Tatsam Mukherjee 
Muhammad Rahat Khawaja (Arif Hassan) is a man of faith. Working as a real-estate broker in Lahore – a father of three daughters (all of them married, two of whom are settled abroad) – he’s popular for singing devotional hymns in praise of the Prophet. For all intents and purposes, he’s an upstanding and respected member of his mohalla. As is the case in most middle-class South Asian localities, neighbours often become as important as blood relations, if not more.
The rotund, mild-mannered Khawaja lives with his bed-ridden wife Farkhanda (Samiya Mumtaz), while their daughter Sadaf (Eman Suleman) drops by every other day, after work. It becomes increasingly clear that the Khawaja household has stopped gendering their chores, something that probably sets them apart from their neighbours. As we soon find out, there’s more that separates the Khawajas from the people around them.
Khawaja takes an unusual amount of interest in films, especially in old heroines and their dance routines (not in the way you’re probably thinking). We see his eyes transfixed on a TV as he watches Aasia Begum perform to Zindagi Tamasha Bani – the song from a black-and-white Pakistani film, Naukar Wohti Da (1974) which also lends its name to the film. At a neighbour’s wedding, the conversation turns towards how Khawaja liked to dress up and dance like heroines as a young boy. Playing along with the celebratory mood of the occasion and indulging his friends, Khawaja agrees to give them a glimpse of his devotion to the likes of Aasia Begum. He recreates the heroine’s lascivious dance steps, and the giggles are soon replaced by awkward silence. The mood changes from faint bemusement to a tense stillness. To make matters worse, someone films the performance and puts it on YouTube. It goes viral, and Khawaja becomes a subject of ridicule. Both at home, and outside.
Sarmad Sultan Khoosat’s film wishes to examine how civil society reacts when the tiniest bits of civilisation don’t fit into their predetermined mould. Khawaja sings for the Prophet, then how can he enjoy such a lecherous song? Or for that matter, how dare he tap into his femininity to dance like his favourite heroine. Sadaf, a producer on a local news channel, chances upon the video on YouTube – and is almost immediately embarrassed of her father. So much so that when they first go home after discovering the video, she doesn’t even confront him. Her husband Danish (Ali Kureshi) speaks to her father, showing him the video and asking him about it. Although Sadaf could be part of the intellectual elite, her worldview proves to be more conservative than her husband’s, who defends his father-in-law by denouncing the narrow-mindedness of others.
A still from ‘Zindagi Tamasha’.
Khoosat’s film interrogates a society riddled with dogma and rigidity, which likes to stifle the slightest hints of happiness and pleasure that isn’t prescribed by it. The family-like neighbours start to distance themselves from the Khawajas. The wedding invitations stop, some neighbours stop greeting him on the street, some send their kids to the doorstep when he goes to their home. On the day of Eid, some neighbours slam the door on his face when he offers them halwa-puri, which we’re told the neighbours usually looked forward to. For all intents and purposes, the upstanding Khawaja is shown to be excommunicated by his mohalla wallahs.
Khoosat’s film premiered at the 2019 Busan International Film Festival, and has been battling for release for over four years.
That happened primarily because of one scene – where Khawaja is trying to record a video for a public apology to his friends and loved ones. A cleric oversees this, constantly interrupting Khawaja by saying he doesn’t look ‘remorseful enough’. Khawaja lets it slide a few times, but slowly becomes agitated by the cleric’s condescension, and slams him for the boys getting sexually abused by clerics and Imams. This scene became the point of contention for political party in Pakistan, Tehreek-E-Labbaik, which held widespread protests, calling the film ‘blasphemous’. Over the last three years in eerie poetic fashion, much like his protagonist, even Khoosat has been denounced by religious scholars and given death threats on social media.
Also read: Why did Pakistan’s Oscar Pick ‘Joyland’ Stoke Controversy in the Country?
However, one of the most compelling choices of Khoosat’s film is that its protagonist is no saint either. Khawaja’s acquaintance – the owner of a DVD-rental shop, Usman (Adeel Afzal) – invites him to a gathering. When he reaches there, Khawaja finds men drinking, while an effeminate-looking man (Sarmad Khoosat himself) dances for them. Usman tells him ‘be easy’, also saying that this is “our kind of mahaul”. Usman assures Khawaja that no one would judge him for being himself. Offended at being identified as gay, Khawaja flings many homophobic slurs at Usman. According to Khoosat’s film, this is the real tragedy of a society fuelled by orthodoxy. Whether it’s Khawaja judging Usman, or Sadaf judging her own father – everyone wants to be more pious than the next person, without anyone trying to understand each other.
A still from ‘Zindagi Tamasha’.
Khoosat’s film is technically sharp – especially how it employs Saakin and Shamsher Rana’s music. There’s a sequence where Khawaja has been denied the opportunity to sing at an annual festivity. Saakin and Shamsher Rana compose a contemporary version of the hymn Khawaja had rehearsed [Ajj Sikk Mitraan Di], as he walks back like a ghost. Khawaja’s vacant eyes at a sweet shop is one of the most haunting visuals in the film. Actor Arif Hassan shoulders the film with a performance that is superbly layered. His warmth next to his bed-ridden wife, the face of silent betrayal as everyone around abandons him, the defiance each time he faces his daughter as if asking her what is wrong about being himself. Khoosat also showcases Khawaja as a petty version of himself, when he goes and tells on Usman’s secret gatherings to the local police, almost as a way to measure up to being a ‘man of faith’ in his own eyes.
The standout performance of the film is Khawaja’s wife, Farkhanda. Samiya Mumtaz’s face is a beacon of empathy, grace and resolve. Some of Khoosat’s finest directorial touches are when a scene plays and he cuts to Farkhanda silently and powerlessly absorbing the events around her. Whether it’s her husband dancing along with heroines on TV in their living room; or when she wordlessly tries to be there for her daughter after she’s found the viral video. In one of the finest scenes in the film, she lies to him telling him she heard him sing, despite having gauged from his face that he wasn’t allowed to sing at the annual festivity.
Zindagi Tamasha is a chilling portrait of a society that pays so much attention to the wheels of ideology that it doesn’t quite make note of the people being crushed or stifled under it everyday. Given the current state of creative conservatism permeating the arts in India over a decade, Khoosat’s film is a reminder of the circus that is about to ensue if we don’t course-correct.
The film is available on YouTube.