Sunday 13 October 2019

Saintly Coke Studio-Wohi Khuda Hai


Kudos to Coke Studio for raising the level of music from devilish to divine and nothing more qualifies this than Hamd (حمد) Wohi Khuda Hai by Atif Aslam.
No wonder, music appealed locals of Hindu tradition. Saints were intelligent preachers than their successor Mullahs, they took path of music to people's hearts. They were on a mission and they were sincere missionaries. Mullah just loves to take post on his pulpit. And to stay relevant, he pulls every emotion on human inventory like hate, anger, love (if they needed).
Then it happened like this that we forgot the ways of the saints. Instead of spreading their mission, we began dancing on their graves on music & lyrics they used to change people's hearts. We hit another low when we began to dance on demonic tunes. If musical abyss had any bottom, it would be Indian love songs. Imagine how bad our music taste had become, rock bottom would be an understatement.
What Coke Studio is doing is that its reconnecting us with tradition of Sufi Saints. Overall, quality, impact & message of contemporary music had become so mundane that such high quality themed video Hamd was bound to stand out. Good standard of music & animating vocals are essential to convey powerful message crafted by the master craftsman Muzaffar Warsi. Wrapped in this package, propelled by Coke Studio platform, words of this Hamd has all the ingredients to touch hearts with its powerful message. Here, it must be mentioned that just becauae of the quality of lyrics, all those who sang this Hamd in past including the poet & Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan made similar impact in the past as well.

The end with Darood Sharif underlines place of Aqa Muhammad PBUH in the whole equation. Whoever, will listen and enjoy the quality of music & vocals must be compelled to look into the meaning of lyrics & ending with respects to The Prophet PBUH. This work will touch hearts. It may change hearts. It is a saintly work of Coke Studio.

Despite being a commercial venture, certain Coke Studio songs seem to reenact the works of saints and Wohi Khuda Hai stands right up there

Wednesday 9 October 2019

Team Misbah versus Team PTI

Except diplomatic victory that an international series took place in Pakistan, on performance front, poor team selection & a whitewash is the outcome.There are unccanny resemblances between Misbah's first series incharge & Team PTI's first year in office. He tried to build the team around his winning formula of Islamabad United pitching Faheem along with Shadab. Pretty much the same selection process seems to have gone in PTI' Team selection. Bacteria of Ahmed Shahzad, Umer Akmal & Faheem Ashraf took two games to be removed but along went the series, too little too late. Let's see how soon PTI takes an antibacterial drug or procrastinate till the series is lost. Misbah is calm & longterm for which he did well in longer version of the game whereas, shorter version is quite the opposite, T20 is fast, fluid & aggressive. You blip & you flip. Plus its good to be overrated in younger age, one can learn but being overrated at middle age is not only end of the road as far as learning & improving is concerned, it is seriously detrimental to people & organizational output. Or do we have to wait for Misbah to complete his on job training like Team PTI. And captain on the field talks too much like our minnisters & deliver too little.
There is a dissimilarity between Misbah's 1st series incharge & PTI's 1st yr in office that  people still have some genuinely measured hope assocciated with Captain PTI than great Sir Misbah ul Haq who does seem to have felt some heat of the hot seat. Its hard for him to get results in shorter format & if he has to stay like Bhai Jan Buzdar then we may have to get used to be on the losing side more often than not.
Similarities between Team Misbah & Team PTI outweigh the dissimilarities. But dissimilarity of Team Leaders alone outwieghs all similarities.