An Arduous Struggle

For quite some time now people have been condemning Pakistani actors and singers - who are opting to make a better use of their skills and aiming a shot at prosperity in Bollywood - without pondering upon the chances of their own reaction had they been in the same situation at any point in time. Artists such as Adnan Sami, Atif Aslam, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, and many others have been branded with names like “popularity seeker,” “unpatriotic,” and even at times a “traitor,” merely due to them being trying their luck in Indian media; but despite these labels, the popularity of these artists have hardly seen to be deteriorated.

Such Indo-Pakistani artists – as I like to sincerely name them – face a harder struggle than many of the Pakistani artists or the Indian artists predominantly because they are required to show their skills to both the countries in order to be publically recognized as artists. Not only do they arduously struggle with a foreign industry, trying to thrive with a foreign media industry, while being considered as outsiders, but also they have to continuously cope with the rants of their own nation which might steer them away from giving their utmost and foremost concentration to the work at hand.

The notion which most people fail to notice is that these artists are trying to establish their career and in doing so they are eliminating any feelings of discrimination against the foreign media. Now, on the other hand, whatever the foreign media – to which these artists usually look up to for improvements in their career – deduces about this situation or about the artist in question, is a totally different matter and generally it won’t conflict with the artist’s thoughts in the first place. The reason for this point might include the artist’s deep passion to be recognized publically, no sense of discrimination for the foreign media, and worldwide recognition of the artist’s own country as opposed to the suggested claim of the artist being unpatriotic.

The question, for which our inquisitive nation is eager to gain some understanding, in order to discover an answer for, inquires about the reason which causes our artists to hope to excel in foreign media, especially Indian media. Well, the answer is simple but very hard to digest for our nation, in fact any nation for that matter. The response to this query deals with the notion of foreign media being wanted to a greater extent as compared to the Pakistani media which could be due to a few reasons; dramas or programs of constant grief on our channels, low quality of movies as compared to movies produced by others, bigger variety of shows or movies presented by other channels. All the points mentioned, plus the ones which I might have missed, point to the fact that our media needs some solid improvement. Denying this fact or dwelling on thoughts suggesting the idea that we are doing better than the rest would only cause our artists to stray away from our own TV/movie industry. Once we fully comprehend this answer, we can improve our media and provide a better medium for not only our artists but foreign ones as well, so that they are able to attain commendable recognition and plan on working for a long period of time.


Posted on Guppu.com on 19th July, 2010
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