Nida Yasir attended the Mehendi ceremony of Sultana Siddiqui’s grandson. She posted a star studded group selfie on her Instagram stories which featured Ali Rehman Khan, Yasir Nawaz, Nida Yasir, Asad Siddiqui, Kubra Khan, Danish Nawaz, Zara Noor Abbas and Arsalan Naseer.
Nida mentioned that she has attended a Mehendi ceremony after almost 2 years.
The ceremony was a celebrity galore with names like Ushna Shah, Hania Aamir and Bilal Ashraf also being present.
The lavish pre-wedding ceremony was held in Karachi.
Student of the year 2 fame actress Ananya Pandey breakdown on her paternal grandmother’s funeral. The actress had a rather problematic entrance at the venue as Indian paparazzi mobbed her.
Ananya can be seen crying on her cousin’s shoulder. Also seen in the pictures are her immediate family members.
Trending at number one since it released on Pakistani Netflix, Haseen Dilruba is India’s latest, winning movie on the streaming platform. An easy watch for a suspense thriller, the story revolves around the murder of a husband after his wife has an affair.
It’s a perfect set up and it begins at full speed. Shy and sweet, seedha saadha sa Rishu (Vikrant Massey) has an arranged marriage with the hot, loud and opinionated Rani (Taapsee Pannu) and beychara Rishu is so intimidated by Rani that he is unable to perform in the first month of their marriage. He overhears Rani telling her family members about their private sex life and decides to never speak/touch her again. Meanwhile, Rishu’s super hot and dashing cousin Neel (Harshvardhan Rane) comes to stay with them and thats when the trouble begins.
The beauty of the film is how fast paced it is, even though it is more than two hours long. The story begins with a bang, slows down but not too slow in the middle, and then ends with a not to unexpected ending.
The downside of the film is really the acting. It’s very evident that the writer has written a strong and thoughtful script but the acting is flat and the chemistry between all the characters is blah at best. Rani is the weakest link with the biggest role. Despite being the hero (and somewhat the villain) of the story, Taapsee’s acting leaves you yawning in the middle and asking, ‘is that the best she can do’ near the end. The only character that comes close to his role is Vikrant as Rishu.
Despite the slow drawl in the middle, the storyline is solid and the movie is definitely worth a watch. But in the end you will wonder if star actors had taken on the role, what an actual big blockbuster it could be.
Bollywood actor Dilip Kumar, who died last week, was many things to many people. He was a Bollywood legend, a screen hero, a public figure who spoke out for minority communities, a good and thoughtful human being, a great thespian. But while many fans will look at the entirety of his work during a career spanning over a half-century, my most cherished memories of it are from his early films – particularly Andaz.
My favourite image of Dilip Kumar will always remain of him seated at the piano singing in Mehboob Khan’s 1949 filmAndaz. As he mouthed the songs (sung by the maestro Mukesh), his soulful eyes would surely have had many swooning: first as he ‘sang’ the optimistic ‘Hum aaj kahin dil kho baithay’ after he has fallen in love with the girl he thinks reciprocates his feelings and then, later, the tragic ‘Tootay naa dil toote na’ when he is heartbroken after the realisation that she regards him merely as a friend and is engaged to somebody else.
Andaz was an interesting film in that, despite a highly melodramatic and preachy ending, it addressed important post-colonial questions of identity and tradition in a newly independent nation. The love triangle – played by Dilip Kumar, Nargis and Raj Kapoor – comes about largely because of Dilip (Dilip Kumar) misconstruing Neena’s (Nargis) friendly behaviour as romantic love. The film seems to regard this as a result of modernity and westernised behaviour and the social message is spelt out clearly in the pedantic monologue delivered by Rajan (Raj Kapoor) at the end of the film. But despite this rather oppressive message and the film’s completely tragic ending, I remember Andaz fondly both for its songs and for being the vehicle to unite three such fabulous actors on the screen (this was the only film Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor did together).
Andaz also fuelled my interest in searching out more of Dilip Kumar’s films from this early period and so I landed on his Daagh (Amiya Chakravarty’s 1952 film)in which again the beautiful songs (sung by Talat Mahmood) did much to complement the tragic nuances of Dilip Kumar’s expressions. Another old film I sought out eagerly was Jugnu as it starred Dilip Kumar opposite our own Nur Jehan. Well, that was certainly disappointing: Jugnu was made in 1947, so I had assumed both young actors would look amazing on-screen and would make a great romantic screen couple. However, in Shaukat Hussain Rizvi’s film, there is absolutely no screen chemistry between the pair and while Dilip Kumar does look quite beautiful, Nur Jehan looks almost old enough to be his mother. Even the youthful two long braids hairstyle and a lineup of very plain (and oppressed looking) female extras as her ‘sahelis’ does nothing to make her look stunning.
In K Asif’s epic Mughal e Azam, Dilip Kumar played Shahzada Salim, the prince whose love for the courtesan Anarkali is thwarted by his father, the Mughal emperor Akbar. Here Dilip Kumar appeared puffier and played a far less endearing personality than in previous tragedies: his Prince Salim was a slimy sort of a character and fairly dislikeable. The on-screen chemistry with Madhu Bhala may have been sizzling and the film’s songs and cinematography memorable but this on-screen Dilip was not one I wanted to remember.
So, I have to say I never really followed Dilip Kumar’s later films as I preferred to stay stuck with the image of him singing ‘Tootay naa dil’ and ‘Ai mere dil kahin aur chal’, etc, but I did follow news of him. His connection to my city, Karachi, was that he was a cousin or kinsman of the well-known orthopaedic surgeon Dr Rahim. His connection to Pakistan was that Peshawar was his ancestral city and he was much loved by many on this side of the border. But when he was awarded the Nishan-e-Imtiaz by Pakistan in 1998, a furious backlash followed in an outcry, which was led by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). The actor seems to have handled this with great dignity but he stated quite clearly in subsequent interviews that he believed he was being targeted because of being a Muslim and a member of a minority community. And it was possibly this episode that led him to a stint in politics as a Congress party member of the legislative assembly. To his credit, he refused to succumb to the pressure generated by right-wing hysteria and he refused to return the award.
They are all gone now, those stylish leading men from the early post-partition era of Bollywood cinema. We remember Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor and Kishore Kumar and so many of their contemporaries in many different and completely personal ways. I choose to remember Dilip Kumar always through those black and white images of him in Andaz: so young and beautiful and moving with such easy grace, mesmerising us with his nuanced and sensitive facial expressions.
‘Toote naa dil tootay naa
Saath humara chootay naa’
Thank you for the memories, Dilip Kumar aka Yusuf sahib
A harrowing video recently went viral on social media in which a man, Usman Mirza, was seen harassing and assaulting a young couple. He had a few male accomplices with him, and he was also armed. Mirza beat up the couple, stripped them, and subjected them to sexual assault. Pakistani women on social media came out in support of the young couple and also voiced how unsafe and insecure they feel in a society full of misogyny and violence.
Following an uproar on social media, the police arrested Usman Mirza and his accomplices. The police also reached out to the couple to record their statement. According to media reports, the couple recorded their statements separately under Section 161 of the Criminal Code. The incident took place last year in November and the couple was blackmailed by the culprit; they ended up paying more than a million rupees to Mirza. This was clearly not an isolated incident as more videos have been found from the mobile phones of the arrested men. It shows that this gang of criminals has been indulging in such nefarious activities for quite some time now.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has taken notice of the case. The Islamabad police chief briefed PM Khan on the case yesterday. Thankfully, the police have so far been extremely responsible and have not indulged in any victim-blaming, unlike the Motorway gang rape case where CCPO Lahore’s comments about the rape survivor were atrocious, to say the least. SSP (Investigations) Atta-ur-Rehman appeared on a few TV talk shows and actually talked about why such incidents are not reported by victims and survivors due to social taboos. Unfortunately, we still have people in our society who think the victims are somehow at fault instead of holding the culprits solely responsible for their crime. Just last month, PM Khan made a controversial statement in an interview where he said that if women wear very few clothes, it will have an impact on the men unless they are robots. And today, in a now-deleted tweet, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmaker Hina Butt said that while beasts Usman Mirza should be condemned but is it not necessary that we teach our boys and girls why they become targets of such beasts. “Our youth should also introspect their own behaviour.”
One wonders why the young couple should introspect when they were the victims and not the perpetrators of a despicable crime. In fact, those who are busy blaming and shaming innocent victims should be introspecting instead. Such attitudes do not just make victims and survivors more insecure but are extremely triggering for those who have faced sexual harassment, assault, and rape. Why is it that ‘honour’ is always linked to a woman in our society? Why is it that instead of empowering women, even empowered women end up blaming the victims of abuse? Why is it that everything depends on how a woman was dressed or where she was or who she was with or at what time she went out? Why? We need to uproot this deeply embedded misogyny from our minds. We need to make our women feel secure. We need to make our laws stronger and implement them so that these survivors have trust in the justice system and also in our society so that they do report such harrowing incidents instead of staying quiet due to expected backlash. When we start pointing fingers at the victim, we end up empowering the criminals, the perpetrators of violent crimes. Stop this trend. Enough is enough.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) Hina Pervaiz Butt took to Twitter to comment on the Usman Mirzacase. She ended up blaming the victims instead in a now-deleted tweet. In a harrowing video that went viral on social media, Mirza was seen torturing, harassing, and assaulting a young couple in Islamabad along with his accomplices.
Hina Butt tweeted, “Why do young people go out and become victims of people like Usman Mirza?” She added that we also need to educate our children on why they become targets when they go out.
Twitterati reacted to Butt’s tweet and called her out for blaming the victim.
Natasha Kundi, a writer wrote, “According to her [Hina] young people go out and deliberately become victims …. so basically young people shouldn’t go out!”
Hina Parvez Butt is asking, why do young people go out and become victims of people like #UsmanMirza. According to her young people go out and deliberately become victims …. so basically young people shouldn’t go out! https://t.co/w8N3i7Pvs6
Lawyer Reema Omer said Butt’s take was no different from CCPO Lahore’s comments. She tweeted, “Why can’t we focus on criminal acts of the perpetrators instead of lecturing victims?”
Abhorrent take, no different from CCPO suggesting survivor of motorway rape should’ve taken precautions
Why can’t we focus on criminal acts of the perpetrators instead of lecturing victims?
How heartless does one have to be to even imply victims were in any way responsible? https://t.co/Ys3H1umCup
Singer and UNODC Goodwill Ambassador, Shehzad Roy, tweeted, “It is true that the oppressor should be severely punished, but it is very inappropriate to criticise the oppressed.” Roy further said that it is akin to blaming victims of a robbery by saying that the locks were not strong enough so it is their fault.
یہ سچ ہے کہ ظالم کو کڑی سے کڑی سزا ملنی چاہئے لیکن اسی لمحے مظلوم کو تنقید کا نشانہ بنانا نہایت نامناسب ہے۔ یہ ایسا ہی ہے کہ چوری ہو جاۓ اور آپ کہیں کہ گھر والوں کا قصور ہے کیونکہ کنڈی کمزور تھی۔ https://t.co/OoemKogkjo
A Twitter user showing his disapproval with PML-N’s leader’s statement compared her stance with CCPO Lahore Umar Sheikh’s comments in the Motorway rape case where he had blamed the victim.
یہ “اگر مگر” اس سوسائٹی کا اصل چہرہ ہے کیا فرق رہ گیا وہ موٹروے ریپ کیس پہ CCPO اور منتخب نمائندے حنا پرویز بٹ میں؟؟؟ https://t.co/UFgBX81Wqc
Journalist Zeb Aslam tweeted, “There is next-to-no difference between this and IK’s statement linking “modesty” and rape…a point that I hope both PMLN and PTI supporters can appreciate before leaping to defend their chosen leader.”
There is next-to-no difference between this and IK’s statement linking “modesty” and rape.
…a point that I hope both PMLN and PTI supporters can appreciate before leaping to defend their chosen leader. https://t.co/WTkpFwDPfJ
Giant pandas are no longer endangered, but they are still vulnerable, Chinese officials have said after years of conservation efforts as their number in the wild has reached 1,800.
As per reports, the country succeeded in saving its iconic animal through its long-term conservation efforts, including the expansion of habitats.
The latest classification upgrade “reflects their improved living conditions and China’s efforts in keeping their habitats integrated”, said Cui Shuhong, head of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s Department of Nature and Ecology Conservation at a news conference.
The news comes years after the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had already removed the animal from its endangered species list and re-labeled it as “vulnerable” in 2016.
However, Chinese officials at that time did not consider the progress, saying that it could make people believe that conservation efforts could be relaxed.
This week’s announcement by China’s environmental ministry is the first time the animal’s status was changed on its endangered species list.
Experts have said that the success is mainly due to Chinese efforts to recreate and repopulate bamboo forests. Bamboo makes up 99 per cent of their diet, without which they are likely to starve.
Zoos have also attempted to increase numbers via captive breeding methods.
Four fans showed up at Umar Akmal’s residence for autographs late Thursday, only to get arrested later.
As per reports, the middle-order batsman got into an argument with them, which turned into a brawl outside his house in Lahore’s Defence area, according to the police.
Police arrived on the spot to arrest the four men on Akmal’s complaint.
The arrested fans were drunk and alcohol bottles were found in their car, according to SP Cantt.
Akmal’s fans, one of whom happens to be a British national, have filed a case against the cricketer as well.
Akmal has represented Pakistan in 16 Tests, 121 ODIs, and 84 T20Is, wherein he managed to score 5,887 runs. These include three centuries and 34 fifties.
Falak and Sarah are excited to celebrate their first wedding anniversary on July 16th. The duo intends to make their fans a part of their celebration and they have a surprise planned for them on the occasion of their marriage anniversary.
The Sabaat diva shared a video on her Instagram in which Falak announces a surprise for their fans which will be revealed on their anniversary.
Twitter witnessed another political spat as Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan Dr Shahbaz Gill said that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto are using derogatory language against Prime Minister Imran Khan.
جس طرح کی گھٹیا زبان مریم اور بلاول وزیراعظم کے لئیے استعمال کر رہے ہیں کل سے اسی زبان اور انداز میں جواب دیا جائے گا۔تمیز سیکھانے والے حضرات انہی کی زبان اور انداز میں ہیڈ لائن بنا رہے ہیں۔ون سائیڈڈ سٹیٹمنٹ چلائی جا رہی ہیں۔ کل سے synthetic leaders کی طبیعت درست کی جائے گی
“Now they [Oppostion] will be paid back in the same coin”, tweeted Gill.
The Deputy Secretary-General of PMLN, Attaullah Tarar, threatened PM’s aide in response and said, “Enough is enough.”
تم ابھی بھی باز آ جاو، تمہاری بد تمیزی اور بکواس اب نہیں چلنے دیں گے۔ بہت ہو گیا۔تم زبان درازی کرو تو سہی، تمہاری ناک سے لکیریں نہ نکلوائیں تو نام بدل دینا۔ اینٹ کا جواب پتھر ہو گا، نہ سیاست کا علم نہ جمہوریت کا پتہ، خوشامد اور گالیوں کی بدولت آج سیاست کر رہے ہو I will sort u out https://t.co/2iNie84Qo3
Taking a jibe at Gill, Tarar added, “You are doing politics today thanks to flattery and abuse.” And in a rather threatening tone wrote, “I will sort you.”
