It has been a tough week for Pakistan’s entertainment industry. We just lost the legendary Aamir Zaki whose unfortunate life story is not unknown to many. He was a musical genius, committed to creating pure music that was unadulterated by commercialism; this need to remain pure eventually led to his financial constraints and otherwise difficulties in life. Sadly, that’s the reality of art today. Those who don’t want to sell out commercially suffer the most and Zaki’s tale represents exactly that.
However, what is even more distressing is the way certain people are behaving merely hours after his death. Waqar Zaka, who’s official professional title should be ‘Attention Seeker’, leaves no opportunity in racking up social media digits for himself and sadly, he has treated Zaki’s death in the same manner. Waqar posted a video of himself outside the Edhi center in Sohrab Goth, where Zaki’s body is being kept, calling upon all the artists of the industry to come take a look at Zaki’s misfortunes. In the video, Waqar irresponsibly and callously talks about Zaki’s unfortunate demise over and over again and at this point, we wish the social media age could just stop giving a chance to people like Waqar to have this much exposure.
Eventually, pop icon of the nineties Ali Haider also joined in with a video of his own to respond to Waqar. While we hate Waqar’s tactics and would have enjoyed Ali Haider’s rant if this were any other situation, it simply seems inappropriate at this given time.
Waqar Zaka named Hadiqa Kiani and Ali Haider in his video, asking them where they’ve been, knowing the tough time Zaki was going through which is why Ali Haider responded to defend himself but in our opinion, nobody should give Waqar Zaka this much importance.
It seems as though people have forgotten how to react to death in this country. The only appropriate response to the death of someone you knew and admired is mourning. Maintain a dignified silence for the departed unless you have something thoughtful or meaningful to share.
Nowadays people immediately begin character assassinations once somebody dies. Whether it was someone as disputed as Qandeel Baloch or someone as revered (and somewhat disputed too) as Junaid Jamshed, people immediately start slinging their words around, getting into fights over FB statuses and tweets and demeaning the person’s death over petty, self-absorbed issues.
Please stop. Stop making somebody’s death about yourself. Stop making these self serving videos. Have some mercy on the departed and don’t make it even worse for those who are trying to deal with the loss.
