Ultimate Lollywood (2): Some Say I Am Sweety

Adil Najam

About a year ago I did a short post and somewhat presumptuously titled it “Ultimate Lollywood.” Let me suggest, equally presumptuously, that I may have now found an exemplar of what it means to be “Lollywood” that is even more “ultimate,” maybe even “Lollywood supreme”. Judge for yourself.

As was the case with my original selection, this song is also sung by Naheed Akhtar. But unlike that first selection, this never became a “super hit”; and understandably so. The lyrics are intriguing; and obviously the “poet” was thinking in Urdu as he (I presume it has to be a “he”) write them:

Some say I am Sweety,
Some say a Queen of Beauty,
I am alive, heart is beating,
But my soul is hurting!

Let me confess that in varied – and maybe disturbing – ways this song has mesmerized me ever since I first saw this. Its not just the words, its the music, the dancing (especially of the jumping ‘extras’ in the background), the clothes (notice the shirt prints the men are wearing), the set (open sky, rooftop nightclub; did anything that at all looked like this ever exist anywhere?). Everything is quintessentially Lollywood, and could not possibly be more so.

But most of all I wonder how some Lollywood producer got Naheed Akhtar to sing this song (by the look of those on the set she would already have become a “senior funkaar” by then. More importantly, how did they get Zeba Begum and Babra Sharif to play this role (by this time Zeba was already clearly the grand damme of Pakistani cinema and Barba Shareef must also have been a major star).

I hope I do not come across as making fun of the song or those in it. I am not. It is nostalgia that the song triggers in me, not ridicule. Lollywood was, and is, in the business of selling dreams, not realities. It reflects the imaginations of movie-goers; and that is exactly what this video does: it gives s a glimpse into the imagination of a certain group of people at a certain point in time. Those of us who are unfamiliar with those people, their aspirations or their times, may find this funny, but let us instead be thankful for being allowed a peep into that world. It is a simple world. maybe a naive world. And, even when it implies naughtiness, an innocent world.