At times when I feel that Pakistan is suffering from an artistic drought (of the intellectual kind), people like Iqbal and Bushra Ansari give me hope.
When I become the President of Pakistan, I will Inshallah exile Dr. Younis Butt and his kind to Newfoundland.
**In search of challenges **
By Afia Zahoor
A quiet demeanour and measured, deliberate tone of voice masks a shrewd, yet artistic intellect. That is the feeling one gets after meeting Iqbal Ansari. The veteran television director has decades of experience and achievements under his belt. His clipped beard makes him look older than his years and his eyes sparkle as he talks of the milestones in his life. Ansari’s entry into the media was purely an act of fate.
“I was a fresh graduate with a degree in Literature when my father died. It was a time when I had responsibilities to fulfill and like any other young man looking for a job, I was keen to get in anywhere without any real preferences.”
Having joined PTV in 1970, Iqbal Ansari directed some quiz shows and programmes for children. He discovered along the way that it was drama that actually appealed to his creative side. He could express his aesthetic feelings from the director’s chair. Thus began the slow and steady trek up the road.
**It was here also that Ansari met his future wife, Bushra Ansari.
“Working together we decided to get married. Nobody had any objections from any side and everything went very smoothly,” he says about the union.
One comes across few Pakistani men who can handle a wife who is more popular than them. And in this tiny minority, even fewer actually become stepping stones for their wives to achieve success. The credit goes to Iqbal Ansari for recognizing the various innate talents in his wife and honing them by giving her ample opportunities.
It is an achievement Iqbal Ansari is not modest about!
“I identified her fortes, saw her from the director’s eye. It was I who gave Bushra the opportunity to act in her first play, encouraged her to host shows and steered her towards writing. Whatever I understood about her I managed to bring out.” **
But some people are of the view that Ansari played favourites by handing out meaty roles to his wife. He clears this point:
“Yes, people did criticize me for having my wife act in my plays, but then they did realize that she was adept at performing all of those roles. She would have been branded a comedienne had she not proved her worth in all these roles.”
Together the husband and wife duo has made some of the finest plays in PTV and viewers cannot forget such serials as Ab Mera Intezar Kar.
The stalwart director of PTV has now joined the Indus Television Network as Director Programmes. It was a move that caused quite a stir in media circles as Ansari had been associated with PTV for more than three decades.
“I wanted change. My professional growth demanded a challenging environment that could steer me towards a higher professional plane,” he says explaining the switch from his old job.
“At Indus I am responsible for the whole channel, not just myself. I can use my knowledge and experience in a professional way. I can groom and garner the next generation of directors like it used to be done in the good old days. For me, that is the challenge. I reflect my own individuality right now, rather than my designation.”
From the look of it, Iqbal Ansari seems to be quite happy in his new workplace.
“The best thing about this channel is that while some channels bank on their past glory and others project the present, this one shows the future. You can see the futuristic orientation. You can see art, in the real sense, rather than commercialism,” he claims.
The director has clear-cut ideas of what makes channels successful.
“You should have ideas to present. The money will then come itself. Channels create long lasting impressions with their ideas and concepts, not with the quantity of ads they bombard into living rooms.”
He still refers to the PTV of yore in a reverential tone.
“PTV is still my mother institution. It made me what I am. I cannot lose the affectionate feelings I have for it. **There is no doubt that PTV produced luminaries like Shehzad Khalil, Mohsin Ali, Ayub Khawar, Shoaib Mansoor, Nusrat Thakur and countless others. And it still has the structure and capacity to produce such giants again.” **
As for his own career, Iqbal Ansari is confident that he is headed in the right direction.
“The overall pattern of my career has been of growth. My mind and ideas have been constantly expanding. I don’t want my knowledge to stagnate. I want to show my growth to society as well as myself. As long as I am sure I’m climbing the ladder of self-discovery and growth and as long as I am my own jury, I know I’m on the right track.”