Shoaib Hashmi
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Shoaib Hashmi
Yours satirically, Shoaib Hashmi
By Shehar Bano Khan
The man who could stop trains and planes after hosting a 30-hour live transmission can still put a smile on many faces. All he needs to do is speak — on anything.
The evening of November 3 was laden with heaviness caused by the slapping of the fallaciously titled ‘State of Emergency’. Any discussion on humour, wit or satire could not lift the dead weight of emergency -- not even talking to Shoaib Hashmi, the redoubtable patriarch of satirical humour in the country.
The 70-year-old professor of Mathematics, Urdu Culture and Literature at a private college in Lahore entered the salon of his Model Town residence, buffed up in a white shalwar kameez carrying a pack of cigarettes in one hand. The dead weight eased, a bit.
“Who are you? Why do you want to interview me? I can’t talk about humour! That’s ridiculous,” all said in the same high pitched tone, eyeing the Dictaphone suspiciously. “I’m not saying anything on record. Oh no! You are not using that on me,” Shoaib Hashmi lit a cigarette before turning on all the lights. “Why is there no light? I see you’ve made yourself quite comfortable with tea. Go on, go on, drink your tea,” said Mr Shoaib Hashmi, occupying the sofa close to the idle fireplace. He shifted in his sofa to peer closely and started pitching his own questions. One and then another till the dead weight of emergency lifted. “These stupid lawyers, these stupid politicians, this stupid sham of democracy. It’s absurd isn’t it? Otherwise you wouldn’t feel depressed,” his tenor was lighthearted, not to be confused with frivolity.
He turned around to speak to a woman who had just entered the salon, cutting short his denouncements on lawyers, democracy, politicians and the judiciary. “What are you doing Farzana? Why are you standing there?” inhaling the cigarette smoke, enjoying every puff of nicotine. He got up from the sofa to continue with the disjointed, inadvertently humorously strung sentences in another room. “Come, we won’t be disturbed here. Bring me the ashtray Farzana and don’t disturb me now,” Shoaib Hashmi held the Dictaphone in one hand, holding a cigarette in the other. “I think I’ve done something to your tape recorder. It has a funny red light. Look!” Upon the reassurance that the electrical gadget had not crashed he resumed smoking.
Shoaib Hashmi’s spontaneity, his wit and the effortless manner worn to effectuate the ensemble of natural humour would be only half-filled if not supported by the way he pronounced each word. Part of the team that set standards for political and social humour all through the ‘70s to the early ‘80s on the state-run television, Mr Hashmi called the satirical Such Gup and Taal Matoal the two most serious programmes ever done on Pakistan television. “It was not stand up comedy. Ours was comedy with a serious purpose.”
Akkar Bakkar, Such Gup and Taal Matoal, produced as a set of satirical, humorous skits pushed the actors beyond a standardised script and turned them into intellectuals having a strong opinion on everything from politics to social problems.
“At the time Akkar Bakkar was put on air in the early ‘70s which was the Bhutto era, we were full of confidence. I call it the age of innocence. We were innocent so were our viewers. We were so spontaneous that if Nusrat Bhutto held a meeting in the morning my wife, Saleema, would parody her wearing the same sized glasses in the evening programme. Nobody had any problem. Nobody would object. For God’s sake, we were so good that it would take us only three days to record it and send it to Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta and Peshawar, the five different stations from where the programme was aired simultaneously,” was Mr Hashmi’s matter-of-fact statement.
He began to speak on politics and stopped short of getting into another diatribe. “No, I’m not going to say anything. I don’t know anything about humour. Haven’t I said enough? Okay, okay continue,” he lit another cigarette.
Making sure not to give a stringent definition of what humour was Shoaib Hashmi believed it was instinctive and could not for that matter be acquired or taught. It was the ability to laugh at himself that took Hashmi from Taal Matoal, Such Gup and Akkar Bakkar to becoming a satirical phenomenon in the mid ‘70s who could ‘stop planes, trains and just about get anything done in this country’. Such was his popularity.
“Yes, that’s true! I could stop planes and trains. It was during the transmission of the 1970 general elections. I was asked to sit through 30 hours of live transmission with Ubaidulla Baig. After a series of numerous meetings with the Pakistan Television management it was decided that intelligent, humorous pieces would be aired in between election results. I did it and within 15 minutes of being on air started getting phone calls from all over Pakistan of how people were enjoying,” recalled Mr Hashmi.
Where does humour stand now? Why do we as a people take things so personally? Shoaib Hashmi responded by explaining that Pakistanis had lost their confidence, quickly adding that they never had any to begin with. “Anybody can laugh at dirty Sikh jokes. There’s nothing great about that, neither is it humorous. That needs either a great deal of confidence or innocence. We’ve lost both of them,” said Shoaib Hashmi.
We might have lost the confidence and innocence to laugh at ourselves, not Shoaib Hashmi. The man who could stop trains and planes after hosting a 30-hour live transmission can still put a smile on many faces. All he needs to do is speak -- on anything.
