap-up of any outstanding correspondence is interspersed with walk-in customers who they deal with personally. “We’re in the midst of establishing a retail brand right now, so we’re really paying a lot of attention to our social media presence, constantly updating our Facebook page with new products and slowly becoming a trendsetting design presence that exudes style and comfort,” says Haider.
After collaborating with US-based ABC Carpet and Home, Abbas Carpets began fusing eastern dyes and motifs with western contemporary designs
This is the first time in forty years that the carpet giant is developing a presence as a retail brand. It was this idea that spurred their spectacular presence at this year’s PFDC Fashion Week in Lahore. “Export till now has comprised 90% of our sales,” Haider tells me. “But we’re looking to change that and get deeper into the local market and really present ourselves as an approachable retail brand that has the potential to change peoples’ taste in carpets and open them up to new ideas for contemporary design and home decor.” Markets abroad have always been more open to new ideas. With the proliferation of technology in Pakistan, people’s staunchly traditional tastes are slowly opening up to new trends. With their stunning range — from sea green to burnt orange to blooms of fuscia — Abbas Carpets is propelling colour into people’s homes.
