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- Khurshid Mirza, with her daughter Lubna Kazim, recalls her experiences of working for television and memories of her ancestral home *
I am very grateful to friends in television, in particular to Shireen Khan, for persuading me to join Pakistan Television. After Akbar, it was especially good for me to return to a working life. My first serial was “Kiran kahani”, written by Haseena Moin and produced jointly by Mohsin Ali and Shireen Khan. In many ways, I was still in bereavement and I often felt that my performance in this serial was slightly off-key. The next serial, again by the same writer, produced by Zaheer Khan and Shireen Khan this time, saw me at my best. It was called, “Zer Zabar Pesh” in which I played foster mother to Roohi Bano who was in the lead role. Haseena asked me to develop some traits for the character and it brought back memories of my grandmother’s house where Peenan Bua’s position was somewhere between a friend and a servant. I also remembered my spinster aunt, called Akka-bi by her contemporaries in Abdullah Lodge, and described her to Haseena.
She grasped the idea immediately and wrote me in as Akka Bua, a combination of Akka-bi and Peenan Bua, a television screen name that I have been associated with ever since. We had a great team in “Zer Zabar Pesh” with Qazi Wajid playing the stuttering houseboy with whom I had a number of hilarious interactions on screen. Shakeel and Roohi Bano were in the lead and Zeenat Yasmeen and Jamshed Ansari played the other romantic pair. Jamshed frequently misquoted Shakespeare to impress Zeenat, the intellectual, drawing much laughter. Qayyum Arif as the eccentric grandfather was adorable, and Arshe Munir as Laddan Khalla was her inimitable self. Mahmood Ali had a small but memorable part as the parchoonwala, the local grocery store salesman.
I remember a delightful scene between Shakeel, who played a rich young man masquerading as a servant, and myself, the all-important retainer. I tell him to fetch me the spittoon. Aghast he asks me, “What?” and I answer, “Are you going to lose your noble zat (birth) by picking up the spittoon?”
Such sharp and witty dialogue about caste and class differences made the show very popular amongst viewers. Haseena Moin had the gift of turning trivial domestic scenes into bristling and entertaining encounters. Roohi Bano had a photogenic face and her diction was good. In the serial “Kiran Kahani”, Manzoor Qureshi played the male lead against her. He was slim at the time and cut quite a romantic figure, and the pair generated some electricity between them.
Throughout my television career, my one grievance was that appropriate props were not supplied to any of the sets. In Kiran Kahani, for instance, a nawab’s family (ours), is visited by Manzoor’s uncle, himself a nawab, to ask for the hand of the daughter in marriage. He is served tea in three chipped cups from the canteen with some horrible mixture in it. There was no teapot, no milk jug, and no sugar bowl on the table and only one tin spoon on the tray. For light refreshment, we had one plate in the centre piled with bananas, apples, and perhaps three kinnoo. I requested them to get a box of sweets at least, but the answer was that there was no time to waste till the sweets arrived. This weakened production values, especially since, according to the script, both the parties were engaged in bragging about their wealth and noble ancestry.
The lack of interest in creating a proper set with attention to detail was quite disturbing to me. Producers, designers, and cameramen had several meetings to outline the structure of the house, various doors, and the windows and so on, but the details that lend authenticity to the scene and make for quality production were conveniently sidelined. I remember, in the serial Portrait of a Lady by James Joyce which was translated as “Parchhain”, Sahira and Rahat Kazmi played the romantic lead. There was a scene where a rich, westernized family is shown having breakfast. I took along my own cutlery to get the setting right and asked the producer to put some real food on the table: fried fish or at least fried potatoes to look like fish fingers, some toast in a toast rack, and a proper tea-set.
After my constant nagging, a new tea set was purchased for the studios, and the responsibility of arranging the breakfast was assigned to someone. It was a scene in which the mother, son, and the niece appear in dressing gowns reading the morning papers and talking casually over cups of tea where the rhythm of casual conversation, the pouring out of tea, and eating from the breakfast table had to be synchronized. On the day of the shooting, there was nothing on the table, not even plates, and it looked like breakfast was just over. A layman might think that of no consequence and, I think, so did the designers and producers of the show.
Freshness and authenticity can be infused in a shot only when the dialogue, costume design, the sets and adequate props all converge into a particular moment making it pulsate with life. Anyway, despite all the handicaps, “Parchhain” remains one of the best television productions in which I worked. It certainly merited a repeat telecast, but did not get it.
I was in Lahore visiting my daughters when Shireen called, asking me to come back. She was waiting to introduce a character into her current serial, called Uncle Urfi. It was written by Haseena Moin and was being jointly produced by Shireen and Mohsin Ali. **Uncle Urfi **remains one of the most popular PTV plays to this day. Shakeel as Uncle Urfi sported a beard and did away with his wig for the first time. He was a smash hit and Shahla, in the female lead, gave an excellent debut performance. And who can forget Ghazi Apa (Azra Sherwani), and Shaheed Bhai (Qurban Jeelani)! Imtiaz Ahmed started his Big Bad Wolf roles from Uncle Urfi. My role was that of a sweet old lady from east UP who prefers to live alone in her village instead of with her son, Qurban Jeelani.
Although outwardly cut off from the affairs of the world this woman remains a law unto herself where her son’s family is concerned. She is a strong-willed woman who is ready to give shelter to a girl who goes against convention. Jamshed Ansari rose as a star with the nervous Hasnat Bhai and his catch phrase, “Chaqoo hai meray paas”. I was planning to visit my family in India in March, so I made it clear to the producers that if they could finish my scenes before that time, I would be very happy to work for them.
After completing my part in Uncle Urfi in March 1975, I left for Aligarh, straight from the sets, stopping in Delhi for two days before proceeding together for Aligarh with Biji. Lubna and her children were living with me at the time and I could take a holiday for three months. I needed the rest and a change of pace because I was not keeping good health.
Apart from these serials, I acted in a special play called “Massi Sherbate”, written by Fatima Surraiya (Bajia) and produced by Shireen. I don’t want to sing my own praises, but the work was widely appreciated
Both the writer and the producer brought the story to a successful climax, and I am grateful to God for giving me the insight and ability to lift “Maasi Sherbate” from the realm of the imagination to a flesh and blood character.
Ishrat Hashmi, a fine artiste herself, paid me great tribute by saying, “I could not bear to look at Apa when I had to say such nasty things about her, because every time I looked at her sweet face, I wanted to burst into tears.”
It is at times like these that you realize how important it is to be generous with praise, especially when it comes from fellow artistes.
Abdullah Lodge held so many memories for three generations of Shaikh Abdullah’s family where many children took their first steps, formed their first words and, while growing up, bonded with the older generation. On my last visit to Aligarh in 1983, I was struck by the enduring loveliness of the red brick house that looked like a ruby amid the verdure of the area. My parents’ graves are within the orchard site where a women’s mosque was planned with residential rooms for visiting old students and guests. I have visited Aligarh many times after Partition, and Papa Mian’s constant concern has been the literacy rate in Pakistan. He wanted to know whether his daughters were doing something to improve the status of their less fortunate sisters by opening schools or doing social work. He continued to receive letters from many ‘old girls’ in Pakistan, assuring him that they had not forgotten their training at their alma mater and were justifying their beloved Papa Mian’s and Alabi’s trust in them.
A very active Aligarh Old Girls’ Association is run by the Old Students in Karachi. The association celebrates the arrival of any ex-student visiting Karachi from any part of the world. I was in Lahore when one of our most famous ‘Old Girls’, Ismat Chughtai, (later Ismat Shahid Lateef) visited Karachi and received a grand reception from the association. Later, she visited Lahore and was given an equally befitting reception in several of the members’ homes. We also organized an official function to celebrate Ismat Apa’s outstanding contribution to Urdu literature.
All the television plays were done while I lived alone in my little house off Tariq Road in Karachi that Akbar had purchased for me four months before his death. But other than this, he left me with no running income from business or rented property because he was a conscientious officer in the Police Department. I had no colour television set in the house, no air conditioner, no deep freezer, not even a second-hand car, because I could not afford these luxuries. But I was happy and content with congenial neighbours, loving in-laws, good friends, and a devoted family.
After “Ana”, which was a long serial, I felt my health failing alarmingly. I also had a sense of satiation from being in the public eye and wanted to leave it for good. In 1985, I announced my retirement, sold the house, and moved to Lahore to be with my daughters and their children. This was a decision I have not regretted.
Looking back, I am happy to say that my children and grandchildren are busy, working people with strong values that have been inculcated in them from childhood. Both my daughters chose to teach at the school where their children studied.