Between me and Karachi- thankyouverymuch-

It’s been a while. I know. But I finally have the guts to talk about what I have been working on in Grad school since last term. So let me start from the beginning. It was Jan 2010 and I had a terrible experience at the airport, which I briefly spoke about in one of my “return to new york” posts. 30 hours at Abu Dhabi airport is enough to drive anyone insane. I was ready to quit the States and Fulbright to be quite honest. Even School was going terribly in the sense that my work was just not getting through to the advisors and I did not know what more I could do.
For my last ditch effort I decided to take a class called Exploring Narrative in video. I figured getting back in touch with my filmmaking passions might kick start something inside me. When my prof. told us we had to have a final video project, either we make a film or something equivalent I knew at once I wanted to make something about Karachi.
Since I had always loved Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography and always wondered why nobody in Pakistan ever made a film out of it (Mehreen Jabbar? Hasan Zaidi?) I decided to do it myself. Not the whole book of course. There is only so much I could do on my own. So I wrote a screenplay around the part when Raheen has moved to New York and Karim is desperate to make her feel some remorse about the political tensions in Pakistan.
Long story short I never made the film. Something more original came from the whole experience though. Through several talks with my prof. (who actually kind of liked my script but felt I didn’t need Karim in it) I somehow ended up writing a video letter to Khizzy.
What the heck is a video letter?
It’s quite simple really. I would just write khizzy having a normal conversation the way I do about everything under the sun be it politics, opinions, my nephew, my issues in life, living in new york and comparing it to Karachi and just generally talking about Pakistan (etc.). I would record myself reading that letter and throw in some visuals that I wont get into details about right now.
Honestly, I had no idea what people would think of it. So when I showed it to my class of 20 and my prof. I was not expecting it to be liked and resonated with as much as it was!
I admit the first one was not too great though but since then and now with letter number 5 I feel I have come a long long way. The letters are about 15 minutes long each and I talk a lot!
Since then, I have shown the letters in all my critiques to several peers and one of them was even a Pakistani. Honestly, it was his opinion I most feared. This guy was one of us, he would tell me if he thought I was wrong in by the way I spoke of where we come from. I do not know why I fear that- especially because its my personal experience I’m talking about when I speak of Karachi. Why do I expect to be understood universally? Don’t artist step on toes all the time? Is my stream of consciousness and the way I speak in the video a valid thing?
But my Pakistani class fellow claims to love it. He really loved it. He said it really showed “us” and what “we” were like. “Our” kind. The kind that barely existed in the larger frame of Pakistan.
Still, I don’t have the guts to show it to you guys. The rest of the Pakistani’s.

Recently, I met an artist from Denmark. She saw two of the letters and told me I needed to turn it into a feature film; to put the 12 letters I intended to complete by the end of my program into one long film type of format. Another filmmaker who I met at a party made the same suggestion to me. They really seem to believe in my work. So why am I so afraid? This is not to say I do not believe in my own work…but I guess I am afraid of being wrongly judged.
Then something wonderful happened this Saturday. I went and saw Slackistan. Talk about everything coming together and resonating with a person. Okay, given that the film was about Islamabadi’s and we are nothing like them, I felt very close to the director artistically because in a different way he did with Islamabad what I was doing with Karachi. In a very very different way, we were similar. The difference was he had the guts to put it out there in a festival.

On a different note what I really liked about the movie was that he was not trying hard at all to show our kind of society. He could have totally overdone it by trying to show how liberal we are with the drinking and partying scenes in the movie, or how Islamic we are by not showing any of that at all or how modern we are by making girls wear clothes we’d never see people wear on the streets or how conservative we are by making the girls wear only shalwar kameez. But he did it all so tastefully that it was nothing short of charming.
The boy shares a glass of whiskey with his dad. It’s done.
The girl dramatically claims she would rather be a lesbian. It’s done.
Wannabe cool guy buys a condom. It’s done.
These things are done and he didn’t try and hide it.

He could have casted super models in the film but he went for the average joes and the non skinny girls instead, making them more likeable and relatable.
The dialogue was a good mix of English and Urdu (perhaps heavier on the English side which is exactly the case with us) but above all, it was sharp, witty and not overdone. I really looked for something to dislike about the film, some hole in it but nothing. Okay so there IS one hole. The font used in the film for some desi terms and some thoughts was terrible, but it can be ignored. Plus, only art students would pick up on that.
What I really really liked about the experience was the Q and A with the director.
Since the moview premiered in New York, aside from the desi crowd, some goras came as well. Their questions were obviously of a particular kind because they did not get a lot of what need not be explained to us desi’s.

“Why was there not much more discussion about the bombs and the bad political situation amongst the people in the movie?” was one question. Now the director’s answer could have veered towards pretentiousness but he was so savvy. It’s a part of life over there, he said. We are so used to it that we don’t feel the need to discuss it more than in passing over coffee.
Perfecto. This was it. He said it like it was.

“Why is there a distinct lack of parents in your film? It almost seems like the young people in the film have none.”
Parents and the relationship they have with the youth would have meant taking the film completely elsewhere, he said. Establishing the relationships between them would have meant explaining some of their behavior and the why they were the way they were.
Good answer. If you think about it, parents are sort of in the background when you freshly graduate and life is all about you and your friends and the nothingness you are up to. But I guess this is one of those things that would be obvious to just us.
“Do you feel like young people want to leave Pakistan these days?” another asked. Now the director could have ranted on about how patriotic he was and this and that but he simply said “yes.”
Sentiments and morale was low, people want to escape, and the situation is bad. Some choose to stay and some decide to leave. That is the reality, he said.
Respect.
Last but not least, someone asked; “Are young people like this all over Pakistan?”
Now I really wanted to see what he would say about that.
Not at all, he said. This is just a pin pointed part of Islamabadi society. If he were to make a film about Lahore or Karachi it would have to be completely different just because of the sheer difference of pace in the other places. Islamabad is a city that always sleeps.
Good answer yet again.
I left the theatre feeling great. Finally someone had done what I had wanted someone to do. Make a film about us. No matter how non-existent we are in the larger frame of Pakistani’s, he made a film about people I could point to and say ‘see them, whatever you think or feel about them is not important, they are us’ (even if they were Islamabadi’s and I am a Karachiite).
I have more confidence in my own work now and I am more open to the idea of putting my video letters in a feature film format and just doing it.

Wish me luck people. This thesis just became larger than life.
Cheers ☺