Source: Dawn

By Asha’ar Rehman
The politically charged latest Lollywood flick, as it were, has the potential to set a new record, that is, if all goes well on election day.

As the old theatre connoisseurs in Lahore would say, the film actually began after the interval. This was when the Barra Bhai (the elder brother) walked into the story, at his own pace, a la the unforgettable Mohammad Ali of the silver screen.

The Barra Bhai, done more than justice to by a born-again Mian Nawaz Sharif, felt for everyone and was ready to embrace all after his eventful return to the country in the last week of Nov 2007. He was unusually warm to his rediscovered sister, Benazir Bhutto, telling newsmen and their owners in his hometown how open-hearted and open-minded he was in his patch-up with the People’s Party leader.

He specially shone in the sequence immediately following the tragic departure of Benazir and could be really commended for his performance as the elder brother from the bigger province consoling the smaller members in this hour of grief.

He was equally accommodating of the people wishing him to play the role of an anti-establishment crusader; one who repented his past sins committed against the judiciary and went so far as to say that unless there was something seriously wrong with the candidate, the promotion to the all-important post of the army chief should be made on the basis of seniority.

But being a Sharif and an elder brother at the same time — a sharif elder brother — the gentleman had to stretch his arms to bring others under his expansive wings. If he was a Barra Bhai to Benazir, he made sure he didn’t leave other dependents unattended. Consequently, the audience found him responding almost equally warmly to his old friends in the All Pakistan Democratic Movement (APDM).

In one scene he would tell the APDM members that he was taking part in the general election with a heavy heart, having been forced into it by Sister Benazir who wouldn’t listen to his experience and his logic and in another, he hinted ever so slightly that working with a president who had given him the sack in 1999 was not totally impossible for someone with a mind for reconciliation. In doing so he came close to emulating none other than Benazir who he had, if ever so mildly, reprimanded over her friendly overtures to the president.

In another sequence, he spoke on the merits of a national government, again indicating to the people that he was going into the competition for votes only half-convinced.

The Barra Bhai was specially supportive of the lawyers fighting the powerful and the mighty, and of the Judge Sahib. He could easily associate with Aitzaz Ahsan, a Chaudhry from Gujrat who had been forced by circumstances to repeat famous Sultan Rahi lines even if he refrained from the use of gandasa against the oppressors. “Maulay noon Maula na maray te Maula naeen marda” so roared Ahsan, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, just as Barra Bhai summoned his candidates to his Model Town residence to swear by the judge sahibs who had been toppled on Nov 2. By that time of course, he had started to sound a bit like the incomparable Mohammad Ali.

Being a pacifist and a troubleshooter to the core, Barra Bhai, sometimes affectionately addressed as BB, understood the importance of carrying along the journalists the rival party had tried to woo to its side during his absence from home. And he made sure that when friend Shaukat Ali got an opportunity to battle through a song eulogising him, younger brother Shahbaz, not to forget their party, journalists were mentioned in it as their friends.

The intent of the script was obvious and the jumps all very visible for everyone inside the theatre to see. Some in the audience even said that they could predict the ending, a happy one for the Barra Bhai and his side. Nonetheless, it was interesting to find out how he intended to go about it against his rivals, who were not at all averse to using the same method practised and perfected by Barra Bhai, who they had until not long ago respected as an elder brother.
The first thing that the other side to the story — Messrs Chaudhry Shujaat and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi — probably did after Sharif’s dramatic entry was to go complaining to the director, “We weren’t told about this twist.” We presume they must have protested with the director for we have no way of finding out what really transpired behind the scenes. We can also guess that, as is the wont of directors in such tight spots, he must have assured the Chaudhries that their roles were no less significant than that of Sharif and that Sharif’s part was essential to sell the formula to the people all around.

Back before the camera, the determined looking Chaudhries would remind Barra Bhai that it wasn’t they who had left him; that he had departed without giving them a thought; that they had to fend for themselves after he had gone and did that as best as they could; and, as the conflict became more and more serious, that he had wronged them in the past by not giving them what he had promised, small favours like the chief ministership of the big province Barra Bhai had felt so possessive about.

In time as they grew a little more desperate they realised that they had to find a couple of villains from among the people around Barra Bhai. They didn’t look far and found one each in Barra Bhai’s younger brother and the husband of Benazir, who, remember, Barra Bhai had come to regard as his sister?

Now these two gentlemen had a reputation that could be played upon. Not exactly someone who could be likened to the chocolate-image of Waheed Murad at his most boisterous and most mischievous, the Chhota Bhai or the younger brother was considered to be a naughty man — as it turned out, not naughty enough though to appear to the audience to have supervised violence that the opponents accused him of masterminding. Of the two, the brother-in-law proved more susceptible to the title of a brother-outlaw even as he grieved the tragic murder of his wife to people providing the script with so much gore and violence that it rendered all other such practitioners superfluous.

As the lady fell in Rawalpindi, she reminded everyone of her late father, continuing the tradition of young martyrs, of a life and mission unfulfilled. Maybe, wondered the keen sign-readers inside the theatre, they had missed out on a symbol that had flashed before their eyes so many times, yet escaping scrutiny. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s brief encounter with a lady by the name of Madhubala so many decades ago: did it foretell of many lives extinguished in their prime and a mystique developing around how it was and how it could have been?

No one today remembers Madhubala thus: “beauty overshadowed her acting talents” or for her “poor choices… which seriously undermined her credibility as a serious performer, to the extent of being labelled ‘box-office poison’.” The hallo around her has grown due to her abrupt ending and she is known today as Anarkali who walked to her death at the hands of the violent order with the grace matched by few before and after her. It was matched by her friend Bhutto in 1979 and by Benazir in 2007. The mystique is only going to grow with time and the talk of poor choices and poisonous acts is going to subside.

Whether it can be translated into votes and electoral victories? In a Punjab struggling to strike a balance between romancing with the departed and the survivers’ own struggle with everyday life, Benazir’s party could have put up a more spirited show following her loss and the loss of so much credibility on the part of the officially-backed party — especially in a big city like Lahore which was attentive and could have done with a better campaign by the PPP election candidates. The sympathy wave was there but not so much a vision for future. The party and its activists relied heavily on Benazir Bhutto in death as they had been doing in her life. Any ground that the party wins in tomorrow’s election will be due to her.

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Tags: Benazir Bhutto, election day, Lollywood flick, Mian Nawaz Sharif, politically charged