The PR coordinator, hovering nearby with a tray of snacks, gets up and shuts it. Shuja waves at the food. “Eat, please,” he insists. He won’t touch it himself, though. Over the next 90 minutes, it becomes clear that this isn’t a one-off gesture. He always makes sure everyone else goes before him.

Shuja, 31, has spent the last two years playing men who are hard to love. There was the evil playboy in Ae Ishq-i-Junoon (AIIJ), the traumatised mountain villager in Khaie and the young man dealing with male assault in Tann Mann Neelo Neel (TMNN).

This year, ARY Digital’s Dr Bahu, directed by Mehreen Jabbar and written by Sanam Mehdi Zaryab, made him something we rarely get to see on Pakistani television: a heartthrob people could fall for without worrying. It didn’t last long, though, because in the episode that was aired after this interview, Salman Shahnawaz, the character Shuja plays, turned kind of villainish.

It’s easy to forget that the confidence of the actor with four overlapping hit projects — Ae Ishq-i-Junoon, Tann Mann Neelo Neel, Khaie and now Dr Bahu — is fairly new. Before it, there was a slew of rejections and typecasting and a feeling he was in Disneyland. So why does he still feel uncomfortable with fame and want to delete his Instagram?

Salman is the black sheep in a family of doctors, married off to Sania, an ambitious young physician (Kubra Khan). A deleted scene from Episode 10, which showed Salman helping Sania fix her sari, went viral in April. And once again the internet lost its head over a man being gentle on television.

“Salman has a lot of traumas,” he says, sounding a little tired of how the internet has distilled his character into one word. “I keep hearing people call him a green flag. It’s not that simple. He’s not a red flag either. He’s just human.”

He lists what he thinks people have missed about his character. That Salman lost his business two or three times before the show began. He had a panic attack. That his dislike of hospitals stems from the fact that his father spent years pushing him towards medicine and never forgave him for failing at it.

“He’s flawed.” Shuja then smiles as he adds, “But he’s there for his wife and mother. Nobody’s asking how someone is supposed to turn out fine after all that.”

Building a character

In listing these details, Shuja is also revealing his acting process. He doesn’t act only by instinct. Instead, he arrives on the set with a long list of specific questions. What are this character’s childhood traumas? How does he eat? How does he talk? Is this the first time he’s worn this suit?

“Even regarding an outfit, I’ll ask the director if he thinks he’s wearing this for the first time,” he says. “Dramas are a six-to-eight-month project. The more questions you ask, the better.”

He traces the habit to Khaie, which got him noticed before Dr Bahu. “That’s where I realised, okay. Keep your room for errors small, Shuja. Ask good questions if you want a real career.”

The questions stem from curiosity, but he admits they can be dangerous. After AIIJ, he met Mehreen for their first meeting for Dr Bahu and found that he was still struggling to look women in the eye. The playboy he’d just finished playing hadn’t let go of him and he was avoiding being misread.

“I’m unable to meet you in the eyes,” he told Mehreen, “so please don’t mistake it for not listening.” He still thinks he could play a better villain than the one in AIIJ. That character, Shehroz, came with a mullet and an actual piercing, both of which he kept until the drama wrapped up. “After that I needed to be Shuja again,” he says, as if putting on another costume.

Salman’s role almost went to someone else because Shuja nearly turned it down. In his first meeting with Mehreen, he says, he kept suggesting other actors. He wasn’t sure he understood Salman. “I wasn’t able to click with it,” he recalls.

Mehreen pushed back. He mentioned to her that he’d grown up mostly around women, his mother and two sisters, and knew which dramas they watched and what they talked about. She told him that was exactly why he needed to play Salman.

It’s worth remembering how recent Shuja’s confidence is. Before Khaie and before the ad that Fahad Mustafa happened to see, which got him cast in Pyar Deewangi Hai opposite Neelam Munir, Shuja spent nearly two years being turned away at casting calls over his teeth. He got them fixed in his 20s and took a marketing job handing out water plant brochures door to door because his mother told him to go and feel what real work was like.

He collected small humiliations during that time and talks about his early 20s the way people talk about a difficult training period.

He still describes himself, half-joking, as a boy who used to watch dramas, wondering whether he’d ever get to play Faysal Quraishi’s son or Sheheryar Munawar’s brother. He is still something of a fanboy and gets visibly overwhelmed recalling the first time he met actor Javed Sheikh. He remembers doing a commercial with Shaan Shahid, thinking to himself in disbelief that he was finally standing next to Pakistan’s action hero. He calls the industry his Disneyland.

The cost of fame

Ask him about fame and he brings up a worry right away. “It’s very hard to go out with your family,” he says. Someone is always taking a picture, or worse, not taking one and just watching him.

He brings up a recent article. It paired a badass photo of him wearing sunglasses, hand in his pocket, with a quote he’d given about not being the best-looking man in the industry. Without context, the quote came across as arrogant. Mehreen texted him asking, “Why would you say that?”

“Negativity attracts attention,” laments Shuja Asad. He sounds tired by the pattern he’s describing and is still figuring out how to cope with it. “Nobody reacts to something positive.” He is quick to point out that he has played a mountain boy (Khaie) and a poor kid from the streets of Lahore (Tann Mann Neelo Neel) and made both work, as if to pre-empt the assumption that his casting has anything to do with his looks.

“Negativity attracts attention,” he laments. He sounds tired by the pattern he’s describing and is still figuring out how to cope with it. “Nobody reacts to something positive.” He is quick to point out that he has played a mountain boy (Khaie) and a poor kid from the streets of Lahore (TMNN) and made both work, as if to pre-empt the assumption that his casting has anything to do with his looks.

He says he stopped reading reviews about a year-and-a-half ago, because caring what strangers think started getting in the way of his work. “If I start caring what 10 people think of me, it affects how I tell a story,” he asserts. “I’m a storyteller. That’s my job.” He still reads messages from fans, and still replies to some of them himself, but he has drawn a firm line around criticism from strangers online.

We begin to talk about an actor who spent years being typecast and being trolled in Pakistan because of her complexion before finding real recognition working abroad. It is proof to him of how much damage the industry’s obsession with looks can do.

“We don’t even realise it,” he says. “When people see someone famous, they can’t handle their own insecurities and they want to say something. That’s on them. Not on us.”

He feels the same way about his family. He posted a photo with his mother and his wife, and the comments turned into unwarranted remarks. “If anyone talks against my family, they won’t be spared,” he says vehemently. For one brief moment during our conversation, the easy tone drops. “I’m very protective of my sisters, my wife, and my mother. I’m their protector.”

Keeping him grounded

If there’s one thread connecting who looks out for Shuja, it’s the women around him. He describes his mother as having “played a very fatherly role” and she continues to give him feedback on his work.

His manager, Samra Muslim, sounds like a stern aunt who doesn’t let him get away with anything. She held him back from photoshoots and press until his work could justify them.

Recently, at a shoot for a commercial, where the crew thought he was being difficult, she pulled him aside. “She told me she didn’t like seeing that attitude in me,” he says. “I thought about it. When I talked to my wife, she agreed with Samra completely.” His wife, for her part, has never complained about his hours, he says. “Her only real request is more time with me.”

It’s Samra, more than Shuja himself, who decides when he’s ready for attention and when he isn’t. “No PR can help you,” he quotes his manager, “until your work is good enough to deserve it.” For three years, he recalls, she kept him at arm’s length from his own success, careful never to let him get too comfortable with praise. The one time that discipline slipped, he says, was after the Hum Awards, when she ran over to hug him.

Ask him where the Pakistani drama industry is heading and his excitement is palpable. He believes that the industry is about to reach a level of success it hasn’t seen before. He points to the sheer range of content with smaller, harder projects like TMNN and the Aik Aur Pakeezah sitting alongside mainstream hits like AIIJ and Meri Zindagi Hai Tu, both finding audiences beyond Pakistan, in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Turkey. He thinks the industry has started taking real risks with subject matters, citing TMNN’s tackling of male assault.

What frustrates him about the industry, though, is more personal. It is what he calls the unnecessary competition inside the industry, actors and producers alike constantly measuring each other’s looks and talent against one another, a habit he thinks the business would be better off without.

Instagram is the one thing he’d happily give up. “So many times, I’ve asked my manager, please, let me shut down my Instagram.” He wants people to meet Salman from Dr Bahu, or Shehroz from AIIJ, or Barlas from Khaie, before they meet him.

He believes that watching a mountain boy from one drama turn into, as he puts it, “a pappu [cute] Burger Boy” (as he refers to himself) with a new watch, new apartment and new car, all posted in the same week’s scroll, somehow undoes his on-screen work. He brings up Michael Jackson’s refusal to give interviews.

“He wanted to be a mystery,” he says, “because he wanted his work to be seen, not him.” He says, more than once, that he thinks he was simply born in the wrong decade, that he belongs somewhere in the 1980s, before anyone needed to post anything.

Beyond Salman

The three overlapping projects that led up to this year were AIIJ, TMNN and Paradise. They were shot in different parts of the country, sometimes with a political protest thrown in, which became hectic, leaving him eating badly and gaining weight.

“That was the toughest stretch,” he recalls. “I thought, okay, I’m done. I started eating so much. I’d come home at night and just eat.” He talks about the emotional toll more than the physical one.

For example, his morning started with playing a scene where his mother had died. Hours later he was acting in a romantic scene and then fighting with an on-screen father in another. “By the time you get home at night, there’s nothing left for your family.”

Ask who he wants to play next, and the answer seems to surprise even him. Not another villain — someone bright and heroic. “Almost Superman-ish.” Not a man with powers, but a man who’s better than the people around him and still flawed. He’s thinking of Christopher Reeve, whose Superman he grew up watching. He talks about the actors he admires, such as Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Timothée Chalamet and Tom Hanks.

There is also, he says, a part he isn’t sure he could pull off yet, which is a character with a physical disability. Almost immediately he remembers a co-star from TMNN who played a character with special needs and told him how exhausting it was.

In the meantime, he’s doing the unglamorous work a lot of actors his age in Pakistan skip. Dance classes, sessions with a speech therapist and acting workshops, arranged through his manager. He didn’t get into Napa because his A-levels were incomplete. He calls the rejection fair, and speaks about Zia Mohyeddin, the school’s late founding director, with reverence.

“Even now,” he says, “if I get a chance, I would still want to go.” He also wants to take a short acting course abroad for four to six weeks, whenever his schedule allows it. He recently turned down ARY’s Laila Majnu, but the news that he’d signed on spread anyway. He won’t say what’s next, but does concede that it will look nothing like Salman from Dr Bahu.

Ever the underdog

He is, by his own description, an underdog who intends to stay one a while longer.

“I don’t mind being an underdog,” he says. “I want that dark horse energy. No controversy, just good projects.” He says he’s glad fame took a while to arrive, and is happy he wasn’t handed this kind of attention in his 20s, when he wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

He brings up a trip to Houston last October, for the HUM Awards, as the first time he really understood how far his work had reached. The love from overseas Pakistanis and Indians, thousands of miles from home, took him by surprise.

Past all of it, what he actually wants is a farm, cattle, a pickup truck and a cowboy hat. And children, which he doesn’t have yet, despite Instagram pictures with his nieces and nephews that have convinced half the country otherwise. “I love kids,” he says. “They’re so pure. No filter,” he says simply.

Near the end of the interview, almost as an aside, comes a detail that seems to catch him most off guard. We end up talking about my teenage daughter, raised on Netflix, who usually doesn’t watch Pakistani dramas and has started watching Dr Bahu. Shuja Asad goes quiet for a second. “Alhamdulillah [Praise be to God],” he says. “Imagine.”

It’s a small moment, but a telling one: a man used to fame and strangers’ admiration briefly stops on hearing that he is being watched by a teenager who wouldn’t be, in regular circumstances, watching him at all.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, August 2nd, 2026

Appearing on Thursday’s episode of Good Morning Pakistan, where she said pregnancy blues and postpartum depression were “so real” and needed to be properly addressed by those around the mother-to-be.

One of the guests on the show, Airaas, who got married at 17 and had three kids “without much of a gap” said it was hard for young women to adjust in a new home because every bit of criticism hits harder when they aren’t mature enough to handle it.

She said this was especially true when women are pregnant. “Because at that point, even the tiniest thing someone says sounds very harsh to you, regardless of whether it was that harsh or not.”

She said wisdom comes with age and without it such words can be traumatic, even if they were never intended to be.

Ashraf responded to this by saying society still needed to learn a thing or two about pregnancy instead of teaching the same outdated lessons to the next generation of mothers.

“Earlier, there was no concept of [pregnancy blues and postpartum depression], people would just say, ‘So what? We had children too.’”

The actor said we didn’t know what past generations had to endure and how they were treated by their loved ones during pregnancy, but nowadays people need to understand that when a woman is pregnant, she feels that her entire life is changing.

“It’s a happy feeling, sure, but it’s an anxiety also.”

At this crucial stage, Ashraf said, a girl who feels she has to face these challenges alone can go into a “really bad state of depression”.

“Here, I feel the people around you, your in-laws and especially your husband, they should have more compassion,” the actor said.

She also clarified that this wasn’t limited to just pregnancy, because raising a child was a unique challenge too, especially for a first-time mother.

Host Nida Yasir said handling a child was no easy task, even for someone with experience, to which Ashraf agreed that it wasn’t and said nobody was telling new mothers that it’s okay not to be able to do all of it instinctively.

Yasir quipped that it was important for young women to get degrees and start their careers before getting married because it makes them “rough, tough” and better prepares them for the pressures of life ahead.

Ashraf is not the first Pakistan celebrity to talk about how pregnancy and childbirth can affect a woman’s mental health, Naimal Khawar, Sarwat Gilani and Zara Noor Abbas have all spoken openly about their own struggles with postpartum depression.

Each described the mental and physical toll, something partners and families can — and absolutely should — help new mothers with.

In an Instagram story shared to her account on Friday, Muneer said every day brought “another horrifying story” and destroyed “another innocent life”. She questioned what had happened to us as a society.

She said the fact that the victim this time was an 18-month-old girl — as per reports — made this incident much more than just “disturbing news”.

“A baby who could not even understand what was happening to her was subjected to unimaginable cruelty,” the actor said.

Muneer asked how many more children had to suffer such a fate before people decided to speak up and how many more innocent lives had to be lost before someone took action.

The actor said we need justice, accountability and stronger protection for our children. “And we need a system where those who commit these horrific crimes know that they will face the full consequences of the law,” she said.

She urged everyone reading her message not to scroll past and go about their lives as they usually would. Instead, she said they should speak up, demand justice and “protect our children”.

Earlier, a number of Pakistani celebrities expressed similar sentiments over the incident. Adnan Siddiqui questioned how depraved people had become that this had become our reality. He said the fact that the victim was just 18 months old and the suspect — a relative of the girl who was arrested on Wednesday — was a teenager, made the ordeal that much more horrific.

Ayesha Omar said the country and society were in “the lowest of lows” and called for people to come together and figure out how to move forward in the aftermath of the tragedy.

The South Asia Speaks (SAS) literary fellowship, which was previously restricted to applicants resident in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, has now opened its doors to young South Asian voices around the world. Afghan applicants were permitted to apply even if they weren’t living in Afghanistan.

SAS pairs a handful of promising young writers and poets with seasoned literary professionals and journalists to develop a book-length project. Successful applicants are provided one-on-one sessions with an assigned mentor, as well as a range of craft workshops and masterclasses to hone their skills.

Masterclasses and workshops have been conducted by Shamsie, Pankaj Mishra, Vauhini Vara and Taymour Soomro for past cohorts.

Applications for the 2026 cohort will open September 1 and run till Sep 30.

SAS has paired over 100 fellows with mentors over the last five years. Their fellows have gone on to publish books with prestigious publishing houses such as Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury and HarperCollins. The 2025 cohort had eight fellows, one from Pakistan, six from India and one from India-occupied Kashmir.

While the fellowship initially catered to fiction and non-fiction writers, last year saw the introduction of an oral history mentorship programme, helmed by seasoned oral historian Aanchal Malhotra.

Malhotra has won awards for her writings on the lived experiences of Partition and is a co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory — a digital repository tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectables and antiques.

The SAS fellowship was founded by Sonia Faleiro, who continues to serve as programme director. She is joined on the board by Fatima Bhutto, Isaac Chotiner and Julia Churchill.

In an Instagram reel posted on Thursday, the singer said this was necessary after seeing so many people make beautiful covers of his song.

He asked fans to tag their favourite cover artist in the comments and said one winner would get to work with him on the song.

In a story on his account, Azhar explained this was real and “not a drill”. He said seeing so many amazing musicians cover his song made his “heart smile”.

“Go tag yourself or your favourite artist who has covered ‘Khabbay Sajjay’ on my latest reel and the best one will get to be on the official unplugged version which we’ll release officially,” the singer said.

Azhar hinted that he might also make a video of the unplugged version with the winning artist.

The song — one of 10 on the Asim Ali album — is a romantic number with Azhar singing praises of his lover who is “so beautiful that my heart moves khabbay sajjay (left and right).”

The song’s description on YouTube — where it has amassed over a million views — says it is “an aching declaration of devotion — love that persists even when distance, fear, and time stretch it thin”.

The reading will be done by Adeel Afzal, a writer, actor and content creator. Afzal has acted in Parizaad, as well as the films Kamli and Zindagi Tamasha. He’s also the co-founder of Amtul Shahida, a collaborative scriptwriting company. Amtul Shahida wrote the script for the new HUM TV drama Bombay Tailors.

“In 1947, during Partition families were separated by borders and uncertainty. In a time when letters were often the only means of communication, they became lifelines carrying stories of hope, longing, and resilience,” reads the caption for the event announcement on Instagram.

The event invites participants to revisit these deeply personal experiences through the dramatic reading of “authentic letters exchanged during Partition and reflect on the emotional aspect of Partition 1947”.

The event will be held from 6pm to 7pm at the National History Museum, located in Lahore’s Greater Iqbal Park. The museum is touted as Pakistan’s first digital interactive museum, curated and managed by the Citizens Archive of Pakistan. It is a project of Lahore’s Parks and Horticulture Authority and opened its doors to the public in 2018.

Interested participants need to register for the event. The museum’s Instagram page has a link to the registration form.

The Citizens Archive is also working on a history museum in Karachi, the groundbreaking of which was performed by the chief minister and mayor in May at Clifton’s Beach View Park.

In an Instagram reel shared on Thursday, Hashmi walked into the assembly building with Alam giving her a tour and showing her the many artworks, dioramas and artefacts on display.

The actor also visited the assembly floor, meeting staffers there and in her host’s office, where the three-time MNA presented her with a token of appreciation and spoke highly of her work representing female legislators in the media.

Alam said she was “proud” of Hashmi for bringing the lives of female parliamentarians and politicians to the screen and thanked her for her work, which she said she found to be “commendable”.

In the post’s caption, the actor said visiting parliament gave her a deeper understanding of the role she played in Leader. “Politics, what just looks like a privilege is more than that — it’s a responsibility, a duty and an all-time commitment,” she wrote.

Hashmi also sat down with Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar during her visit. She said they had a “productive discussion on critical issues, particularly those affecting women in media in our country”.

Earlier in July, Alam and Balochistan MNA Jamal Raisani praised the actor’s performance in Leader, with Alam saying Hashmi owned the role and calling her acting “absolutely phenomenal”.

The actor thanked both lawmakers for their kind words.

Hashmi’s onscreen persona in Leader, Rubab, is the daughter of a shrewd politician with a feudal background. In later episodes, she takes the reins of her father’s political empire, coming into her own as an iron-willed party leader.

She also seemed to know the names of every plant in the garden. Often, we would stop for a bit longer to check on the jackfruit tree. I had never seen the big, spiky, golden-yellow fruit anywhere other than on her property. She said that the tree was a gift from friends in India’s Mangalore (now Mangaluru), if I remember correctly.

A ripe jackfruit may be enjoyed fresh or cooked. Here is a recipe for jackfruit fritters and an easy chutney as a condiment

For years afterwards, I never encountered another jackfruit. But I spotted it recently at Karachi’s Empress Market. It was being sold as kathal, its local name, at Rs400 per kilogramme. Given the fruit’s enormous size, buying one is not a matter of a kilo or two — the price of one fruit is in the thousands.

Curious, I did some quick research. I found out that the fruit, though sweet-tasting, is good for diabetics, and even better for those with a sluggish thyroid, cardiac issues and blood pressure.

Jackfruit season in Pakistan, according to fruit sellers, starts in May and lasts until early August. The good news is that the fruit can be frozen after peeling and cleaning. But preparing to freeze it requires some effort, as the fruit is sticky and gummy, and clings to knives and hands. You will need to coat the knife and your hands with edible oil before cutting and peeling it.

A ripe jackfruit is sweet and can be enjoyed fresh or used in a variety of dishes. During the monsoon, when the heart yearns for warm and crisp pakorray [fritters], there is no reason why you can’t move away from the traditional besan [gram flour] pakorray to make jackfruit pakorray.

Jackfruit fritters

Soak one cup of rice in water overnight. Take one and a half cups of cleaned and peeled jackfruit along with one cup desiccated coconut, half a cup of gurr [jaggery] and put them into a blender. Drain the soaked rice and also add it to the blender. Do not add any water to these ingredients before blending, as the jackfruit and jaggery release enough moisture. Finally, add a teaspoon of salt and blend the ingredients to a smooth paste.

Now, fill a wok halfway, preferably with coconut oil, though any other cooking oil will also work. Heat the oil to about 175 degrees Celsius before adding separate tablespoons of your batter to it to make the fritters. The fritters are ready when they turn golden. Take them out on a paper towel to drain the excess oil and enjoy them hot.

South Indian red chutney

Just so you won’t have to enjoy your jackfruit fritters on their own, here is an easy South Indian red chutney to prepare to go with them.

Take a small piece of ginger (about the size of a teaspoon) along with three garlic cloves, one medium-sized chopped onion and three dried red chillies. Sauté the ingredients in a frying pan in two tablespoons of any cooking oil for five minutes on medium heat.

When the onions start turning translucent, add two medium-sized chopped tomatoes and sauté them for another five minutes before transferring the mix to a blender. Add one teaspoon of coconut oil, and salt to taste, to the mix and blend it into a soft paste. The chutney is ready.

Correction: The print version of this piece misidentified Zahra Mirza as an Anglo-Indian, a term specifically used for people of mixed parentage with a male British father. Ms Mirza’s mother was British while her father was Indian. This mistake has been corrected.

Originally published in Dawn, EOS, August 2nd, 2026

In a long, emotional note shared on Instagram on Wednesday, Asad thanked “everyone who watched, supported, debated, agreed, disagreed, and felt something throughout this journey”.

The actor said one of the best things about his line of work was that it can start conversations even after the show has ended and the credits have rolled.

He said that if Doctor Bahu had sparked discussions in viewers’ living rooms about “difficult subjects like grief, control, unhealthy relationships, forgiveness, or accountability,” then he and his team were able to create something truly meaningful.

Talking about his character Salman, Asad said he wasn’t written to be perfect. “He stumbled, made mistakes, carried pain, and at times became someone he never wanted to be.”

Still, the actor said, his character “owned those mistakes, apologised and tried to find his way back”. That’s what, he said, made playing the role so human.

Lastly, coming to the team that worked with him on the show, Asad thanked his “incredible cast, director, writers, producers, crew, and everyone who worked tirelessly behind the scenes” for trusting him with a role in their story.

The actor shared a picture with his on-screen partner Kubra Khan, who posted her own note of thanks on Tuesday. She said she had the most amazing experience making the show and thanked everyone involved with the show for making it happen.

Khan said she had no idea how nine months of her working on the drama flew by with all the fun they had on set, describing the team as less of a family and more like friends in high school or college who had each other’s backs no matter what.

Now imagine if someone just fed the book to AI and called it a day. That’s exactly what Urdu novelist Umera Ahmed’s team is worried about.

In an Instagram post on the writer’s official page, they thanked readers for the “tremendous love and support” they had shown her novels over the years and said they had noticed “a lot of AI-generated images, videos and reels trying to depict scenes, characters and dialogues from the novels”.

“We kindly ask all content creators and pages not to generate or share any AI visuals of Umera Ahmed’s work,” the post said.

The team said literature cultivated a very personal experience for those who enjoyed it and AI content deprived readers of that “personal connection”. They also said some of Ahmed’s works — like the novel Peer-e-Kamil — were so “deep, sensitive and spiritual” that no one should dilute their “beauty and sanctity” with AI.

The team said while they valued the creativity and energy that goes into running the many fan pages that post about the writer’s books, “it would be a great shame if people started diluting the beautiful words of Umera Ahmed”.

They asked content creators and pages to let the magic of Ahmed’s words touch them and others “the way it is meant to”.

AI has become a talking point in Pakistan recently after a number of incidents highlighted its negative impacts on the entertainment industry.

On Monday, Minister of Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal shared a music video produced by his ministry with extensive use of AI. It was criticised heavily for trying — and frankly, failing — to replace human artists.

Last month, TV personalities Tauseeq Haider and Farah Saadia were given quite the shock when they found out AI-generated pictures of their supposed wedding had gone viral. They both later clarified in a video that they were, in fact, “happily single”.

Actor Hira Tareen also cautioned against contracts being given to actors which could have their sign away their likeness for studios to make AI content with. She advised her colleagues to always read the fine print before signing anything.

According to the FIR registered on the complaint of the girl’s father, the child was taken out by a relative to buy something to eat. When they returned, she was unconscious and taken to a private hospital and then to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where she died.

The relative — a 17-year-old boy who lived with the family — was arrested on Wednesday on charges of allegedly raping and murdering the child.

Among those calling for justice and accountability was actor Sanam Baloch, who said the news was “devastating” and that “justice must be served”.

Baloch said that being a mother herself, she “can’t even imagine the trauma this family must be going through”. She said the safety of the nation’s children was paramount.

Adnan Siddiqui questioned how depraved people had become that this had become our reality. He said the fact that the victim was just 18-months-old — as per reports — and the suspect was a teenager, made the ordeal that much more horrific. He said he was feeling both “disgusted and heartbroken”.

“There are no words left. Only rage, grief and shame that we have come to this,” said Siddiqui. He prayed for “swift and uncompromising justice for the child and strength for her family”.

Ayesha Omar said the country and society were in “the lowest of lows” and called for people to come together and figure out how to move forward in the aftermath of the tragedy.

“We cannot go on like this anymore,” Omar said.

Srha Asghar said we ought to have some shame as another day brought with it another miserable story. Zhalay Sarhadi, meanwhile, could only plead for God’s mercy in these times.

A number of cases of violence and abuse against children have been reported recently, including two gruesome murders that elicited similar reactions in June.

At the time, Siddiqui said that even animals have an instinct to protect their young and questioned how humans had failed so badly in protecting their own.

Omar said, “The environment all over Pakistan is barbaric,” and that she was “shaken, so, so, so angry and feeling hopeless about this country”.

Both demanded accountability for those responsible for harming children.

The actor, accompanied by his son and co-star, Karan Deol, was asked by a journalist to weigh in on “Pakistan as a nation” and its “atmosphere”.

Deol didn’t give a direct answer, and instead quoted his late father, Dharmendra.

“We can’t talk about how [we] feel about it because both countries were once one. As my father used to say, ‘This [India] is my mother and that [Pakistan] is my maternal aunt.’ You all know that. We’re all connected, in one way or another,” he said.

Dharmendra, who passed away last November, was a vocal proponent of strengthening relations between India and Pakistan.

Declining to comment further on Pakistan, Deol highlighted his duty to tell stories as an actor without politicising his craft.

“I don’t wish to get into all that. We are actors. We are makers. We choose stories and make stories. We don’t want to take them in a political direction, nor do we.”

Despite not wanting to ‘politicise’ the matter, the former BJP politician, has been known for extremely political and hyper-patriotic films, such as Border and Gadar. His attempt to distance himself from politics and echo his father’s softer stance towards Pakistan was not received well online.

One X user criticised the actor for using “nationalistic jingoism” to fight elections in the past.

Others called him “opportunistic”.

Many others online slammed him for what they perceived to be his “support” for Pakistan.

While political relations between Pakistan and India have always been strained, the hostilities reached a crescendo in the wake of a four-day military conflict in May 2025. India also put into place digital restrictions on Pakistani entertainment content, including bans on YouTube channels and Instagram profiles of celebrities, even going as far as pulling songs and removing imagery from music streaming platforms, such as Spotify.

A heated debate on social media was, therefore, more or less expected as Batwara 1947 is set during the time of Partition. It tells the story of a Muslim family forced to flee to Pakistan following the violence caused by the Partition of British India. However, tensions continue — and escalate — after they discover a Hindu woman, played by Shabana Azmi, occupying the house they’ve been allotted in Lahore.

Directed by Rajkumar Santoshi, Batwara 1947’s cast also includes Preity Zinta, Ali Fazal and Abhimanyu Singh. It’s set to be released on August 14.

Saffron Kingdom follows Masrat (Diana Aras), a half-widow — a term used for Kashmiri women whose husbands have been abducted by Indian forces. She flees the valley with her young son Rizwan (Alex Cheeks) in the wake of her husband’s enforced disappearance.

Masrat settles in the US, where both she and Rizwan must grapple with traumatic memories from their time living under occupation. The filmmaker said women played a central part in the movie, “the main character is a woman… you see another woman playing an important role… it’s an allegory I’ve used”.

“You don’t see a lot of men in the film because there aren’t a lot of men [left] in [India-Occupied] Kashmir,” he explained. “But you see women, and through them you understand what it takes to live in an occupation,” Sheikh had told Images.

The film premiered at the Wake Forest Film Festival in the United States and went on to play in six more countries, often to full houses with a strong showing from minority communities who related to its themes of migration and the trauma of persecution at home.

Saffron Kingdom joins Academy Award nominee The Voice of Hind Rajab, Bafta winning documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack and Pakistan’s 2025 Oscar submission The Glassworker in Watermelon+’s extensive library of works.

Cover photo: Arfat Sheikh/Daffodil Studios

In a reel posted on her Instagram account on Wednesday, Khan said the experience of filming the show left her with strong feelings not just for her co-stars, but for everyone on set.

She started the video by saying she didn’t add a song to her video of clips from behind the scenes, choosing not to add the drama’s OST because the audience had heard it too many times.

Working on the show reminded her of a line from Elton John’s ‘Your Song’, she said. “It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside. But not one of those you can easily hide.

“Doctor Bahu, was something like that for me. It had so many emotions, so many feelings, not just attached to the script, but [to the] set. I always say that if your set has a good vibe, a good atmosphere and everyone is treating each other well, then half of your work is done.”

Khan said she had no idea how nine months of her working on the drama flew by with all the fun they had on set. “They say [actors] laugh during romantic scenes. We used to laugh during sad scenes as well.”

She said that while she would love to tell the world the cast and crew were like a family, they weren’t. It was more like time spent in high school or college where “whatever happens, we always stayed together… If there was a problem on set, whether it be rain, shine or a war, we’d support each other”.

Without getting too “mushy”, she said this wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the people involved in the project. Khan thanked the show’s director, Mehreen Jabbar, the writer, Sanam Mehdi Zaryab, and the director of photography, Tayyab Shah, in particular.

The actor also thanked “cast members, but more importantly, the crew members… for making this set so beautiful”.

Khan ended her note by saying she didn’t know if she’d ever get to work with a team like this again but would always look back on them fondly. She said the bar for all her future projects “has gone way too high” after Doctor Bahu.

Take, for example, the ARY Digital show Bas Tera Saath Ho. The show’s been running for 28 episodes so far and Hameed is playing the wife of the male lead’s uncle (Faran Tahir). A more recent project she’s doing is ARY’s Dar-e-Nijaat where she plays the mother of the female lead’s dad (also Tahir). Wait…what?

Yeah, we’re not kidding and we’re definitely not alone in thinking it’s a quite weird. In a reel posted on Monday, content creator K Khan asked the team behind Dar-e-Nijaat which angle they looked at Hameed from to think she was even remotely fit to play Tahir’s mum, especially when she’s playing his spouse in a show that airs on the same channel.

In the comment section, actor Zhalay Sarhadi said only women seem to age in Pakistani society, as men never really stop being boys.

“Hence our industry keeps on submitting to this cultural and generational brainwashing. All over the world, it’s changing, just not in this part of the planet.”

She said female actors in Pakistan needed to get “more appropriate roles written for us with better, more realistic casting”.

Sarhadi also joked that if this keeps up, she’ll be playing Humayun Saeed’s mother in a drama soon enough.

Actor Atiqa Odho also thought the whole situation was ridiculous. In a clip from her drama review show Kya Drama Hai, posted on YouTube on Tuesday, she said, “The cast is fantastic, except I don’t understand how Saba Hameed can play Faran Tahir’s mother.”

Odho said Hameed’s look in the show seemed forced because she does not look like a grandmother.

Not everyone thought it was strange though. TV host Juggun Kazim felt the two roles were “a testament to Saba Hameed’s extraordinary talent”.

“She has the rare ability to make you forget the actor and believe the character every single time. We are so lucky to have artists like her,” Kazim said.

Ageism is a contentious subject in Pakistan’s entertainment industry, with some several actors — including Odho — suggesting the rules of age apply very differently to male and female actors.

While male actors in their 40s continue to be cast in lead roles as young men — like Fahad Mustafa playing a 20-something-year-old in Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum — their on screen partners are often much younger girls. Women in their 40s and over, however, frequently get typecast as mothers or much older women.

Pakistani dramas have frequently explored narcissistic pathology. We call them ‘villains’ without recognising that they are psycho-education disguised as entertainment. Narcissism exists on a spectrum, and can perhaps be divided into two broad categories. Each destroys differently. Each requires a different survival strategy.

Overt narcissism: The shouters

Easy to spot, they are loud, entitled and unapologetic. They demand attention and special treatment and believe rules do not apply to them. And when challenged, they rage.

1. Mubashira Jaffer (Ayeza Khan) in Main — The textbook grandiose narcissist

Mubashira does not just want power. She claims it as a birthright. Her arrogance is her core identity, not a mask. She manipulates, schemes and destroys whoever threatens her position because she genuinely cannot conceive of a world in which she is not the main character.

Narcissism is more than vanity or selfishness. From domineering personalities to subtle manipulators, Pakistani dramas offer striking examples of how narcissistic behaviour unfolds

The clinical markers are unmistakable. She exhibits a sense of self-importance, exaggerates achievements, expects automatic compliance and displays a complete lack of empathy. When her plans fail, she doesn’t reflect — she retaliates. This is narcissistic rage — the violent response to any threat against the fragile ‘god self’ beneath the grandiosity.

Protecting yourself: Bou­n­daries must be impenetrable, stated clearly and enforced. They will test every limit, gaslight, guilt-trip and escalate. Do not negotiate or explain. They thrive on reaction. Calmness is your armour.

2. Farasat Ali (Naumaan Ijaz) in Sharpasand — The malignant manipulator

A darker sub-type, he doesn’t just lack empathy — he enjoys destruction. He destroys the character of women in his neighbourhood who do not submit to him — Shazmeen (Hira Mani), Hafsa (Zuni Sheikh) and Sanam (Hareem Farooq). His cruelty is calculated, not impulsive. He identifies vulnerability and exploits it with maliciousness.

This is narcissism with sadistic features. The pleasure is not just in winning. It is in watching you lose. Farasat seeks submission rather than admiration. He wants to see spirits break. This is the narcissist who will destroy reputations, relationships and people’s sanity — and then claim he was “just being honest.”

Protecting yourself: No contact is the only safe option as there is no reasoning with someone who derives pleasure from pain. Do not engage or confront. Document everything, protect your support system and exit. This is not a person who can be won over. This is a person who must be escaped.

Covert narcissism: The whisperers

Harder to spot, these narcissists play the victim, appear humble, sensitive and even self-deprecating. But beneath the vulnerability lies the same grandiosity — a deep belief that they are special, misunderstood and entitled to endless care. They drain you not with demands, but with need.

1. Nabeel (Mirza Gohar Rasheed) in Goonj — The covert harasser

He does not shout or threaten. He makes covert comments, withholds approval and isolates his target Zarnab (Komal Meer). When she explodes, there is no evidence. He has engineered the perfect crime: abuse that leaves no fingerprints.

In slow-motion gaslighting, the victim begins to doubt her own perceptions. Nabeel’s narcissism is not loud entitlement — it is quiet control. He does not need to dominate openly. He needs to make sure you know, in every interaction, that you are less than him.

Protecting yourself: Tr­u­st your gut. If you feel small, confused, or constantly apologising around someone, pay attention. They thrive on your self-doubt. Keep a journal of interactions. Share with a trusted person. Remember, you are being psychologically conditioned.

2. Raza Haseeb (Usman Mukhtar) in Pamaal — The love-bomber who crushes

Raza is perhaps the most insidious sub-type: the narcissist who loves you into submission. He begins with overwhelming attention, gifts, declarations of devotion. His wife Malika (Saba Qamar), a writer, believes she has found her soulmate. Then slowly, the mask slips.

He critiques her writing, isolates her from her friends, portrays her creativity as a threat to their marriage. He does not yell, he acts disappointed. He sighs when she succeeds. He withholds affection when she asserts herself. He is not a monster — he is a slow poison. His wife does not leave because he is cruel. She stays because he was once so kind — and she keeps hoping that man will return. He never does. That man was the bait. The trap was her hope.

Protecting yourself: Recognise the pattern. Love-bombing is seduction as strategy. Healthy love grows slowly. It does not demand self-abandonment. If someone asks you to shrink so they can feel big, leave… because they are incapable of seeing your worth.

Regardless of their type, narcissists share core features: a fragile self-esteem masked by grandiosity, a profound inability to empathise and a relentless need for a narcissistic supply of attention, admiration or submission.

But here is what they take: reality testing — you stop trusting your own perceptions and self-worth, you believe you are the problem — and hope. You exhaust yourself trying to be good enough.

Is change possible?

Research says yes, but it is rare and difficult. Unlike the dramatic redemption arcs we see on screen, real change requires years of committed therapy. This is the hardest step because narcissism is built on denial.

Therapeutic approaches work by helping the narcissist develop the capacity to understand their own mind and the minds of others — something stunted in childhood. With treatment, reductions in pathological narcissism are possible, but here’s the catch: change only happens when the narcissist wants to change, not because someone demanded it, but because the pain of staying the same has become unbearable. Most never reach that point. And those who do? It takes years, not episodes.

For everyone else, the only healing is the one you do for yourself.

Healing the partner

If you have encountered a narcissist, you know: the damage is not just what they did but what you stopped being. Recovery is not about “getting over it.” It is about rebuilding the self.

1. Identify: This is not about labelling someone but about validating your experience — the confusion, exhaustion and persistent feeling of being either ‘too much’ or ‘never enough.’

2. Grieve: You will grieve the person you thought they were, the relationship you believed you had, the years you lost. Let yourself feel the anger, sadness and relief as valid.

3. Rebuild: Narcissists dismantle your sense of self. Reconnect with your own needs, voice, desires. What do you want, feel and need today? The answers will feel foreign at first. Keep asking.

4. Set boundaries that stick: This means walking away when they are violated. Choose yourself over the fantasy of their change. They will test every boundary. Your job is not to convince them to respect it. But to respect it yourself.

Pakistani dramas have shown us narcissism in all its forms. We fume watching these characters. But the real work begins when we recognise them in our own lives. The question is not “who is the villain?” but “who in your life is making you smaller?”

You do not have to stay small or earn love by disappearing. Narcissists may or may not change. But you can. And that is the only freedom that matters.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, August 2nd, 2026

The star appeared on the podcast Fahad’s Den, where host Fahad Abid asked him why he was opposed to “removing taxes on imports”. Quraishi explained he was against the relaxation of taxes on foreign TV shows specifically.

As part of this year’s federal budget, the government announced in June it would be withdrawing advance taxes — an amount of income tax that is paid much in advance, rather than a lump-sum payment at the year-end — on payments for foreign television plays and advertisements.

“Look, back in 2013 we had a major issue when Turkish dramas started playing here… Our industry suffered a lot because of it, we lost our slots [on television]. And each of those slots represents 80 to 100 livelihoods; losing 10 slots means 1,000 people out of a job.”

The actor said this doesn’t affect him much personally as he only does one or two dramas a year now, young actors who need exposure will be deprived of primetime slots if foreign shows are taking them up.

Quraishi contended that if his industry is going to be forced to compete with foreigners, other industries should be too. “If you’re saying it should be an equal playing field, why must that only apply to dramas? Let shampoos compete with shampoos, cigarettes with cigarettes, ice cream with ice cream too, everything.”

The actor said import restrictions and taxes were imposed to give local industries a boost and questioned why other industries should get one when entertainment doesn’t.

Quraishi said the situation was made all the more dangerous with artificial intelligence (AI) being part of the creative process. He said it was now possible for studios to dub foreign media without hiring dubbing artists, with AI replicating foreign actors’ voices in Urdu and even synchronising lip movements.

Nevertheless, he said, Pakistani dramas had their place in the world and competed with Netflix and Amazon Prime series in terms of popularity.

He said despite the prevalence of OTT platforms, people across the world continued to watch Pakistani dramas and even recognised our stars.

“Brother, look our competition right now is directly with Netflix series… Our free-to-air dramas are being compared with Netflix series. Even the most expensive of our shows cost about 200 million to make, meanwhile the Indians are throwing away 300 to 400 million per episode. That’s what we’re being compared to.”

Quraishi claimed a single episode of a good Pakistani drama was getting more views than popular Netflix series in their entirety.

The actor asked Abid to turn his attention to India, which has a massive industry compared to Pakistan, but does not let Pakistani content enter its market.

He said this was being done to give India’s own productions an edge, like the country had done for decades with consumer products like cars to boost its domestic industry.

Whether shaped by disability, gender, geography, political violence or ethnicity, the works of Attiya Shaukat, Rabia Farooqui, Maisam Hussain and Syed Hussain explore what it means to belong to a society that simultaneously excludes. The exhibition unfolds through deeply personal narratives, revealing the invisible fractures that quietly shape contemporary Pakistan.

Attiya has spent more than two decades navigating life in a wheelchair, after a fall just before presenting her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) thesis at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore in 2004 left her paralysed from the waist down. Rather than allowing disability to define her, she has transformed it into a language of resilience, self-examination and artistic inquiry. Her artist’s statement speaks of continually searching for inner strength and embracing experimentation as an essential part of her practice.

Frida Kahlo appears as an important artistic companion in Let the Dice Roll I and II, where stitched thread intersects with portraits of the Mexican artist, whose own physical suffering has long become part of art history. In To Be or Not To Be I, Kahlo’s face is stripped of every feature except her unmistakable unibrow, while her exposed heart extends through branching veins towards Attiya’s own seated figure. The artist herself is portrayed with her face completely obscured by her hair, suggesting both concealment and protection.

Four artists confront disability, political violence, emotional vulnerability and prejudice in an exhibition that explores the hidden fractures running through Pakistan

The paired work, Queen of Bones I, shifts the viewpoint to the back of her head, allowing the damaged vertebrae that caused her paralysis to dominate the composition. Attiya transforms the injured spine into both subject and symbol, reclaiming ownership over a body that has become central to her artistic vocabulary.

Where Attiya’s work turns inward, Rabia examines the subtle dynamics of instinct, vulnerability and power. Trained in miniature painting at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS), the artist employs gouache on wasli to construct carefully orchestrated narratives that deliberately resist easy interpretation. Her anonymous figures refuse portraiture in the conventional sense. By withholding identity, Rabia redirects attention towards relationships, gestures and emotional undercurrents.

Motifs of fire, water, birds and eggs become metaphors for contemporary political and emotional landscapes. Fire represents crises that have become disturbingly familiar, while turbulent water suggests disasters whose violence barely registers in public consciousness. Particularly compelling is the diptych comprised of the artworks Don’t Stop Me and Protection, where cranes, women and cats coexist in an uneasy balance of care and threat. In Forced Release, a woman struggles to lift a crane from water while its eggs drift helplessly nearby. The imagery recalls both maternal instinct and forced displacement, allowing multiple readings without prescribing a single narrative.

For Maisam, memory is inseparable from conflict. Born in Parachinar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), his childhood unfolded amid bomb blasts, gunfire and recurring violence. His paintings recall growing up in an environment where explosions, shattered buildings and dust-filled air became ordinary experiences rather than extraordinary events.

A sculptor by training and currently teaching at the NCA, Maisam works with unconventional materials closely associated with warfare. Every work in this exhibition is executed using gunpowder and graphite, transforming the very substance of violence into a medium of artistic expression. Rather than depicting war literally, Maisam allows its physical residue to become the image itself, collapsing the distance between medium and message. His restrained monochromatic surfaces convey trauma more effectively than overt representation could.

Syed approaches marginalisation through the lens of identity. As a member of Pakistan’s Hazara community, whose distinct physical features have made them frequent targets of discrimination and violence, he explores visibility itself as both burden and necessity.

His Document Series consists of exquisitely rendered portraits of Hazara children, painted on wasli. Instead of naming the children, however, each portrait is identified only by a number. The decision is quietly devastating. These are individuals whose humanity is unmistakably conveyed through delicate observation and remarkable technical precision, yet bureaucratic numbering strips away personal identity. The contrast raises uncomfortable questions about documentation, surveillance, anonymity and the reduction of human lives into statistics.

Although each artist speaks from a different social location, ‘The Invisible Collapse’ succeeds because it avoids reducing marginalisation to a single narrative. Disability, emotional vulnerability, political violence and ethnic persecution remain distinct experiences, yet the exhibition reveals their shared foundation: the struggle to be recognised fully within society.

By transforming personal histories into visual testimony, the four artists ask us not simply to witness suffering but to question our own habits of looking away. In doing so, The Invisible Collapse becomes less an exhibition about victims than about resilience, memory and the urgent need to recover our capacity to see.

‘The Invisible Collapse’ was on display at Canvas Gallery in Karachi from July 14-23, 2026

Originally published in Dawn, EOS, August 2nd, 2026

Only the third beauty queen to represent Pakistan at Miss Universe, Riaz is currently in the process of helping choose her successor. So, I sat down with her to ask what exactly she’s looking for.

Riaz is heading to the Philippines to crown the next Miss Universe Pakistan. The organisation has already shortlisted 10 contenders from a large pool of applicants. The finalists include one contestant chosen by the Miss Universe organisation, six chosen by a panel of judges — which Riaz is a part of — and three chosen by the public. The winner will get to represent Pakistan at the 75th Miss Universe pageant in Puerto Rico later this year.

“We are just looking for a good girl with a good heart and passion for the progress of Pakistan,” she said, adding she was surprised by just how much of the emphasis was on beauty on the inside.

“When I won, the first thing I asked my national director was, why me? And his words have always stuck with me because he said to me, ‘You can teach a girl how to walk, you can teach a girl how to wear dresses and put on heels, but you can’t teach her how to have a good heart.’ So above everything, that is true beauty and that is what Miss Universe always looks for.”

Friendship was the real prize

At the competition, she said, she was fortunate enough to meet and bond with many amazing women from around the world. “I just look back and I think about all the time I spent with my sisters and I feel so happy to think I have a sister in every country now.”

She said taking part in the Miss Universe pageant was a life-changing, once-in-a-lifetime experience, advising her successor to not get too lost in the competitive aspect. “You can never do this ever again. So I would always remind her to make these friendships. There is nothing more important than them.”

Heavy is the head that wears the crown

I asked Riaz whether the crown she wore as Miss Universe Pakistan was heavy; she said it had weight “not because it’s made out of metal, but because the responsibility that comes with it is so heavy”. She said representing Pakistan on the global stage was “the biggest honour and responsibility of my life”.

The pressure, of course, isn’t just from the responsibilities that come with the title. Riaz said the public nature of the job got her a lot of criticism and backlash. “So a lot of thick skin is needed for this.”

And she has faced her fair share of backlash. During the competition, she addressed criticism for “not looking Pakistani enough,” vowing she would not “apologise for looking like my people”. Arguing at the time that this criticism was rooted in colourism, she said she proudly represents Pakistan, and “a new generation of South Asian women who don’t fit into the narrow boxes of what society thinks we should look like”.

When I asked how she chose to deal with all the hate being sent her way — especially by internet trolls — she said she had a purpose in her role as Miss Universe Pakistan and the comments only fuelled it.

“[They] made me realise that there is a bigger impact in this than I had initially thought. These are the conversations Pakistan needs to have. I’m happy to suffer if it makes it easier for the girl who comes after me.”

Later, Riaz shared one particular fan interaction that made the whole journey worth it.

“During my training in the Philippines, we had a little group of schoolgirls come out and they had obviously seen us with our sashes and were really excited that these are Miss Universe girls… They had taken pictures with all of us and this little girl came up to me and she was like, ‘All the Miss Universe queens are so beautiful, but you are the most beautiful to me because you have the same skin colour as me.’”

That made Riaz tear up and realise that this competition and her role in it were bigger than just herself and her feelings.

Bringing positive attention to Pakistan

For the future, the outgoing queen said she hoped beauty pageants would continue to expand in Pakistan, because they bring with them the positive light that the country needs. “I think, through this competition, we can bring a lot more attention to Pakistan and the creativity and talent that is within it.”

That creativity, she said, was the one thing she felt the world needed to know more about.

“That is kind of an umbrella term for everything we do… our food, our lorry art, even our songs, music. Everything is just so incredibly well done and there is so much thought that goes into this that often cannot be translated into other languages. So I would just love for people to see Pakistan as the creative and talented country that it is.”

Who is Roma Riaz?

Lastly, I had to ask who Riaz was when she took off the crown and sash. The answer, unsurprisingly, was a young girl who loves spending time with her family, going to church, doing pilates and drinking matcha.

She’s also a bona-fide Pakistani, attested to by the fact that her favourite food is biryani and she knows exactly how she likes it — handmade by her mum.

What did surprise me a little was the beauty queen’s last job before taking on the Miss Universe Pakistan crown. She was a full-fledged corporate girlie with a job in sales analysis.

Riaz said that although she can’t clock out at 5pm like she used to at her old job, she doesn’t regret it. “This is just a more meaningful and purposeful path. And I think, now that I’ve taken this step, nothing makes more sense for me than this.”

“Inspired by the timeless philosophy of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, this song carries the message of Khudi and the spirit of the Shaheen. Iqbal taught us that true strength lies within. A nation rises when its youth discover confidence, character, knowledge and an unshakable belief in their own potential,” the minister wrote in his tweet.

The song, based on a poem by Allama Iqbal, has been released by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives and URAAN Pakistan, the ministry’s initiative to spotlight and advance projects and reforms as part of the 5Es National Economic Transformation Plan.

Rather ironically, he wrote that the poet’s Shaheen “never accepts mediocrity and always aims for greater heights”. But what’s more mediocre than a government department using AI to create a song and music video instead of hiring actual Pakistani artists and filming it in our beautiful country?

In 2022, the government released a re-recorded version of the national anthem to make it more inclusive. It featured musicians from all over the country with diverse regional, cultural and ethnic backgrounds and was gender-balanced and inclusive of national musical talent. That’s the kind of content we want to see from our government, not this.

“Today, Pakistan needs a generation of Shaheens — young men and women who choose hope over despair, innovation over stagnation, and hard work over excuses. Under the vision of URAAN Pakistan, we are building a future driven by knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship and opportunity. That future belongs to you,” the minister wrote in his tweet.

It’s unfortunate that a minister, while calling for the youth to “work hard”, is promoting AI slop of this kind. Pakistan is full of talented artists, any of whom could have written, composed and sung this song. We’re not even going to go into the impact AI has on the environment, even as data centres are inaugurated in Pakistan, a country that already faces water scarcity.

AI slop is already taking over the internet. One of the most well-known attempts at replacing actual humans with AI is an inane attempt by Elon Musk, the AI pushing owner of X and Tesla, to recreate The Odyssey using AI because he didn’t like Christopher Nolan’s version, ostensibly for being too ‘woke’, read: not featuring only white people. Three weekends in, Nolan’s The Odyssey has generated a whopping $911 million at theatres around the world and Musk’s plans are still just that — plans shared in a tweet.

Artists around the world are condemning the use of AI, both in writing and in music. Seth Rogen, the American actor and director, recently said that if your first instinct is to use AI to write, you shouldn’t be a writer. Nolan called it a Trojan Horse, just one that’s not stealthy. In 2024, over 13,000 artists, including some of your faves like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus and actor Julianne Moore, signed an online statement warning about the unlicensed use of artificial intelligence.

Pakistani artists are also fighting this battle. Recently, Hira Tareen cautioned fellow actors to read their contracts properly because a production house tried to get her to sign away her digital likeness. “First, they use AI just to make your posters. Pretty innocent. Then they use your voice for dubbing. Then they call you in for 10 scenes instead of 20, because now the model is training on your existing likeness and footage that they already have. And then, one day, the model is ready and they don’t need to call you in at all,” she said.

There are also arguments against the use of AI to generate music and how it threatens to relegate actual human-made music to mere disposable background noise rather than a meaningful cultural artefact.

This Independence Day, we hope our government will honour actual Pakistani artists — not machines.

Ghost School, which was written, directed and produced British-Pakistani filmmaker Seemab Gul, has already bagged the best director award for the film at the UK Asian Film Festival.

The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where it was nominated in the best film category. It was then screened at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah earlier this year, and earned critical praise and an honourable mention at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles for its “exceptional social realism and restrained storytelling”.

It also won a special award at the Asian African Latin American Film Festival.

The film highlights the issue of girls’ education, and follows the story of 10-year-old Rabia — played by Nazualiya Arsalan. The protagonist wants to pursue her studies, but her local school is closed down after a rumour that it is haunted — an excuse used by both the teacher as well as the village elder to shut the school.

Filmmaker says no reasoning given for withholding permission; minister insists censor board must have had ‘a valid reason’

The movie was filmed in Chashma Goth, and another village on the outskirts of Karachi.

Talking to Dawn, Ms Gul said she was shocked by the censor board’s decision. She maintained that her film did not contain anything controversial and only dealt with issues around education. She said that the federal censor board, as well as authorities in Punjab had no objections to the film, and only Sindh found it “not suitable”.

According to a letter sent by the secretary of the Sindh Board of Film Censors, “After careful examination and due deliberation, the board found the film not suitable for public exhibition”.

“I have no information what the board members found objectionable in the film,” she said, as no reasons were given in the board’s correspondence.

Dawn reached out to Sindh Board of Film Censors Chairman Khalid Bin Shaheen, but received no response.

When approached for comment, Sindh Culture Minister Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah said that the censor board was an autonomous body with a 15-member board that was authorised to issue film licences. He added that the board would certainly have had valid reasons for rejecting the licence application.

The decision comes as a blow to Ms Gul, who financed the film and is paying for its distribution out of her own pocket. If the film is not released in Karachi, the largest cinema market in the country, Ms Gul stands to take a massive financial hit. She told Dawn she had written to the censor board following their rejection, but received no repsonse.

“There are around 15,000 ghost schools in Sindh, it’s a critical issue,” she said, appealing to the censors to reconsider their decision.

Tahir Siddiqui in Karachi also contributed to this report

Originally published in Dawn, August 4th, 2026

A representative for the star told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday she would be “taking a step back from visibility” after she completes her Eternal Sunshine tour on September 1.

“She looks forward to finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which have led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny,” the representative said.

This isn’t just about her music, she has also decided not to appear in a theatre performance of Sunday in the Park with George in London next year, the production company confirmed.

“We know this cannot have been an easy decision and she makes it with our complete understanding and support. The production will open at the Barbican in summer 2027 as planned and casting will be announced in due course,” Empire Street Productions said.

Grande also stars in Focker-in-Law alongside Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. It is unclear whether she will participate in the film’s promotions in the lead up to its release on November 25.

The singer released her eighth album, Petal, on Friday, with the title track’s music video attracting concern and commentary regarding her health. Fans — and even some celebrities — have said Grande looked incredibly thin and weak.

British model, author and body positivity activist Charlotte Howard was among those speaking out following the release of Grande’s music video.

“I think it’s vital we discuss imagery/videos/content like these and the damage they can — and will — have on women and girls. WHAT YOU SEE HERE IS NOT NORMAL,” Howard wrote in the caption of a post featuring stills from the music video.

She claimed Grande was evidently suffering from anorexia and that it was “absolutely appalling, from both a moral and capitalistic standpoint, to have released these videos and an album when this person needs psychiatric help and hospitalisation”.

Actor and comedian Jameela Jamil also spoke up, claiming the singer was “possibly dying right in front of us” and that it was “thoroughly irresponsible” of her team not to guide her away from presenting such an image to young fans.

Grande herself has told people not to comment on her appearance — or anyone else’s. Last year, she shared footage from a 2024 interview where she was asked about beauty standards.

“I think in today’s society there’s a comfortability that we shouldn’t have, at all, commenting on others’ looks, appearance… what they think is going on ‘behind the scenes’, or health, or how they present themselves. I think it’s dangerous, for both parties involved,” the singer said in the video.

The movie, which marks actor Tom Holland’s fourth outing as the web-slinging superhero, depicts Peter Parker fighting crime in a world that has forgotten he is Spider-Man. Zendaya co-stars as MJ, the love of Parker’s life. Audiences returned for a film that was grounded in Parker’s struggles with loneliness and his pursuit of human connection.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day is fundamentally a movie about friendship, about the balm of connection in all our lives, and that is resonant to audiences of all ages and all around the world,” Tom Rothman, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, said.

Data from Rentrak indicates Spider-Man: Brand New Day had the highest domestic gross opening since the Covid-19 pandemic and the second-highest of all time, in North America and worldwide, behind the 2019 release of the superhero film Avengers: Endgame. That film raked in an inflation-adjusted $1.6 billion in global ticket sales, including $467 million in the United States and Canada, in its opening.

Internationally, Spider-Man: Brand New Day grossed $572 million in opening weekend ticket sales, with China leading international markets with $121 million in ticket sales, according to the studio.

Spider-Man is one of the most popular of Marvel’s comic book characters, with a cinematic appeal that endures even as audiences have shown signs of fatigue with the superhero genre. The latest instalment has been well-received, scoring a 90 per cent rating from critics and 98pc approval from movie-goers on Rotten Tomatoes.

Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends for Rentrak, said on Friday that the franchise is approaching the $10 billion mark in unadjusted worldwide theatrical box office, which speaks to the character’s appeal.

Greg Durkin, the founder and CEO of the entertainment research firm Enact Insight, said the movie’s central themes of loneliness and isolation, and triumphing over drama, resonated especially with Gen Z filmgoers.

“There’s a mental health crisis now with young people in our country — it’s especially acute for young men right now. There’s a friendship crisis,” Durkin said. “The pandemic created a bunch of shock-wave effects that we haven’t fully documented, much less addressed. This movie touches on some really important themes.”

The performance of Spider-Man: Brand New Day fuels an already-robust summer box office, which has been buoyed by such major releases as Toy Story 5 and The Odyssey.

Dergarabedian said on Sunday that the combination of Spider-Man: Brand New Day with another hit, The Odyssey, created the “all-time biggest domestic weekend” in movie theatres.

“There’s no better lead-in to this movie than The Odyssey,” Dergarabedian said. “Think of how many people around the world were in movie theatres being exposed to trailers marketing for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

Holland, Zendaya and Jon Bernthal appear in both movies.

The overall domestic box office performance remains below pre-pandemic levels. Year-to-date receipts are up 10pc from last year, but 16pc below 2019, the year before the pandemic struck, according to Rentrak.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, the group said they were “detained by the police, isolated and separately questioned” with some of their members even being “subjected to hotel room searches and temporary passport confiscation”.

The band said their audience had been chanting “Free Palestine” from before they even stepped on stage and continued to do so at the end of the show. They said the fans were “presumably aware but undeterred” by the government’s strict censorship laws.

Massive Attack said they “did not imagine that merely holding up the flag of a sovereign state recognised by 157 countries (Palestine) would violate any law”.

Nonetheless, the group said they were “proud” to have expressed solidarity with Palestine alongside their fans in Singapore “who clearly felt a moral imperative” to do so as Palestinians lived through a “reality of illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide”.

Massive Attack called their experience “surreal” and said it underscored “defending universal human rights and freedom of expression, wherever those rights are threatened”.

That, in the group’s words, included the UK, “where, extraordinarily, we still see protesters arrested under terrorism laws for holding up handwritten signs protesting genocide”.

The group thanked the people of Singapore for welcoming them into their country and hoped the government will “allow their citizens expressions of conscience without fear of state persecution”.

“As we were saying… Free Palestine,” the group wrote at the end of their message.

Singapore bans the display of foreign flags and emblems without permits and the unpermitted display of a foreign flag is punishable with a fine of up to 500 Singapore dollars ($389), a maximum prison term of six months, or both.

Authorities said the band were investigated for their “actions of support for a political cause and unfurling of a foreign flag” during their concert and will no longer be allowed to perform in Singapore.

“The police take a serious view of acts which could potentially harm the racial and religious harmony in Singapore and urge the public, including foreigners, to refrain from importing foreign politics as this can undermine our social cohesion and the rule of law,” the police and media authority said in a joint statement.

Massive Attack, meanwhile, have a long history of support for “foreign politics”, speaking up on wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. The band’s frontman, Robert Del Naja, was even arrested in London in April for protesting in support of Palestine Action, an activist group banned by British authorities.

Cover photo: Simran Panaech via Reuters

Sana posted a picture of the two laughing together on her Instagram account on Sunday with a caption celebrating her team’s win — she plays for Birmingham Phoenix in The Hundred, which is partly owned by Bellingham.

Users on X were quick to say the footballer was lucky to be in the presence of Pakistan’s queen (of cricket).

Bellingham himself seemed to have enjoyed the chat, commenting a heart under Sana’s post.

Pakistanis were surprised to see the unusual crossover with two beloved stars from two completely different sports.

Someone brought out the “before GTA 6” gag while they still could — the meme will (hopefully) be put to rest when the game releases in November.

One user knew exactly what they wanted to see — and it wasn’t the footballer.

Bellingham also met — and played a couple of shots with — Pakistani spinner Usman Tariq, leading one user to get a bit jealous over how everyone was living her dream moment with the star.

It was a big day of Pakistani cricket at Edgbaston on Saturday and Sana’s squad even managed to score their first win of the season against their Welsh opponents — Tariq, who plays in Birmingham Phoenix’s men’s squad was not as lucky.

Who knows, maybe they can convince England’s football sweetheart to visit Pakistan sometime and we can all have our fan moments.

In its announcement on Friday, the Met said the exhibition, titled John Galliano: Horizons, would be the first to “examine the full breadth of his creative output” using “garments, accessories, sketches, toiles, research books, and archival materials” drawing extensively from the Costume Institute’s collection — the largest of its kind in the world.

The exhibition will examine Galliano’s work stretching from his 1984 graduation collection in London through his work with Givenchy and Christian Dior, to his later tenure at Maison Margiela and his critically acclaimed spring/summer 2024 collection.

The show will also look at the darker elements of Galliano’s past, including his struggle with addiction and two incidents of racist and anti-semitic abuse in 2010 and 2011 that landed him in legal trouble and got him fired from Dior.

Marina Kellen French Director and CEO Max Hollein said, “John Galliano has exerted a profound influence on fashion over the past four decades. His work brings historical inquiry, artistic imagination, theatrical expression, and technical experimentation into dynamic relation. Drawing upon the depth of The Costume Institute’s scholarship and the breadth of the Met’s collections, John Galliano: Horizons will offer an expansive examination of his creative practice while attending closely to the historical, cultural and ethical circumstances through which his work is understood.”

The show will be divided into three sections — Bearings, Horizons and Atlas of Transformation. The first will have a chronological telling of his career and will address his racist and anti-semitic actions. It will also shine light on his fight with addiction and public acknowledgement of his actions.

The second segment will focus on his sources of inspiration — history, geography, art, storytelling and performance — and look at how his work blends many of these sources together.

The last section will trace Galliano’s creative process based on the wealth of material in the Costume Institute’s collection. His research books, sketches and fittings will take centre stage to show how the designer brought his imagination to life.

“[It] approaches fashion as a form of cartography, mapping not territories but affinities, tensions, and transformations. It traces how images become ideas, ideas become material and material becomes emotion,” said Andrew Bolton, the curator of the exhibition.

“Yet a horizon reveals not only what lies before us, but also where we stand. The exhibition therefore considers both how Galliano has remapped the world through fashion and how his conduct, its consequences and changing cultural, values have reshaped our understanding of his work,” he said.

Vogue’s Anna Wintour said there was “no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano”. She said he was “a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment”, even if it was “something that he will live with for the rest of his life”.

John Galliano: Horizons will run at the Met’s campus on New York’s Fifth Avenue from May 9, 2027 to January 9, 2028.

The question does not apply equally to adaptations and remakes.

Adaptations can be from a myriad of sources: books, articles, short stories, real-life events — each domain carrying its own particularities that clash with the medium of film and its own constraints. Remakes are new versions of older films, and if Disney has taught us anything, they’re more or less a copy-paste job.

The list is maddening: 101 Dalmatians (1996), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019), Dumbo (2019), The Lion King (2019), Lady and the Tramp (2019), Mulan (2020), Cruella (2021), Pinocchio (2022), The Little Mermaid (2023), Snow White (2025), Lilo & Stitch (2025), and now Moana.

Disney’s live-action Moana faithfully recreates the 2016 animated hit, but offers little reason for its own existence

Some I’ve seen, most I’ve ignored, a few I’d forgotten even existed, but most (with the exception of Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent) should not have been made at all.

I mean, what’s there to appreciate when the exact story beats, the exact frames and the exact acting cues — yet somehow, with a slightly slower pace and a little longer runtime (animated films are designed to move faster and snappier) — are revisited?

So, what’s the appeal here? Especially when the original — in the case of Moana — came out exactly 10 years ago? That’s not really a long time. Especially when you have the main co-lead returning.

In case there’s any mystery (and there isn’t), the returner is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, the original voice of the animated, full-of-himself demigod Maui, who is stranded on a tiny island. Where Maui was animated, The Rock mostly plays a rock. The stiffness, an added layer of seriousness, though not a bad thing in the right context, does not help the character or the performance.

Moana (Catherine Laga’aia, not as good as her animated counterpart), the young daughter of her tribe’s chief (John Tui), rescues Maui after leaving her island. She, like everyone there, was forbidden to leave their perfect island life. But the call of the sea, and the water’s enchanted beckoning (a magical wave of the sea calls and guides her), is too much to ignore.

Her quest is twofold: find a way to calm Te Fiti’s violent anger — Te Fiti is a living island that brought life to the ocean — by returning her heart, and to end every island tribe’s fear of oceanic exploration.

It’s a noble cause that we’ve seen before, with the same cast (Jemaine Clement returns as the voice of Tamatoa, the giant crab), the songs (by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia Foa’i, returning), the same screenplay (screenwriter Jared Bush returns with Moana 2’s co-director Dana Ledoux Miller, now co-writing) and much the same direction (Thomas Kail, the director of stage musical Hamilton, in his live-action debut).

Direction, mind you, that feels as if one is playing and pausing scenes from the original before shouting: ‘Lights. Camera. Action!’

Released by HKC and Disney, Moana is rated PG. Parents have no need for caution: the few minutes of scares by Te Fiti aren’t even as scary as those in the animated film

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, July 26th, 2026

The venue for the General Assembly — an annual meeting of professionals working on art biennials and triennials worldwide — was decided following an open call for applications earlier this year. The 2024 meeting was held in Sydney and other host cities have included Sharjah, Venice, Istanbul, and Liverpool.

The five-day programme will include a number of conferences, round tables, workshops, and public events. These will be in addition to the Biennale’s own programming and exhibitions, which will continue till April 25.

The newly introduced Regional Meeting for Asia follows two editions of a similar gathering in Europe by the International Biennial Association. The Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) said the two meetings will share some agenda items and events, but the regional meet will “place particular emphasis on workshops and discussions addressing the specific opportunities, challenges and institutional realities shaping biennial practice across Asia”.

The LBF invited “universities, cultural institutions, civic organisations, artists, researchers, and other partners from across Asia broadly, and the wider international community” to the regional meeting, hoping to foster “exchange, collaboration and new forms of regional connection”.

The fourth Lahore Biennale is curated by Nav Haq, who serves as associate director at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium. The theme for 2027 edition is The Shape of Coexistence.

“Responding to a multipolar world, [the fourth Lahore Biennale] positions Lahore as a historic and contemporary artistic and intellectual centre from which to imagine new ways of building internationalisms that are relevant for the twenty-first century,” as per the LBF.

The foundation said the exhibition “will explore new solidarities and forms of exchange, drawing on the histories and engagements that connect Lahore with wider regions across Asia and beyond while foregrounding questions of plurality and social equality”.

Cover photo: Lahore Biennale Foundation

In a video shared to his Instagram account on Thursday, the veteran television producer, director and writer blasted the director and writer of the new film, Farhan Khan, for not asking his permission.

Calling it “daylight robbery”, he said Ainak Wala Jin, the beloved series that ran on PTV from 1993 to 1996, was his idea, his concept and his creation. “I am the concept writer, I named it, directed it and created a good quality serial, gave it to PTV and they made millions off it. If you go to their YouTube page, it still makes millions for the channel,” he said.

The film released in cinemas on July 24. Tahir said the director of the film, Khan, did not ask him for permission before making it, nor did PTV ask him to be part of the production.

“They got a novice to make an AI-based film and made a mess of my iconic idea,” he said, pointing to major changes in the characters’ appearances and voices.

“My main character, Nastoor Jin, looks like a daku and  Hamoon Jadoogar’s face has been ruined, the voices have been ruined,” he lamented, adding that they’ve created “bad music” using AI and added it as well.  

“They have taken a great and beautiful idea and destroyed it,” said Tahir. He ended his video with a question — “should I just wail about it and remain silent or do I take the legal route?”

The city-state bans the public display of all foreign flags, national emblems or banners without a permit.

A video circulating online showed two band members on stage raising a Palestinian flag to loud, prolonged cheers from the audience.

The concert was held on Wednesday, according to local media.

Broadcaster CNA quoted one concertgoer as saying the band members shouted “free Palestine” during their performance and that many in the audience joined the chant.

The Singapore Police Force said in a statement to AFP that “reports were lodged and investigations are ongoing”, adding that the government’s media regulator was “also investigating a possible breach of licence conditions”.

The unpermitted display of a foreign flag is punishable with a fine of up to 500 Singapore dollars ($389), a maximum prison term of six months, or both.

The concert promoter did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.

The band is known for its criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza and has used its popularity to support the Palestinian cause.

In April, frontman Robert Del Naja was among more than 200 people arrested at a protest in London’s Trafalgar Square in support of Palestine Action, an activist group banned by British authorities.