The date for Lollywood Film Star Sana’s marriage with model Fakhar Imam has been finalized at the end of this year on December 13.The Mehndi will be on December 14, Baraat on December 15 and Valima on December 16.
Sources said the marriage is scheduled in December because Fakhar is busy in building a house to present it to Sana as the marriage gift.
Starring: Shahzad Nawaz, Mahnoor Baloch, Ali Kazmi, Nausheen Shah This telefilm showcases a very intricate and complex story that revolves around the situations couples face when living in Pakistan due to the highly conservative society.
Shahzad Nawaz plays the role of Dabeer Baig, a successful business tycoon who is living a very unhappy (second) married life with university professor and ambitious woman, Izzat Adil, played by Mahnoor Baloch. In the lives of these individuals enter Sharjeel Khan (Ali Kazmi), a college student and Rosheen Aslam (Nausheen Shah), an assistant and secretary to Dabeer. How these individuals interact and the relationships they develop make for a very interesting plot. This telefilm leaves you thinking about the extremes of relationships and how insensitive human beings can be to each other.
Few days back, music director Aadesh Shrivastava lambasted Adnan Sami in front of everybody at singer Richa Sharma’s birthday party held at BJN Banquets, Mumbai.
He insulted him calling him a non-singer and claiming he had no right to be in the Indian music industry. While we thought that matter was closed that night itself, the whole thing is now taking a very serious turn what with Aadesh hell bent on kicking Adnan Sami out of India.About the recent turn of events, Aadesh states, “I am the Vice President of the Cine Music Director’s Association and a man of strong principles. Adnan has utter disrespect for Indian laws and regulations. If he wants to give music to Indian films he should respect the laws of our country. He has no right to work in India.
“People like him who come from Pakistan are ready to work here even at peanut rates because they get a global platform. But do you ever see them lauding our nation and its people for that who give them this opportunity at the first place? Do they buy any properties here? They send the entire money back to their country. Also, if he is so desperate to work in India then why doesn’t he posses the required legal documents.
This is not a eulogy or a tribute to Ahmed Faraz, for I never knew Faraz personally. Nor is it a comment on his poetry - I am not qualified to do that. It is just a memory of a few impersonal encounters with Faraz that came rushing to my mind when I heard of his death a week or ten days ago.
As students at Peshawar, we often saw Faraz on campus. He taught Urdu. (Poetry, I guess. What else?). He was a noted poet even then but, among the students on campus, he was equally known, if not more, for his bohemian lifestyle .
Peshawar University campus, built at the foot of the Khyber, was then 5 miles away from Peshawar city. It still is, but now you cannot tell where exactly the city ends and the university begins. Peshawar Sadar, in the cantonment area, was the happening part of the city. It was here that you found trendy cinemas and cafés, bookshops and upscale stores.
The Sadar was to Peshawar what the Mall Road was (or still is?) to Lahore. The Greens Hotel served Murree beer to its customers in a bar tucked away upstairs. (Prohibition came later, in 1972, when MMA’s version 1.0 came into power in the NWFP.) A few minutes down the road, the upscale Dean’s Hotel, even though it had cast off most of its colonial trappings, still retained its colonial architecture and continued to serve mulligatawny soup and caramel custard, and, of course, beer and other drinks, in a more formal setting.
In the evenings, the students would descend upon Sadar to watch movies, to gossip over a cup of tea in the cafés, and to just walk up and down the short stretches of the main Sadar Road and the Arbab Road, watching people. The Capital and Falak Sair were the two elite cinemas that showed English movies ; Silver Star and Café Alig were the two popular cafés; London Book Depot was the big bookshop; Bandbox were the drycleaners and Medicose were the chemists. Not far from these places, on the main Sadar Road, across the bus stop, was this little paan and cigarette shop, a khokha, which did brisk business.
I do not know if Faraz visited the Greens or the Dean’s but he often stopped by at the cigarette shop. He would come on his noisy motorbike (it was before he graduated to the white Volkswagen), stop in front of the shop, and, without switching off the engine or getting off the bike, buy his cigarettes and paan, and breeze away. The alacrity with which the vendor stepped out of his khokha to serve Faraz suggested that Faraz had a running account with the vendor or perhaps he was an ardent fan of the poet - or both.
FROM THE VERY beginning, Mehreen was different from the usual crowd of young directors of the private productions. It’s my assessment, which could be wrong, that she was inspired by the Indian art cinema of the Eighties. The reason I am saying this is that she did not treat subjects that were usually dealt in the PTV Longplays of the Eighties. Her plays also did not have the typical philosophical content of the MNH or Yawar Hayat drama. Nor did she ape Hasina Moin and Fatima Suraiyya, which was the trend then. Her woman was not from the cushy atmosphere of the middleclass, who was seen so often in the serials of the above-mentioned writers. In fact, she was more the woman of the stage plays of Tehreek-e-Niswan, or Dastak, or so many such street plays of India’s greatest martyr of theatre, Safdar Hashmi. But, her main goal, if you have seen her TV plays, obviously looked the art cinema. And with the release, and immense appreciation of her first movie, Ramchand Pakistani, she has proven herself as a director, who has not just tackled a burning topic of the new Global World, but has also impressed with her cinematic sensibility, the lack of which has gobbled up many a famous director in the past!
It’s no mean achievement for a TV director to present a successful, as well as a theme-wise and treatment-wise powerful film on the Pakistani screen. This is a first for Mehreen, because none of the superstar names of PTV and private productions could do either, in so many years. For a young film director, Mehreen has definitely become an icon. Having been her strongest critic in the past in the context of some aspects of her work, I still feel that continuous struggle, and an indomitable spirit, aside from some major cinematic courses, has made Mehreen see things in, what the technical people call the Master Shot. She has come to view things on an overall basis. The moment you realize that after two lengthy scenes, the drama could drag, and may not recover till the end, you are blessed with an overall view. If you end all shots on climactic lines, then your climax may never be a climax, which is what is happening to the most Indian soaps these days. Mehreen has conquered all these aspects at a relatively young age. You can see that in simple scenes, for instance the scene, where Ramchand is brought before Maria Wasti, the jail warden, and she questions him regarding his Dalit identity. It’s a poignant scene, and one which sets the mood for the coming scenes.
Rashid Qureishi has shown in Ramchand Pakistani that he has surely come of age as an actor. His gestures have reached that scale, where an actor forgets himself, and becomes the character. Nandita is, already, a superb actress, and I truly feel that she hasn’t been given her status in the Indian cinema, yet. Here, she delivers the goods, as a Thar woman, whose life becomes a terrible struggle. Shafqat Amanat’s song, Phir wohi rastey is the highlight of the film.
In the end, I read a review by some Indian critic somewhere that he feels the heroine has been given too many gaudy clothes, and that a sad, forlorn woman would not be decked up in such finery. I think either the chap hadn’t been to his own side of Rajisthan, or doesn’t know the traditions of the Thar women. These clothes are their identification, and emotions have nothing to do with them.
She has a commanding presence that fills the screen, a presence that spills out of your television set and dominates your living room. When you meet Naveen Naqvi in person, its even better. The professional presence is very much there, of course, but she also has a friendly look and a relaxed manner that puts you at ease.
We are seated in a glass-fronted cubicle in the middle of DawnNews studios open-floor plan. Young men and women are everywhere. Some are hunched over desktop computer screens while others are scurrying about from one end of the cavernous hall to the other. Despite the bustle, Naveen is as calm as you like, giving unwavering attention and conversing easily.
We have come to associate her with the anchors role on DawnNews, but there is more to Naveen Naqvis talents than meets the eye. As most people are aware, I used to be a model, she says, referring to the first of several things she has tried her hand at and done well. After modelling, I started working on television. I hosted a music show and also acted in a few dramas. My first play was under the direction of Haider Imam Rizvi, and I went on from there.
In a span of just four years, Atif Aslam has released three albums, won countless awards and has developed a massive following in and outside Pakistan. Its not exactly rags to riches and yet his success story remains unique.
I always dreamed of being a rock star as a kid,” says Atif smiling.
At the age of just 25, Atif Aslam is living his dream.
With three albums to his credit, in a span of four years, the mess of a break-up (with his former band Jal) behind him and a mass appeal that extends all the way out to India and beyond, Atif Aslam’s story is truly unique. He is sitting on a sofa in denims, a polo top and his guitar on his lap when we meet.
It’s a crisp Sunday afternoon and Atif has a hectic schedule ahead. He is flying back to Lahore and is then heading for a massive US, UK and Canada tour.
We meet the morning after the Atif Aslam Lookalike-Singalike contest, where five men, who adore Atif, belt out Atif ditties, imitating his antics, attempting to impersonate the man himself. Atif came to the finale and picked the winner himself.
“It was a little bizarre,” admits Atif and continues, “but a good effort. Some of those guys were confident, others had a decent voice but Gibran matched my style more than the others so it had to be him.”
As a person, Atif is friendly, open and confident. What drives him is his ambition to bowl out the world. He doesn’t look at Asians as his target market. The world is his stage and he is here to perform and entertain.
What sets him apart is his ability to mould himself, that elastic factor.
Whether it is through lending his vocals to Indian films or dancing with Aaminah Haq at the Lux Style Awards or going out all-rock on a single like ‘Hungami Halaat’, Atif is willing to bend and break norms to make his mark.
His latest is his new album, Meri Kahani.
A sharp, conscious turn from his commercially hit album Doorie, and a return to form, the kind one first witnessed on his debut record Jalpari.
Meri Kahani sees Atif don the roles of singer, songwriter and lyricist. But most importantly it sees the various emotions of the man that is Atif Aslam. Not surprisingly, it is a mixed bag. And even though Jalpari remains the best Atif Aslam record, Meri Kahani shows off his skills as an artist and his will to experiment. To make sure that it is his brand of music, Atif brought in Overload men Farhad Humayoun, Shiraz Siddique and Mahmood Rahman to play on the album.
“I did Doorie but afterwards I wanted to do my kind of music. Meri Kahani is just that. It is an album that is filled with personal reflections. I got Overload guys involved because I love their music, especially the Pappu Saeen bit and it was fantastic working with all of them,” says Atif.
The record comes after Atif received severe criticism for Doorie, the smash hit album that consolidated his position firmly in India and Pakistan. At the same time, it brought out criticism on the fact that the album was purely commercial and Indianised.
But Atif has never shied away from criticism. His defense has always been one, breaking into the Bollywood-friendly Indian market.
The 11th death anniversary of world’s most outstanding vocalists the great Sufi Qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was observed on Saturday.Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who had worked with such Western musicians as Eddie Vedder, Peter Gabriel and progressive guitarist and producer Michael Brook, died at age 48, a private TV channel reported.Born into a family with a centuries-long tradition of qawwali singing, Khan began recording in the early ’70s after ignoring his father’s wishes that he pursue medicine.Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was considered as one of the greatest Qawwals in the world.
Khan was a master of qawwali singing, which combines lyrics from Sufi religious poems with hypnotic rhythms and vocal chants.He never performed in English he sang in Urdu, Punjabi and Farsi. Khan also captivated many Westerners, including such musicians as Vedder, Joan Osborne and the late Jeff Buckley, as well as Hollywood types like Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
Khan had made a great impression on the music scene with his mix of Eastern poetic music with that of the West.After travelling to London for treatment for liver and kidney problems, Khan was rushed from the airport to Cromwell Hospital, where he suffered a fatal heart attack.Khan departed from this sphere on the 16th of August 1997, and will be missed immensely by his fans all across the globe.
We first saw the ebullient Ayesha Sana quite a few years back on the national telly. Having started out her career as an actor, she made a transition to being a host and that too a successful one! Soon she was lapped up by PTV World to host their morning women-based-show Mina Bazaar which was a hit with the fairer sex.
In between Ayesha worked, for brief spells, in various drama serials. Currently she is based in Lahore busy anchoring live shows for various organisations¦ while acting continues simultaneously.
Known to be immaculately dressed and a well groomed lady, we check out her style preferences.
What’s your style code?
It™s definitely classic!
What do you wear on off-days?
Probably my night suit “ pajamas and some hopeless (read comfy) shirt.
Who’s your style inspiration?
I admire a lot of people for their sense of style. I am inspired by anyone who wears classic and elegant clothes.
What’s your formal going-out look?
Some elegant outfit in striking shades.
What’s your fave hair style?
Something very classic¦ I like hair with a lot of body and volume¦ something like Shilpa Shetty™s¦
Are you high maintenance?
Yes, I am.
What’s your one beauty/style essential?
It would be my watch and bag.
Do you have a signature scent?
There are quite a few I like¦ I prefer strong fragrances.
How do you keep your body buff?
I really need to workout but I have never followed a health or a beauty regime though I™m always planning to.
Any style blunders you want to reveal?
There must have been a million down the road but now I try to keep them minimum.
What’s the most expensive item in your wardrobe?
A few outfits by our local designers.
Which item from your wardrobe do you love the most?
It would be my black and white ensembles.
