A prose by Mehreen Ahmed
Who isn’t smitten by the dashing Waheed Murad? Despite his meteoric
success in the stardom, Waheed is a fashion metaphor, class, culture and
romantic nostalgia to boot, as Elvis Presley is in rock and roll. When I
pay a visit to his filmy website to catch a glimpse of him, I am both
intrigued and intimidated just being here. Because, this world is much
beyond my comprehension. Yet, I am here. Come to think of it, that’s
exactly the kind of effect Waheed Murad has on people. And trust me, as
someone who knows nothing about the movie world, let alone Waheed, I am
just as enchanted as anyone else, drawn into his aura. Far apart we
maybe, but he seems to be hovering on the outskirts of my mind’s eye,
whom I now try to fathom. Is he unfathomable? Most likely, but at the
cost of being laughed at by all of Waheed’s associates, and perhaps
against my better judgement, I set out in a bid, to explore his
artistry. The best that there is by a long shot in the Himalayan
peninsula.
Not inconsequentially, I cannot but help thinking of the obvious. Very rarely, does one come across a personality of Waheed’s stature in the movie world. Regardless of age, he strikes a chord even with the fourth graders, particularly one girl that comes to mind, who watches his movie, Armaan in grade four and takes a fancy to him. She cannot be made to wake up the next morning to go to school, because, her eyelids are laden with lovesick potion; he, who is a senior by 30 years at least, the same age as her parents. This “chocolate” hero, gives her a flavour of his maddening charms, like he does to millions of crazed, intergenerational women, back in the day, and today. A zesty king of the hearts, this tall man with slightly drooping shoulders, is but not rugged necessarily. He stalks them in their dream and day dream as though Venus, Cupid and Aphrodite with the entire pantheon of love deities have colluded to shoot random arrows with this love message that it is expressly vital.
Not inconsequentially, I cannot but help thinking of the obvious. Very rarely, does one come across a personality of Waheed’s stature in the movie world. Regardless of age, he strikes a chord even with the fourth graders, particularly one girl that comes to mind, who watches his movie, Armaan in grade four and takes a fancy to him. She cannot be made to wake up the next morning to go to school, because, her eyelids are laden with lovesick potion; he, who is a senior by 30 years at least, the same age as her parents. This “chocolate” hero, gives her a flavour of his maddening charms, like he does to millions of crazed, intergenerational women, back in the day, and today. A zesty king of the hearts, this tall man with slightly drooping shoulders, is but not rugged necessarily. He stalks them in their dream and day dream as though Venus, Cupid and Aphrodite with the entire pantheon of love deities have colluded to shoot random arrows with this love message that it is expressly vital.
In the meantime, as the time passes, that fourth grader notably,
continue to suffer from love affliction at the risk of being precocious.
If this sweet sensation is corrupting in Socratic measure, then so be
it. Because, this puppy love, which no hemlock can slay, grows and
flourishes like a secret garden in her charmed heart. She does not
outgrow this any time soon, although she may have grown out of her
dresses. It sinks deep, and freezes in the moment’s rockbottom, with
many historical chain of events piled up over it. Primarily, the bad
blood and tensions between the East and the West Pakistan, culminating
into a brutal civil war, ending in a severed relationship. I don’t want
to go into the gory details of the war or its causes. I only want to
celebrate the magnetic, Waheed Murad, to prove a point; that he is
rightly an atypical idealist.
Having said this, it is not an easy feat. Being a Bangladeshi, it is
not easy to put only Waheed with his ideology in a bubble without the
historical rubble. Because his fans, even in the aftermath, think of him
as just that, uncontaminated as the raindrops, pure as the driven snow,
who never betrays a poet’s imagination. For many years after the war,
when I rekindle my frozen memory of the somewhat snapped link with my
dark hero, since I am that precocious fourth grader, I retrieve him from
a memory storage in a holographic projection, as it were, with awful
clarity. Curious as it is, this shocking revelation isn’t a case of a
novelty wearing off, rather one of idolatry, to the point of awakening
him from his crypt. Emboldened by this blind loyalty, I place him in the
forefront of my thoughts; this dandy, debonair hero, pulled up from my
memory bank. With little hope, or none at all, for all that is worth,
and much for his fans’ sake, as well as mine, this figment of my
imagination lends itself to a legacy within a legacy. Like Hamlet’s
ghost, it haunts to goad me farther to the brink of God-knows-what, to
unravel a mystery about him that the world knows not. This spell, fogs
all my critical thinking; an insane craving resurfaces, strong and
ravenous that cannot dispel my thoughts about him. Even better that I
retreat into a fantasy world to shape him as whatever I wish in my
story, a full-blooded lover, or platonic, as decreed by our
circumstance.
Platonic, now there’s a thought. At best, this can clue me in to seek
out a new dimension in Waheed’s gripping love scenes. That which may
assist in eliciting his personal thoughts on romance through his movies.
He is not an incidental hero, who perchance takes Lollywod by the
storm. What is it after all, that makes Waheed’s love scenes a cut above
the rest, thus far special? Watching Waheed, in circumspect and
maturity, I say this, that even in his most flirtatious roles, there is a
fascinating underlay. An aspect, of a shadow reality, which elude the
viewers. In essence, an urgency to define love as fulfilling and an
undying emotion, which Waheed the persona, exudes almost involuntarily.
His nuanced performances of intimacy, the touches, the facial
expressions, the linguistic flourishes of sweet endearments, poured into
the ears of his leading ladies, are all accomplished with such
dexterity that the self and the art bond indistinguishably. Hence,
Waheed the mask, and Waheed the man, converge into one whole inseparable
entity, alluding to an unscripted streaming.
To tie up the loose ends, his romantic roles translate, by far, into a
fusion; a fusion of the physical and the spiritual which dictates the
former to be a stepping stone to a higher ground of love. And in his
passionate pursuance, this zeal for love is akin to bandagi and zindagi.
Something, not sought after by the majority of actors, but all too
uncommon a concept; an idea of resolute love, which resides in the soul
to mean that he is never really in love with the person, but with the
idea of love itself in the spirit, which he strives to conceptualise and
perfect in its abstraction.
What’s more? To understand Waheed, I delve deeper into his
fundamental ideals. It dawns upon me that Waheed’s movies unveil not
just his artistic endeavour, but his life and death, and a potent
philosophy all entwined in one seamless composition. It is very
convincing that the man that he is, the lover that he acts, are all but
in pursuit of love for humanity, truth, beauty and fairness. And as I
stumble on the newspaper, Dawn: In Memoriam, The Mystery Behind Waheed
Murad, my inkling is corroborated; that the coded messages conveyed in
Zubaida, Bandagi, Samundar, Mastana Mahi, and Naag Mani are all but well
thought out allegories, central to his core beliefs of religious
equality, and mutual bonding in a country torn apart by ravages of the
war and zealous stupidity. This uncompromising situation obstructing to
find a common-ground for union, empathy and egalitarianism, disturbs his
equilibrium profoundly. The irreconcilable wave of religious apathy,
social and political disparity, precludes him to achieve poetic justice
to a fatal consequence; an irreparable loss pushing his fans to the edge
of inconsolable grief.
He plays his finale well as he departs backstage after the last
curtain drops. As he dies in carelessness, for all it may seem, a death
most tragic, but certainly not in vain. Because, he has never really
rendered himself off-limits to his fans. His remains burn aflame in
their tender love for him, as he appears and disappears in a stream of
consciousness, as in his innovative stream-of-consciousness movie,
Isharaa, an example of his artistic prowess.
In fact, Elvis has never left the building. His signature writ large
on the silver screen, the appealing smiles of youth, moody, blues looks,
and croaky, sexy voice-overs with a marked air of romance, set him
apart from casual ordinariness; a cast, not from the same mould, as the
other actors of his time.
Lest the world forgets, he is that Sufi steeped in love. That poet lost in lyrics. And that postmodern visionary drunk with idealism. But also an actor who lives to die another day. He, who offers himself to posterity in all earnestness, not in the sense of a celebrity hero, but as a question for those, who pine away for him, to wonder, and to ponder timelessly about Waheed Murad, the man. Hence, his fans remember this powerful enigma, as mei aisa ak sawaal hu; he is that unanswered question; he is that unfolded mystery.
It may very well be that Waheed is none of this, but exceptionally
talented entertainer, made larger than life. However, to think of him as
an iconic figure, I retrace this journey at the behest of my muse which
hints at all these possibilities. To conclude Waheed Murad’s
inconclusive tale, one may gauge him to be a sentient human, existing
within the subliminal cinemas of his mind, and essentially, in the
futuristic outreach of his arts.
Source (with the author's permission): Mehreen Ahmed's Blog
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