Adam Khor Ayash Gorillay

There are about half a billion cells in the human brain associated with sight. Five hundred and thirty eight million if you happen to be especially particular about these things. It’s perversely fascinating to take a step back and absorb the fact that precisely those many individual parts of your body could be made to suffer over the course of a single half hour.

Perhaps, and this is the most marginal of calls, had the powers that be called it quits the other night after Aaroh’s Raag Neela, we could have made our peace and kept our dysfunctional love-hate relationship going. Omar Inayat and whats-his-utterly-forgettable-song went ahead and ensured that there was no return, but even then, the train of consciousness was still entirely disyllabic. But no. It had to happen. Lo and behold, in less time than would make an idle mind of the deer-in-headlights variety realise that there exists the capital recourse of a power-off button, what do we have, but that man himself, Arif Lohar, appear smack in the middle of the screen – fur coat, hood, gold medallion, retro-eighties moustache, a bevy of gun-toting blonde babes et al… Did I mention the moustache?

It’s too much for a man to take. Leave alone over such a short period of time.

Now, let’s put things in perspective. Aaroh dressing up as metrosexual leather-daddies and looking decidedly out of place in a bar sipping blue lagoons and blowing smoke out of various orifices is bad enough, but at least anyone who has ever seen Haider Hashimi with his gynormously oversized all-weather, all-terrain shades welded into his frontal bone would have claimed advance notice. The same can be said about Omar Inayat and others who adhere to a particularly perverse interpretation of the term heavy metal. Arif Lohar, however, wins by the veritable country mile with the pseudo-forcibly-modern transformation of the decade. This is the man who epitomized Punjabi singing. A bit of an acquired taste, and a rather large bit at that, but he had his little niche carved out so far away from all that is bling, that the new look is nothing less than the pledge, the turn and the prestige rolled into one; the ultimate magic trick in just one act. Hugh Jackman, eat your heart out. Rahim Shah too.

The broader point that absolutely begs to be made, if for no other purpose than to compensate half a billion precious non-regenerating neuronal elements, is that why in the name of all that is holy, is everyone these days tripping over themselves to conform to this stereotype of being hip? It’s a little bit akin to that mother of four you see in the store force-feeding herself to the daintiest pair of imported shoes in the shop. Always a big no-no.

Sadly, as is the nature of all such things, you can run but you can’t hide. They’re everywhere. Annie drawling out Mahia. Click. Dino and the suspiciously high-pitched Pari. Click. Hash doing the little kicks (reference lost on all except the die-hard Seinfeld enthusiasts). Click. Jigga Fez pulling an Arif Lohar (or was it the other way around). Click, click, click… The medusa of modern-day entertainment has taken over the world (or the various music channels, at the very least), able to sprout new sock-puppet heads even while the old ones are still going strong.

Wait long enough, and eventually one of the Gregor-Samsa brigade will metastasize onto a television chat-show or interview, extolling the virtues of present-day media, and laying thick the age-old nauseating tripe of (hold your breath) rebelling against conventional norms, being creative, and establishing a separate identity that reflects individualism. Somewhere amidst the twinkle-toeing and boundless witticisms, there is the obligatory dig or two at those other artistes who effectively sold out. It’s all a bit precious, in some sense, to hear a bunch of groovy cat’s-pyjama-kinds conform lemming-like to a distinctly banal and over-the-top typecast of the West and foist it off as the definitive foray into individuality and creativity. Shaking things up and giving the local music scene a distinctive modern flavour (even one that heavily borrows on inspiration from the land of the stars and stripes) is one thing. Being caught up and wholly consumed by a desire to appear forward-thinking, even if it means achieving the tripartite cross-pollination between a Gregorian monk, the remains of North American grizzly and a revved-up chimta, quite another.

The most galling aspect to it all is that individualism is scarcely something that needs to be proven (leave alone quite so hard) in the first place. In the ideal case, it’s one of those things meant to follow naturally from the music and any obvious talent on display, as opposed to a troupe of crassly-attired performers gallivanting across your plasma screen and trying doubly hard to atone for the musical sins of another. Perhaps this is the precise reason the written word will always continue to reign supreme over other forms of expression, being driven as it is purely by naked thought and sentiment.

There is a distinctly inorganic feel to much of the present-day music scene in Pakistan (more generally, to certain segments of the population at large). Self-confidence, often a barometer for an emerging society, is probably as much about feeling comfortable in your own skin as it is about anything else – to borrow a conventional idiom, the only folks who buy Hummers are the ones with something to prove. Much of the flotsam and jetsam floating around the airways presently falls into this category; complete devoid of any home-grown element. MTV might be all the rave out West, but it is something that has evolved into its present state, alongside changes to society. Over a period of time. By contrast, the transformation on the home front has followed all the postulates of a Dirac function with about as much aesthetic appeal as a three inch thick layer of foundation hastily slapped on. Sometimes, the best things in life must be achieved gradually, being allowed to simmer awhile.

One final point needs to be made. The issue at hand is not so much of creative license and allowing performers to let their hair down once in a while, as it is the attempt to incarnate the make-belief as the truth. Arif Lohar, with the last remnants of Woodstock flashing off his chest, attempting to pass off the look as his real life persona is about as sad as Aaroh rattling on about the finer points of Rastafarianism (okay, so maybe I made that one up but give it time). You can’t help but be reminded of that annoying kid in class, who spent the summer abroad and came back claiming he’d always had that funny accent.

It’s not impossible to look around and find a bunch of really creative folks on the existing music scene. Some are shackled irreversibly to a naughty past (think Ali Azmat and Downtown Princess), but there is a definite silver lining amidst the gloom. From Junoon’s Ehtesaab and Noori’s Manwa Re, to Abrar’s Preeto and a bunch of stuff by Jawad Bashir and Aiyaz Kidwai, some of the most original videos have embraced their surroundings and been secure in their identity. So please, in the name of all that is sacred, get Haider Hashmi a half-decent pair of shades (and an appointment or two with a fashion guru) and Arif Lohar the contact of a local modelling agency. They might be talented individuals, but little of that follows from their recent identity crises.

To the inquisitive mind wondering about the title of this piece, it’s something that was sighted on a billboard outside Regal last summer, advertising the latest dubbed Hollywood B-fare playing at the cinema. Moral of the story, you can take something and apply it out of context. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it falls spectacularly flat.

Perhaps it’s time we finally exhumed good taste and understood what caused it to die.