Pakistani Dramas and I
This was supposed to be a four part series for me to rant about my on-again-off-again relationship with Pakistani Dramas.
Pakistani Dramas and I | The Breakup Phase
Pakistani Dramas and I | Life During Our “Time Apart”
Pakistani Dramas and I | Are We Getting Back Together?
Pakistani Dramas and I | Our Reunion Drama
But I have more things to say, about how I started watching ’em, got addicted, early memories, etc. I could have done it under a different title, or just used plain ol’ “#ThrowbackThursdays”, but it didn’t feel right. So here I am, extending this series to write more…about the aforementioned memories of how I started watching ’em, got addicted, early dramas I watched…
I promised in some recent post about “Tum Ne Mujhe Bahot Mayoos Kiya Hai”. And it will come, I promise. Soon.
How I Met My New Addiction
This was more than a decade ago. We (me and my two sisters) moved to my owned home in 2014. And buying a television was one of the stupid things I did. Mind you, this was the first time we had TV at home.
- In my house, like the house I grew up in, we never had a TV; we still don’t have a TV.
- Before living with my sisters, I lived with roommates. My roommates were TV addicts and one of them bought it, but I didn’t watch it as much. I did become habitual of “doom scroll” of those days, though. Doom. At least that’s what it felt like when I watched my roommate mindlessly just pressing up button and changing channel every 30 seconds trying to find something good enough to watch.
- I lived with my sister in a rented house for four year, but our source of entertainment were Aanchal digests and some Bollywood movies downloaded from torrent. Not everything was available the way it is now.
- And in 2014, TV made entry into our lives.
You must have seen dramas and read stories where middle class people become rich and don’t know what to do with their money because they have spent all their freakin life saving money? I had the same problem. I had bought a TV because some people suggested I should and got Tatasky connection (Tatasky is a different topic altogether, more on that later, perhaps), but I did not know what to watch.
So, my sister, who was very social at her workplace, got this idea.
There is a Zindagi channel, airs Pakistani dramas. We started watching out of curiosity, because Indian dramas just didn’t match up to our sensibilities. We watched a couple of dramas, a few episodes and boy did we become addicted. It was a whole new world, a world that we only read about in Aanchal digest stories, a culture so familiar to us and yet so distinct.
And thus began our journey. More than a decade… How time flies!
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Shabana Mukhtar