Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari has written to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Henrietta Fore regarding the Priyanka Chopra controversy.
As per the details, Dr Mazari has asked Fore to remove the Indian actor as UN’s Goodwill Ambassador for Peace as she has “made a mockery of the title” by supporting the Modi government’s unlawful actions in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK), besides “supporting a nuclear war”.
Sent letter to UNICEF chief regarding UN Goodwill Ambassador for Peace Ms Chopra pic.twitter.com/PQ3vwYjTVz
Chopra had come under fire for her patronising and dismissive comments when asked by a Pakistani-American activist Ayesha Malik about her support for war with Pakistan.
The much-awaited second season of Netflix’s Sacred Games was
dropped on Indian Independence Day, and if you want us to save you some time…
we’re disappointed.
It isn’t easy to be divided between watching Ganesh Gaitonde
(Nawazuddin Siddiqui) back in action and sticking to the idea of shunning Indian
productions at a time when Pakistan and India aren’t the best of friends.
However, having watched the eight-episode series, we can
guarantee that you won’t miss out on anything as great as the first season, in
case you’re planning not to watch it.
Expanding beyond the novel by Vikram Chandra, the second season has left us disillusioned of Anurag Kashyap and co.’s ability to do wonders.
To quickly recap the first season, because Netflix won’t, Sacred Games is one drawn-out game of cat-and-mouse between notorious Mumbai gangster Gaitonde and his chosen police mark, Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan), trying to figure out the former’s dastardly (and as-yet-unknown) plans set in motion.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The second picks up halfway through the 25 days left to save
Mumbai from uncertain calamity. Singh dives back into the investigation,
following a trail that points to nuclear weapons, terrorism and Gaitonde’s link
to Khanna Guruji (Pankaj Tripathi).
Gaitonde, still narrating to Singh but actually to us, calls Guruji his third father, to whom he and so many others are drawn like moths to a flame.
But, as one could’ve imagined (keeping in view flashbacks and
those mysterious mandalas from the first season), the ashram is actually a cult
and its leaders the liaisons between Gaitonde’s drug trade and the weapons
Singh suspects will be used to attack Mumbai over a decade later.
Just after the new twists are registered – and half the season is gone – one starts waiting for things to get as interesting as promised by cast members time and again. You start looking forward to something big enough for the season to beat its predecessor… and in all honesty, to make sense.
It isn’t later you realise that Sacred Games has successfully
pulled a Game of Thrones and disappointed you more than Gaitonde was upon realising
how Guruji deceived him as a pawn, for his own plans to create a “new world”.
All this remains the tip of a story lost somewhere between
juggling too many balls – crowing Singh as the hero, unnecessary exaggeration,
Pakistan being portrayed as the villain, gang wars, Soviet-Afghan War, 9/11 and
26/11 attacks and so much more.
Without spoiling the not-so-much a cliffhanger finale, it’s safe to say that both Gaitonde and the show might have lost the legacy which followers strived to honour after the first season (and we don’t really mind).
Extremism is no joke. Pakistan has suffered for the larger part of its history because of extremists. It’s something every single Pakistani is aware of and it’s nothing new. But using it as a casual term in a soft drink advertisement is.
On July 28, after the Ad was released in a big social media and television campaign, singer and politician Jawad Ahmad tweeted: “The new #Coke Ad is an ugly interpretation of the word ‘Extremism’. It shows how low can marketing of a brand stoop to, just to make more money.
It is dumb & immature of marketing team of Coke to use such a highly socially sensitive word so non-seriously just to sell their bottles.”
The new #Coke Ad is an ugly interpretation of the word ‘Extremism’.It shows how low can marketing of a brand stoop to,just to make more money. It is dumb & immature of marketing team of Coke to use such a highly socially sensitive word so non-seriously just to sell their bottles. pic.twitter.com/FLh0oP4DTn
Pakistan’s Electronic Media Regulatory Authority also found the advertisement to be problematic and has ordered that the Ad not be run on television or the radio until they review it. The Authority stated in their notice that they had gotten many complaints against the Ad and that, “the content of the advertisement is not only offensive but also tantamount to demeaning Pakistanis, as a nation.”
PEMRA’s notice available on @ReportPEMRA ‘s twitter feed PEMRA’s notice available on @ReportPEMRA ‘s twitter feed
It’s not clear what clause PEMRA has used to ban the Ad. The Authority will make it clear when the Ad is reviewed and the controversial content is omitted (which might be difficult in this case). Until then, judge for yourself.
Allah, the poor, poor widow, young, beautiful, with one lock of hair always on her face to give her delicate softness, she is shunned by everyone since her husband died.
The Beychari Naintara
The beychari Naintara (Minal Khan) gives birth to her dead husband’s (Shahroze Sabzwari) son (after he is killed in a robbery) and is suffering, suffering, suffering ever since. Her husband’s older brother, Farhan (Noor Hassan) feels terrible about her state and is growing sick of his uber jealous wife Zari (Arij Fatima) who is doing everything in her power to make Naintara look like a complete skank who couldn’t wait for her husband to die. Zari plays idiotic games, from trying to get her brother to rape Naintara, to faking a pregnancy and then accusing Naintara of causing her miscarriage, to getting her friends to shame Naintara for getting it on with her brother-in-law Farhan.
Oh and Naintara has a sister, whose husband wants to marry Naintara off to an Indian businessman for money. If she doesn’t marry the businessman, he will divorce Naintara’s sister. Farhan helps Naintara get out of the situation but it’s sickening – how a sister is willing to sell her blood because Oh No! Mera ghar toot jaye ga, mai kya karoon?
Hassad wali Zari
Farhan’s mother (who is also Zari’s khala) decides to get Naintara and Farhan hitched so Naintara can have her “rightful, respectable” place in the society after Farhan’s first wife Zari leaves in a huff and goes back to her house. Farhan, not so reluctantly agrees and Naintara doesn’t put up much of a fight either (aye hai, beychari, how can she) and they get nikkahofied when Zari isn’t there. Right after the qabools, Zari walks in and has an (obvious) crisis. She leaves and later decides that she needs to come back and break up this marriage.
Okay. What the hell. Did the writers not know that it is now A CRIME to not ask your first wife for permission before you marry again? And why is it that Naintara cannot attain a “rightful” place in society without having a man by her side? The dialogues are literally cringe-worthy, to the extent of being really, really sexist. Oh, aurat ka ghar tou admi se hi bunta hai. What a terrible, terrible social message. Don’t get me wrong, its fantastic mirch masala, the oh NO! Oh nahi, kya! that comes up every time there is a twist. But is it really important to pass such messages to society? Sparring wives, sad, sad widow, jealous crazy wife?
Crying-all-the-time Naintara and Saas
If you actually watch Hassad, it shows all that’s wrong in our society. Glorifying the male child and showing women as being mental devils with nothing better to do than ruin reputations. Get a job, Naintara. You can do it.
These three
docu-dramas series are so good that while watching them, you’ll be googling to
see how true they really are.
HBO’s CHERNOBYL
IMDb: 9.6
Unbelievable.
Many of us have never heard of Chernobyl and the nuclear disaster that history
suggests, was also a part of the downfall of the Soviet Union. In five riveting
episodes you’ll be transported to April 1986 when an explosion at Chernobyl, a
nuclear power plant in Russia caused one of the world’s worst catastrophes. The
series details how the Soviet Union tried to downplay the disaster and how many
lives were affected by the event. It’s so unbelievably real, that you’ll have
to google it just to confirm that such a big event took place in our recent
history and you weren’t aware of it. When the series was released people said
it was better than Game of Thrones and Chernobyl has now become a tourist
attraction.
NETFLIX’s WHEN THEY SEE US
IMDb: 9.1
https://youtu.be/u3F9n_smGWY
Racism at its peak, this four episodes series
will leave you shocked at the how deeply engrained racism was in American
society. The series tells the 1989 true story of four black and one Hispanic
teenagers who were convicted of a rape they did not commit. They were called
the Central Park 5, who were forced into false and convoluted confessions and
convicted for many years. The episodes chronicles the conviction and the
release and the director of the series says it was compiled after many years of
research and is “very accurate.”
NETFLIX’s MINDHUNTER
IMDb: 8.5
Questions were never seem to ask or think of,
and once you start an episode of Mindhunter, you think, damn, why didn’t I
watch this earlier? Set in the late 1970s, two FBI agents interview serial
killers to find out what causes them to do such heinous crimes. They interview
serial killers, (who have done crimes you will not believe), and use the information
to solve cases. Want to know how the term serial killer first came into existence?
Watch this.
A Lahore sessions court on Saturday recorded the statement
of a witness in Ali Zafar’s defamation case against Meesha Shafi, wherein it
was informed that Shafi’s “harassment claims were false”.
As per the details, the court rejected Shafi’s appeal for not
to record the witnesses’ statements as her request was pending in the Supreme
Court (SC). She asked the court to stop the process until the verdict of the
top court was issued.
However, the judge said the hearing would continue and
recorded the statement of one witness, Kanza Muneer.
In her statement, Muneer told the court that during the
rehearsal, at which 11 people were present and videos were made, Zafar and
Shafi maintained five to six feet distance from each other. She said that Shafi
left after saying bye and claimed that her allegations of harassment were
false.
The court then adjourned the hearing with the order that other
witnesses will record their statements on May 18.
Ali Zafar has filed a defamation case against Meesha Shafi
and demanded a public apology as well as Rs2 billion in damages for accusing
him of sexual harassment.
In April 2018, Shafi had taken to Twitter to accuse Zafar of physically harassing her on “more than one occasions”, as part of the #MeToo movement.
