by KAMILA SHAMSIE
I was eight when a brother-and-sister duo, Nazia and Zoheb Hassan, released the single ‘Disco Deewane’ (‘Disco Crazy’). I was too young then to know that something altogether new had arrived in the form of the ‘Disco Deewane’ video with its dream sequences, dancers in short, white space-age dresses and Nazia’s sensual pout.
…
I’m fairly sure that I wouldn’t have been so dismissive of the idea of Pakistani pop videos if I had been born just a few years earlier, and could recall the Karachi of the early seventies, which had no shortage of glamour and East–West trendiness: nightclubs; locally made films with beautiful stars and catchy songs; shalwar kameez fashions inspired by Pierre Cardin (who designed the flight attendants’ uniform for Pakistan International Airlines); popular bands who played covers of UK and US hits at fashionable spots in town. It’s true, a good part of this world was known only to a tiny section of Karachi society, but I grew up in that tiny section and yet, even so, by the start of the eighties, stories of that glamorous milieu seemed a million miles away from the reality around me.
Granta for more
(Thanks to Robin Khundkar & Asad Zaidi)