This was the time when PTV ruled the TV and local cable network was pretty new.

I had had lunch and was sipping tea when I turned on the TV.

I was pretty bored so started changing channels.

Cable operators had dedicated channels where they would play videos on demand including Bollywood movies. Time to time they would also put popular Pakistani stage dramas. It was like the Netflix of the time. Instead of simply choosing the show you like, you would have to call and vote for the show you wanted to watch. I was so bored that I keenly watched people voting frantically. It was a close race between a Bollywood movie and a Pakistani stage drama Bakra Qiston Pay. It was the stage drama that was eventually played.

The stage is set as someone’s lounge. There’s a five-seater sofa in the middle of the room.

Drama starts with Rauf Lala talking about his ‘sahab’ who has short term memory loss. Five minutes into the drama, Omer Sharif enters the stage wearing a charcoal shalwar qameez, with a smoking pipe in his right hand. Omer is playing the role of a middle-aged man with silver in his hair.

As he speaks to his servant, Lala, the telephone rings.

Omer Sharif walks to the extreme left of the stage and picks up the phone.

Then his monologue begins:

“Hello, hello, yes, connect it. From where? Brazil? Please connect.”

Omer Sharif continues as if his call has been connected, “Yes, Assalamualaikum.”

“Tera baap hoga (Must be your father)”, he says as he slams the phone down.

“Who was that,” asks Lala.

“I don’t know who the devil (khabees) is,” Omer retorts. “Every time I pick up the phone, he asks, ‘Buddha ghar pe hai?’ (Is the senile at home?)”

This is how I was introduced to Omer Sharif, the original standup artist in Pakistan. Unlike many comics of today, rationality and cause were not lost on him

The dialogue was such a hit that later on Omar Sharif used it as a title for another of his most popular play. Buddha Ghar Pe hai and Bakra Qiston Pe were his most famous plays.

On surface, his shows might seem a sort of improvisation aimed at drawing laughter but there’s always some social issue that he is trying to address. Case in point Bakra Qiston Pay.

The show was about what especially a father has to go through to marry off his daughters in our society.

Moin Akhtar, who plays the character of the suitor of one of the daughters, brings his father to meet Omer. The father acts as if he is the descendant of Genghis Khan. In one of the scenes Moin says that his father is going to sleep and won’t wake up until bride’s father cuts his own finger and splashes fresh blood on the face of groom’s father. This might sound like a silly joke, but when I look back I can’t stop wondering if Omer Sharif had written this scene to highlight the plight a girl’s parents face in the form of blood sucking in-laws of their daughters.

In another show, Omer is having a conversation with a policeman. The policeman asks what his name was. Omer replies he hasn’t been named and they’ll have a ceremony soon. He asks the police officer if he would like to come, to which the officer readily says yes. “It would be in Lalukhet, would you still come?” asks Omar.

Crowd erupts in laughter as the officer sheepishly looks around.

The subtle joke came straight from real life. It was a time when the state was conducting operation in Karachi against, what was called, “criminal elements” and police and paramilitary forces would face resistance entering areas like Lalukhet.

Beside all of the above, quick retorts and impromptu responses — both with other actors and with the audience — made Omar Sharif what he was: people’s man.

When he talked, his audience felt as if he was voicing what they had in their hearts. He would put to words things, they dared not.

Today they have lost their voice. Now no one will pick-up the phone because ‘budha ab ghar pe nahi ha’.

The old man is no longer there to respond.



source https://www.samaa.tv/news/2021/10/omer-sharif-will-never-come-home/